336 



GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS AND DISCOVERY. 



their energies to establishing a commercial 

 route from the coast into the productive and 

 healthful interior. Stanley was first in the 

 field. With abundant means furnished by the 

 King of the Belgians, he, at great cost and with 

 great difficulty, constructed a road, fifteen feet 

 wide and solidly laid to withstand the torrents 

 which descend the mountain-sides in the rainy 

 season, from below the cataracts along the 

 north bank of the river to the upper navigable 

 waters above Stanley Pool. The length of this 

 costly artificial route is 230 miles. He com- 

 menced the work in August, 1879, with a force 

 of fifteen Europeans, sixty-eight Zanzibar! s, 

 and a number of Kabindas, besides the natives 

 whom he engaged in the districts through 

 which the road passed. The engineering tools 

 and machinery were brought from Europe 

 in an English steamer and a barge towed by 

 their own steamer, La Belgique, of thirty tons 

 burden. They were provided besides with 

 four steam-launches and five other launches. 

 Stanley gave substantial consideration to the 

 five chiefs of Vivi for the right to build the 

 road through their territories. He leveled the 

 summit of a rocky hill upon which to erect 

 the first station. By December, 1880, the turn- 

 pike and bridges had been built as far as the 

 second station, at Isangila, fifty-two miles from 

 Vivi. Beyond was a mountain around which 

 the road had to be carried by excavations and 

 stone embankments. Beyond the mountain 

 the road leads through a dense forest, in which 

 the tall trees which they fell ed were piled on 

 each side, and the roots dug out with much la- 

 bor. The third station, Manyanga, was reached 

 in May, 1881. The river is navigable between 

 the two stations. Stanley fell ill at this stage 

 of the work. When recovered he pushed for- 

 ward to select a site for the fourth station on 

 Stanley Pool. He had been obliged to pay a 

 dear price for every privilege, and was prepared 

 to offer high ground-rent for the site, but here 

 he encountered unexpected difficulties. De 

 Brazza had preceded him and bespoken the 

 spot which he chose for the fourth station on 

 the north bank of the river. It came almost 

 to a bloody conflict between Stanley and the 

 people at Mfiva, where De Brazza had acquired 

 a cession of land on which to found the future 

 French station of Brazzaville. A friendly chief 

 intervened and offered Stanley another site on 

 the opposite shore, where he erected the sta- 

 tion of Leopold ville. In December, 1881, he 

 launched a steam-yacht and boat on the Congo 

 above the last of the Livingstone Falls. The 

 site for a fifth station was selected at the con- 

 fluence of the Coango with the Congo, about 

 one hundred miles above Leopoldville. The 

 soil is reported by Stanley to be of inexhausti- 

 ble fertility and suited to all kinds of crops. 

 The supply of caoutchouc in the forests is suf- 

 ficient for the world's demand. The principal 

 difficulty in the utilization of the river through- 

 out its navigable length he considers to be the 

 cannibal tribes beyond the farthest point 



reached, and Nyangin6, with whom he had 

 many collisions in his original exploration of 

 the Congo. Before returning to Europe, Stan- 

 ley made a voyage of discovery in the steam- 

 launch for four hundred miles above Stanley 

 Pool. He steamed up a new river, entering 

 the Congo from the south some distance above 

 Stanley Pool. It led into a fine lake, which 

 was covered with fishing-canoes. 



French explorers have usually chosen the 

 Ogov6 River as the route of their expeditions 

 in Central Africa. Its delta is only forty miles 

 south from the Gaboon, on which there is a 

 French colony. One of the more energetic and 

 successful of the explorers of the Ogove is Sa- 

 vorgnan de Brazza, an Italian, who holds a 

 commission in the French Navy. In 1880 he 

 discovered that a tributary of the Congo, the 

 Alima, rises close to the upper course of the 

 Ogove. He descended the Alima to the Congo. 

 Between the navigable waters of the Ogove 

 and of the Alima there are passable natural 

 roads, and a railroad could be built over the 

 short stretch at less expense than Stanley's 

 wagon-road around the cataracts of the Congo. 

 He unfolded a remarkable skill in African di- 

 plomacy in his efforts to forestall Stanley and 

 obtain for his country a priority in the com- 

 merce of the Congo. On the upper Ogov6 he 

 established a French station, Franceville. On 

 the Congo he obtained the cession of a strip of 

 territory fronting for nine miles on the Congo 

 at Stanley Pool. A treaty was drawn and 

 signed by the immediate chief of the territory 

 and by all the chiefs of the Batekes and their 

 head chief Makoko, who claims the sovereign- 

 ty of all the region between the Lefini, or Law- 

 son, and the Ncouna Rivers. They agreed to 

 the grant, and accepted French flags in token 

 of the protection of the French Republic, ac- 

 cording to De Brazza's construction of the ar- 

 rangement. The documents were signed on 

 September 10 and October 3, 1880. De Braz- 

 za then descended the Congo to where Stanley 

 was engaged in his toilsome task near the sec- 

 ond station, at Isangila. In a second journey, 

 concluded in the summer of 1882, De Brazza 

 explored the country north and south of 

 Franceville, seeking some more favorable wa- 

 ter-route by which the commerce of the Congo 

 could be diverted. He explored the plateau 

 between the source of the Ogov6 and the 

 coast. He found it to be extremely fertile, and 

 rich in copper and lead. He found also an- 

 other promising water-route, the Niari River, 

 which discharges only sixty miles north of the 

 mouth of the Congo. The chiefs between 

 the Ogov6 and the Congo seem to look favor- 

 ably thus far on the development of a French 

 protectorate. The rough methods of Stanley 

 are the cause of his being more feared than 

 liked in the region of the Congo. Since the re- 

 turn of De Brazza, Dr. Ballay has departed for 

 the upper Ogov6. Mizon, the head of the sta- 

 tion at Franceville, has explored the plateau 

 between the Alima and the Ogov6 several 



