estimates of the total population rates it as high as 40,000,000. The Lower Congo enjoys the priceless advantage of traversing an intermediate zone admirably fitted for cultivation, separating two opposing tracts, in one of which cultivation is rendered impossible by absolute want of water, and in the other by a permanent excess of it. The great mass of forest and swamp covering the basin of the Niger and almost the whole of the west coast stretches southward as far as the mouth of the Ogoway River, about fifty miles south of the equator. Here it gradually begins to melt away, the rivers being still thickly wooded; while the open country assumes the form of wide green savannas, dappled with clumps of trees, and representing the "park-like region" so often and so enthusiastically referred to by Mr. Johnston. This in its turn gives place by degrees to the scantier vegetation of the Portuguese provinces of Benguela and Mossamedes, growing thinner and ever thinner as it recedes from the limit of the oil-palms at the tenth parallel of south latitude, till the last trace of vegetable life vanishes on the border of the great Kalahari Desert, which lies immediately north of the Orange River and Cape Colony. It is through the great natural park above mentioned that the Congo flows downward to the sea, with all the commercial advantages that can be given to it by a magnificent climate and a soil of unexampled fertility. Among the products of the Congo basin enumerated by Mr. Stanley are palm-oil, cassava, plantains and other fruits, palm wine, copper, iron, vermilion, camwood, tobacco, sugar-cane, beans, maize, millet, sweet-potatoes and other vegetables, mats of palm fibre, nuts, fish, eggs, pigs, goats, India rubber, and ivory. The last article is so abundant on the Upper Congo, that, in one of the villages of the savage region near the mouth of the Aruwimi, an "ivory temple" is said to exist, formed of a light roof supported by thirty-three entire tusks, many of which are of enormous size. The chief local imports are cotton, hardware, cloth, salt, crock ery, guns, and powder, the three first-named articles being in especial demand, and forming in some districts the actual currency of the country, so far as it can be said to have any. "At the present time," says Mr. Stanley, "the quantity of cheap cottons sold every year in yards; and supposing every inhabitant of the Congo basin to have just one Sunday dress every new year, 320,000,000 yards would be required." Stanley Pool, 346 miles from the river's mouth, 24 miles long by 16 broad, studded with islands of considerable size, completely sheltered by hills varying from 1,000 to 3,000 feet in height, and itself 1,147 feet above the sea-level, is as fine a haven of local traffic as Adam Smith himself could have desired. Not without reason did the same observant eye which singled out the hill-top now crowned by the neat little station of Vivi select the western gateway of Stanley Pool as a fit site for Leopoldsville (the virtual capital of the new Congo state), at which its would-be rival, Brazzaville - rashly built in an unhealthy and inconvenient spot on the right bank, some years ago, by the French pioneer De Brazza - looks gloomily through its clustering trees across the broad brown current of the river. The proposed connection of Leopoldsville with Vivi by a railway 235 miles long, avoiding the formidable rapids of Yellala, Isangila, etc., will practically unite the Upper and Lower Congo, and will undoubtedly give an enormous impetus to the commerce of the whole basin, the yearly value of which, when fully developed, is estimated by Mr. Stanley himself as high as $350,000,000. But these splendid results are not to be achieved (as many who ought to know better appear to think) by a single determined effort. "You cannot expect to civilize a whole continent at one blow," said Mr. James Irvine of Liverpool, with whom I had a very interesting talk shortly before my departure for the Congo, and who, having lived for years on the west coast of Africa, and had abundant experience of the natives and their ways, is fairly entitled to speak with authority on this point. I give this African undertaking twenty-five or thirty years to get into what you might call proper working order. There can be no doubt whatever that the establishment of fair trade is the right way to put an end to these tribal wars that do so much mischief; for when once the natives can get what they want by trading, they'll have nothing to fight about. But to regard Africa as a second Peru, where fortunes are to be picked up like pebbles, is simply absurd. Africa will unquestionably be