STANLEY'S GREAT CONGO EXPEDITION 35; 



interior ; an opening for the manufactures of Europe. By the medium 

 of roads, rivers and bridges, by the founding of settlements and the 

 cuhivation of land, by the pacification of hostile tribes and the estab- 

 lishment of a secure main route, by means of the exchange of goods 

 and other comm.ercial methods, the Association was to achieve the 

 gradual civilization of the Congo tribes and the opening of a vast field, 

 for the commercial energies of the world'. 



Proceeding first to Zanzibar, in the spring of 1879, Stanley 

 engaged the services of about seventy Wangwana, most of whom 

 were veterans who had crossed Africa with him. They were now to 

 aid him in founding a state on the great river they had helped him to 

 discover. Banana Point, at the mouth of the Congo, was reached on 

 August 14th, from which point the expedition proceeded up the stream 

 to Wood Point, thirty-four miles inland, where navigation for sea- 

 going vessels ends. A few miles farther up begin the rapids, down 

 which for fifty-two miles the river rushes from the plateau of interior 

 Africa. 



Here the expedition met with its first great labor. A road fifty 

 miles long needed to be made to the upper level for the transport of 

 the great supply of material of every kind which had been brought, 

 including a number of steamers for navigation of the interior waters, 

 portable wooden houses, and minor goods innumerable. A huge moun- 

 tain mass stood in the way, and the roadway had here to be made by 

 blasting the clififs, a few feet above the surging rapids. The work 

 to be done with the small force at command was so great that it took a 

 year to complete it, during which six of the whites of the expedition 

 died and thirteen retired invalided. Even many of the natives suc- 

 cumbed to the heat of the Congo canyon. But Stanley held his own 

 and by May i, 1880, the fifty tons of baggage brought had been 

 transported over the well-built road to Manyanga, two hundred and 

 fifty miles above the river's mouth. 



At Manyanga, ninety miles above the lower rapids, the Upper 

 Livingstone Rapids were reached and a new road had lo be built to 

 Stanley Pool, where the station of Leopoldville was built. Here 

 begins the Upper Congo, which is navigable for the enormous distance 

 of one thousand miles, forming a grand highway for commerce into 



