played so prominent a part in subsequent developments that his personality is woven into the story and demands brief reference. This naval officer of Brazilian descent and French naturalisation is an unique figure in modern African annals. For a quarter of a century, from 1874 to 1899, he toiled continuously and almost uninterruptedly for the political interests of his adopted country in this tropical region so deadly to white men. It was entirely owing to his labours that France was able to claim this vast territory as coming within her sphere of influence in the African Settlement of 1884. He possessed an extraordinary influence over the native mind. The type of political agent and administrator who carved bloody tracks through the "bush" he held in abhorrence. He travelled with no military retinue and with few personal attendants. He never fired a shot against the natives, whose internal quarrels he healed, and by whom he was venerated as the "great white father" over an enormous area. For these simple and primitive forest dwellers, whose many qualities he discerned and appreciated, he possessed a real affection, and the sight of their agony and ruin after six years of frantic exploitation broke his heart.
The System imported into the French Congo being fundamentally identical with the Congo Free State original upon which it modelled itself, the inevitable consequences followed as a matter of course. French officialdom shrank at first from avowing the logical interpretation of its decrees. It was, however, soon compelled to do so owing to the legal resistance offered by the British firms in the Lower Congo to the proceedings of the representatives of the Concessionaire Companies. Having committed the initial and fatal error, the French Government and the local Administration in the French Congo found themselves involved deeper and deeper in the mire, until the French Congo became an almost exact replica of its neighbour.
The Concessionaire Companies acquired by their charters the sole right of possession of the negotiable products of the country. They became de facto owners of the rubber trees and vines within their respective concessions. This implied, of course, dispossession of the native. Dispossession of the native implied, in its turn, the immediate cessation of the act of purchase and sale—