estimates of the total population rates it as high as 40,000,000. The Lower Congo enjoys the priceless advantage of traversing an intermediate zone admirably fitted for cultivation, separating two opposing tracts, in one of which cultivation is rendered impossible by absolute want of water, and in the other by a permanent excess of it. The great mass of forest and swamp covering the basin of the Niger and almost the whole of the west coast stretches southward as far as the mouth of the Ogoway River, about fifty miles south of the equator. Here it gradually begins to melt away, the rivers being still thickly wooded; while the open country assumes the form of wide green savannas, dappled with clumps of trees, and representing the "park-like region" so often and so enthusiastically referred to by Mr. Johnston. This in its turn gives place by degrees to the scantier vegetation of the Portuguese provinces of Benguela and Mossamedes, growing thinner and ever thinner as it recedes from the limit of the oil-palms at the tenth parallel of south latitude, till the last trace of vegetable life vanishes on the border of the great Kalahari Desert, which lies immediately north of the Orange River and Cape Colony. It is through the great natural park above mentioned that the Congo flows downward to the sea, with all the commercial advantages that can be given to it by a magnificent climate and a soil of unexampled fertility. Among the products of the Congo basin enumerated by Mr. Stanley are palm-oil, cassava, plantains and other fruits, palm wine, copper, iron, vermilion, camwood, tobacco, sugar-cane, beans, maize, millet, sweet-potatoes and other vegetables, mats of palm fibre, nuts, fish, eggs, pigs, goats, India rubber, and ivory. The last article is so abundant on the Upper Congo, that, in one of the villages of the savage region near the mouth of the Aruwimi, an “ivory temple" is said to exist, formed of a light roof supported by thirty-three entire tusks, many of which are of enormous size. The chief local imports are cotton, hardware, cloth, salt, crock ery, guns, and powder, the three first-named articles being in especial demand, and forming in some districts the actual currency of the country, so far as it can be said to have any. "At the present time," says Mr. Stanley," the quantity of cheap cottons sold every year in yards; and supposing every inhabitant of the Congo basin to have just one Sunday dress every new year, 320,000,000 yards would be required." Stanley Pool, 346 miles from the river's mouth, 24 miles long by 16 broad, studded with islands of considerable size, completely sheltered by hills varying from 1,000 to 3,000 feet in height, and itself 1,147 feet above the sea-level, is as fine a haven of local traffic as Adam Smith himself could have desired. Not without reason did the same observant eye which singled out the hill-top now crowned by the neat little station of Vivi select the western gateway of Stanley Pool as a fit site for Leopoldsville (the virtual capital of the new Congo state), at which its would-be rival, Brazzaville — rashly built in an unhealthy and inconvenient spot on the right bank, some years ago, by the French pioneer De Brazza looks gloomily through its clustering trees across the broad brown current of the river. The proposed connection of Leopoldsville with Vivi by a railway 235 miles long, avoiding the formidable rapids of Yellala, Isangila, etc., will practically unite the Upper and Lower Congo, and will undoubtedly give an enormous impetus to the commerce of the whole basin, the yearly value of which, when fully developed, is estimated by Mr. Stanley himself as high as $350,000,000. But these splendid results are not to be achieved (as many who ought to know better appear to think) by a single determined effort. "You cannot expect to civilize a whole continent at one blow," said Mr. James Irvine of Liverpool, with whom I had a very interesting talk shortly before my departure for the Congo, and who, having lived for years on the west coast of Africa, and had abundant experience of the natives and their ways, is fairly entitled to speak with authority on this point. "I give this African undertaking twenty-five or thirty years to get into what you might call proper working order. There can be no doubt whatever that the establishment of fair trade is the right way to put an end to these tribal wars that do so much mischief; for when once the natives can get what they want by trading, they'll have nothing to fight about. But to regard Africa as a second Peru, where fortunes are to be picked up like pebbles, is simply absurd. Africa will unquestionably be |