roMMKUUE AND NAVIGATION. 



COMJO FKKK STATK. 



193 



of 850,057 tons; for Puerto 



tons; for tin- Philippine 



i l.::i>7 tons; for the Canary Islands, 



- ion>; fur other Spanish j .SSOM- .11-. 



n.-.: for Sweden and Norway, till, of 



: I'nr Turkey in Kuropc ami A-I.I. 



i ,'^84 tons ; for Turkey in Africa, 9, of 5,659 



i ii-ua\ . ~>7, of 34,909 tons ; for Vene- 



M.ioi! tons ; for all other countries, 



_g, and inlands, I'.). of l.i\'.',i\ tons; for the 

 le hMierics '.'I. of Ji.vM'.Molis. 

 nicrican Shipping. In 1858 over 78 per 

 >f the exports and imports was carried in 

 American bottoms and in 1801 the sea-going 

 tonnage in the foreign trude reached 2,642,628, 

 Jiest point in the history of the country. 

 4 the four years of the Civil war the ton- 

 :i- reduced to 1,602,588, and since then, 

 to the removal of early discriminations in 

 .f American shipping and the stimulation 

 of iron ship-building by other governments, it 

 has further declined, until in 1891 less than 13 

 IHT cent, of the maritime commerce was done by 

 American >hips. The registered tonnage in 

 isiu was l.Oi I."), 1 .).")!), tin 1 number of vessels being 

 comprising 988,719 tons in the foreign- 

 Ming ocean trade and 17,231 tons in the whale 

 lihery. Of the commercial tonnage, 236,070 

 tuns were steam vessels and 7."W.649 were sailing 

 The enrolled and licensed tonnage 

 comprised :!.'i(>!),876 tons documented under 

 rVd"r;il laws as engaged in the coastwise trade 

 on the oceans, lakes, and rivers, and 68,933 tons 

 i for the fisheries, the total number of 

 U-ing 22,:512, of 3,678,809 tons. These 

 make with t he registered vessels a total number of 

 1 .md a total documented tonnage of 4,684,- 

 !t.")!i tons. There is an enormous undocumented 

 tonnage, consisting of unrigged barges, flat 

 canal boats, etc., that on the Ohio and its 

 tributaries above Cincinnati, amounting alone to 

 2,-17i)..~>47 tons. Of the total documented ton- 

 '3.016,264 torts were steam vessels and 

 ..\i;i;M!i.-> sailing or other craft. The docu- 

 mented tonnage on the Northern lakes at the 

 cloM- of the fiscal year 1891 was 1,154,870 tons; 

 on the Western rivers, 308,348 tons; on the At- 

 lantic and Gulf coasts, 2,780,683 tons; on the 

 Pacific coast, 440,858 tons. The documented 

 iron tonnage, including that on the Western 

 was 741, 598 tons. That on the sea-coasts 

 Vi-l.!i<>3 tons, and on the lakes 281,724 tons, 

 he registered tonnage during 1891 received 

 a net increase of 59,254 tons, and the enrolled 

 and licensed tonnage was increased by 201,007. 

 The documented sailing tonnage increased 62,- 

 :!-'! tons, and the steam tonnage 157,175 

 tons. The number of new vessels built and 

 documented during the year ending June 80, 

 I vi. was 1,384, of 369,302'tons, of which 733, of 

 144,290 tons, were sailing vessels ; 488, of 185,037 

 tons were steam vessels: and 163. of 89,975 tons 

 were barges and canal boats. There were 944 

 new ves>els, of 218,392 tons, built during the 

 \-aron the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, as corn- 

 wit h 663, of 156,756 tons, in 1890; on the 

 Pacific coast, 122 vessels, of 19,070 ton-, a- ci.m- 

 pared with !:i. of 1'J. :;:'>.") tons; on the Northern 

 .'Hi. of 1 11, 856 tons, as compared with 191, 

 v-Vjr. tons; on the Western rivers, 114. of 

 19,984 tons, as compared with 104, of 16,506 

 VOL. xxxi. 13 A 



tons Tin- iron vessels built during the year 

 mea-urcd HCi.filH tons, of which 57,989 tons 

 represent vessels built at the lake ports. 



t'ONUO FREE STATE, an independent -late 

 in Central Africa, constituted by the general 

 act of the Congo, signed at Berlin on Fed. -ji;. 

 1885, which defines the limits of the territory 

 ami declares it to lie neutral under an interna- 

 tional guarantee. The Congo was declared t 

 be an international and neutral river free to Un- 

 commercial Hags of all nations, and police juris- 

 diction over the stream was confided to an in- 

 ternational commission, which was empowered 

 to levy tolls and navigation dues sufficient to 

 defray the expenses. These commissioners were 

 to be appointed by the powers, but only a mi- 

 nority of them named their commissioners, and 

 the commission has never been constituted, its 

 functions being discharged by the officers of the 

 Free State. Leopold II, King of the Belgians, 

 was authorized by the Belgian Parliament in 

 1885 to assume the title and dignity of Sovereign 

 of the Congo State. The supreme Government, 

 which is composed of the King and heads of de- 

 partments, has its seat at Brussels. Freedom of 

 trade, which was decreed for the whole basin of 

 the Congo in the original act, the powers reserv- 

 ing for themselves the right of deciding after 

 twenty years whether free entry should be con- 

 tinued, was modified by the International Anti- 

 Slavery Congress at Brussels in 1890. By the 

 act then signed and afterward ratified by all the 

 treaty powers, with the exception of "France, 

 Holland, Portugal, and the United States, the 

 Free State was enabled, in order that it might 

 co-operate efficiently in the suppression of the 

 slave trade, to levy certain duties on imports. 

 The Government of the Netherlands was the 

 only one to object to this clause. On Aug. 2, 

 1889, King Leopold executed a will by which he 

 bequeathed to Belgium all his sovereign rights 

 in the Congo Free State ; and on July 3, 1890, 

 the Free State and Belgium entered into a con- 

 vention by which the former conceded to the 

 latter the right after the lapse of ten years to 

 annex its territories, which on July 81 of the 

 same year were declared inalienable, although a 

 prior convention had given to France a pre- 

 emption claim next to that of Belgium. 



The officials employed in the general admin- 

 istration at Bomaand in the other districts num- 

 ber 69. The 12 administrative districts are 

 Boma, Banana, Matadi, the Congo Cataracts. 

 Stanley Pool. Kassai, the Equator, Ubangi, the 

 Aruwimi and Welle. Stanley Falls, Lualaba. 

 and East Kwango. The authority of the State 

 is recognized wherever there are missions and 

 factories, and has recently been defied only in 

 the Bolobo country, where it was considered 

 necessary to make an example of the rebellious 

 natives, and in Lukungu, where an agent of the 

 Stale was killed. The general administration in 

 Africa is directed by a governor-general. The 

 post for a year or two has been vacant, the chief 

 administrative officer being Yice-(io\ernor-Gen- 

 eral ('ot)uilhat. A judiciary has been organized 

 and a criminal code has been in operation since 

 issti. For civil and commercial affairs the Bel- 

 gian law is in force, wit li certain modifications. 

 The natives are beginning to take their quarrels 

 into the courts for adjudication. 



