104 4 JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
in character, and offers many beautiful landscapes, which, 
however, are all of the same type and grow somewhat 
monotonous in feature. A great stretch of valley, filled — 
with rich forest, with a sounding stream that is seen 
flashing through the trees, is bounded by boldly-shaped 
hills, between each of which !esser valleys lie, that seem, 
as it were, tributaries of the great one, some of them 
mere crevasses in the mountains, but each with its tiny 
stream, its cascades, and its velvety woods. Occasionally, 
especially near Lutete, patches are cleared in the valleys, 
and the rich soil which the rain is always washing down 
from the hills is planted with manioc, tobacco, ground- 
nuts, and bananas. This gives, at times, a strangely 
civilized look to the country, and suggests the idea that 
in the future, when colonists flock to occupy the Congo 
territories, these lowlands will become true golden valleys, 
bringing forth all the products of the tropics ; while their 
hill-sides, terraced and planted with vines, will be sur- 
mounted by many a fine-built habitation, from which the 
Neo-African may complacently look down on his rice- 
fields and his gardens, or his plantations and his sugar- 
brakes, which he basking under an equatorial sun, 
irrigated by a never-failing stream. And what a future 
studying-ground for scientific men! When people have 
conquered their unreasonable fear of the Congo climate, 
and some medical man has deigned to study the local 
hygiene, and so instructed us as to what we should eat 
and drink, and how we should live that we may best 
become acclimatized—when transport is facilitated and 
communication with the outer world easy and assured, 
then let the scientist come and found his botanical garden 
in one valley, and his vivarium in another, whilst in his 
comfortable brick-built house, built of the bricks that are 
locally made, and exposed to the dry and healthy breezes 
that assail the hill-tops, he may prepare his specimens, 
and arrange his accumulated facts as much at his ease as 
if he were in Kew or the British Museum. 
The rounded hills that encircle these luxuriant valleys 
are covered with strong coarse grasses of several sorts, of 
