diff --git a/src/CHANGELOG b/src/CHANGELOG
index e728cea4d..1b10ece87 100755
--- a/src/CHANGELOG
+++ b/src/CHANGELOG
@@ -6,6 +6,10 @@ ECL 9.12.3:
  - When converting rationals to floats, ECL now rounds instead of using the
    routine in GMP, which truncates.
 
+ - LOAD open streams in buffered mode. It does not cause any significant
+   performance increase except in broken network filesystems that lack
+   buffering such as some implementations of NFS.
+
 ECL 9.12.2:
 ===========
 
diff --git a/src/c/load.d b/src/c/load.d
index d061788dd..7972009c2 100755
--- a/src/c/load.d
+++ b/src/c/load.d
@@ -464,7 +464,8 @@ si_load_source(cl_object source, cl_object verbose, cl_object print)
 		strm = source;
 	} else {
 		strm = ecl_open_stream(source, smm_input, Cnil, Cnil, 8,
-				       ECL_STREAM_DEFAULT_FORMAT, Cnil);
+				       ECL_STREAM_DEFAULT_FORMAT | ECL_STREAM_C_STREAM,
+                                       Cnil);
 		if (Null(strm))
 			@(return Cnil)
 	}