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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



lands are, on the whole, little suited to support a 

 large population. They are mostly choked with 

 rank vegetation ; they are damp, and reeking 

 with miasma. But a large part of Central Africa 

 is much more favorably situated. It consists of 

 elevated basins, one containing the upper waters 

 of the Congo, another those of the Nile, another 

 that of Lake Tchad, a fourth that of the Benue 

 and Niger, and all are flanked by broad ridges 

 near and parallel to either coast. The floors of 

 these basins are more, sometimes much more, 

 than one thousand feet above the sea-level, and, 

 in consequence of this exceptional altitude, they 

 are subjected to a climate far drier and lighter 

 than that which characterizes the larger part of 

 the equatorial land that exists elsewhere in the 

 world. A considerable part of Central Africa 

 maintains a teeming population, contrasting 

 strongly with the sparse inhabitants of South 

 America ; and the capabilities of the country gen- 

 erally appear to be such as would enable it, so 

 far as they alone are concerned, to be as populous 

 as any part of the world. 



The very causes that conduce to the compar- 

 ative salubrity and to the fertility of Central Af- 

 rica militate against its easy commercial inter- 

 course with other countries. Its rivers, in trav- 

 ersing the mountain-ridges that confine its ele- 

 vated interior basins, descend to the lower lands 

 near the sea-shore through a succession of falls 

 or rapids, and are, therefore, impracticable as 

 continuous water-ways leading from the interior 

 to the ocean. The Congo is undoubtedly the 

 most marked of all these instances, being at the 

 same time the river that gives the principal out- 

 let to the waters that fall in the equatorial lands. 

 The rapids begin within a very few miles of the 

 head of its magnificent estuary, and are totally 

 insurmountable by ship, boat, or canoe. The 

 river passes through gorges, of the lowermost of 

 which Tuckey has given us a minute description. 

 Ascending the river still higher, those falls and 

 rapids are reached down which Stanley's party 

 drifted in continual danger, and in one of which 

 Francis Pocock was drowned. Such is the nar- 

 rowness and depth of the rift through which the 

 Congo passes, in the neighborhood of the Yellala 

 Falls, that, when looked down upon from above, 

 the mighty river seemed to Tuckey's party as if 

 it had shrunk to the size of a Scottish burn. It 

 was strangely contracted in width, and even in 

 that reduced water-way its course was further 

 constricted and choked by masses of rock. It 

 was difficult to believe that the mighty volume of 

 the river could find its passage through so nar- 



row a channel, and the hypothesis was freely en- 

 tertained by members of the party that the bulk 

 of the river must have found a subterranean 

 course. They supposed that the greater part of 

 its waters disappeared at the point where the 

 narrows began, and rose again to the surface 

 after their termination. Here a succession of 

 violent whirlpools and upheavals disturb the cur- 

 rent of the river ; they are so turbulent that no 

 vessel can venture to approach them, and it was 

 with the greatest difficulty that the boats of Cap- 

 tain Tuckey's party were extricated even from 

 their eddies. 1 Stanley's route struck overland at 

 the point where these narrows began, and, there- 

 fore, he had not the opportunity of seeing this 

 part of the river ; but he gives a graphic descrip- 

 tion of the gorges higher up-stream, through 

 which he and his party struggled for nearly half 

 a year : 



" While we were fighting our tragical way over 

 the long series of falls along a distance of more than 

 180 miles, which occupied us five months, we lived 

 as though we were in a tunnel, subject at intervals 

 to the thunderous crash of passing trains. Ah ! so 

 different it was from that soft, glassy flow of the 

 river by the black forests of Uregga and Koruru, 

 where a single tremulous wave was a rarity, when 

 we glided day after day through the eerie wilds, in 

 sweet, delicious musings, when our souls were 

 thrilled at sight of the apparently impenetrable for- 

 ests on either hand, when at misty morn, or humid 

 eve, or fervid noon, wild Nature breathes over a 

 soft stillness. . . . But there is no fear of any other 

 explorer attempting to imitate our work here. Nor 

 would we have ventured upon this terrible task had 

 we the slightest idea that such fearful impediments 

 were before us." 2 



None of the other rivers of Equatorial Africa 

 give commercial access to the interior. Thus the 

 Ogowai, though pursued far up-stream by recent 

 explorers, is hardly practicable for small vessels 

 even up to its falls, some 250 miles from the sea. 

 The navigation of the Coanza is interrupted by 

 falls 140 miles from its mouth. 



On the eastern coast the rivers are small, ex- 

 cepting the Zambesi, whose channel is full of 

 shifting sand-banks, and whose mouth is closed by 

 a dangerous bar. Moreover, its upper course is 

 broken by the cataracts of Kebra-bassa and 

 Mosio-tunya. Its tributary, the Shire, up which 

 small vessels might otherwise pass from the sea 

 to Lake Nyassa, is blocked by 30 miles of rapids. 

 The other rivers on the same coast have their 

 sources on the seaward side of the ridge that con- 



1 Tuckey's " Congo," p. 340, etc. 



2 Daily Telegraph, November 22, 1877. 



