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Piers PS AE 
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. 
THE LOWER CONGO—BANANA POINT TO ViIVI. 381 
European extension on the Congo, lies about eighty miles 
from the mouth of the river, and is the site of many 
“factories” and trading establishments belonging to the 
English, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Belgians. There 
is also a flourishing Catholic Mission here. The river at- 
and below Boma somewhat resembles the Congo at 
Stanley Pool in its great breadth, its many islands, and 
the numberless water-birds that haunt its banks. The 
sinister influence of the barren stony hills and straitened 
stream that marks the Cataract region is over, and Nature 
expands in richness and luxuriance. No villages are. 
found near the river until Vivi is reached. ‘There is, it is 
true, a sort of native town near Kisange, but it is chiefly 
used for trading purposes, and is almost abandoned in the 
rainy season. Boma is, perhaps, the most unhealthy 
place on the Congo. The heat is excessive, and behind 
the European houses lie great swamps and fetid marshes, 
which not only give rise to much fever, but breed the 
most terrible mosquitoes for size and bloodthirstiness that 
I have ever known. Fortunately, both my visits there, 
coming and going, were of short duration, and I hastened 
to leave a place which, whether from fancy or otherwise, 
seemed to me eminently disagreeable.* 
Ascending the river towards Underhill, a settlement of 
the Baptist Mission on the south bank of the Congo about | 
110 miles from the sea, where I had been invited to pass 
a few days on my way to the interior, I noted the in- 
creasing asperity of the river scenery. The rounded 
grassy downs of Boma became abrupt and jagged hills 
with great red patches of bare earth, and little forest re- 
maining in their stony clefts. The graceful Hyphcene 
palms with their fan-like fronds gradually decreased in 
numbers until they finally and completely disappeared. 
Meantime the river narrowed, and wound tortuously with 
many whirlpools and sunken rocks amid the stern pre- 
* Now (1894) Boma has become the administrative capital of the 
Congo Free State, and draining and clearing have made it far 
healthier and more suited for the great capital it will some day 
become.—H. H. J. 
