vl | PREFACE. 
river. All that is written or drawn within has been 
directly done from Nature, and the faultiness in it arises 
more from incompleteness of detail than from incorrect 
outline. Nearly the entirety of the book has been compiled 
in the midst of my studying-ground. Many of the 
chapters here are reproduced exactly as they were jotted — 
down in pencil, either when stopping to rest in some 
shady spot, or as I glided along the river in a canoe. All 
the illustrations have been photographed directly from 
my drawings, twenty-three of them being absolute fac- 
similes reproduced by the Typographic Etching Company. 
H. H. Jounsrton. 
Lonpon, February, 1884. 
PREFACE TO FOURTH AND CHEAP EDITION. 
ELEVEN years nearly from the date of the first publication 
of this book I am asked by the publishers to put my name 
to a specially-prepared fourth edition which will be issued 
at a cheaper rate. During these eleven years greater 
changes have occurred in the Basin of the River Congo 
than in any other part of the Dark Continent. The 
African International Association has developed by 
degrees into the Congo Free State under the Sovereignty 
of the King of the Belgians, and finally into a Belgian 
Colony. The Arabs have been conquered and almost 
expelled from the Congo Basin. Stations have been 
established on all the great confluents of the Congo 
and on the main river itself up to within a short 
