Read it through once

In the Congo Free State the taxes are paid by the collection of rubber. It is alleged that "if the demands for rubber or other produce were not satisfied, the people at fault were flogged often most barbarously with a thong of twisted hippopotamus hide, called the _chicotta_. Or else the natives were told to catch the women from the offending villages, who were brought to the _Chef de Poste_ and imprisoned by him as hostages for the industry of their husbands. Or else the sentries shot some of the defaulters as examples to the rest. Frequently there were armed expeditions into refractory districts and widespread promiscuous slaughter. The cannibal soldiers of the State or of the Company sometimes feasting on the bodies of the slain."[135]