1878. | Geography and Travels. 33 I 
jestic and calm Lower Congo. In this 180 miles it has a fall of 
585 feet. Stanley found the people in this region very friendly. 
Kwango to be over 500 miles, while there are four or five others 
which, from their breadth, he thinks, should be navigable for 
great distances. The Nile, he says, has greater length than the 
Congo, but the Congo could furnish water for three Niles, and it 
is a much more valuable river for commerce than the Nile,as the 
Congo has its rapids concentrated in two places, and is not, like 
the Nile, frequently interrupted by rapids. The upper rapids, 
where all navigation westward on the Upper Congo terminates, 
has six great falls, while the lower series has sixty-two important 
falls and rapids, with many minor ones. Once above the lower 
cataracts, he says, we have the half of Africa before us, with no 
interruption like the desert regions of the Nile, but one vast popu- 
lous plain, no part of Africa with which he is acquainted being so 
thickly inhabited. The term villages, he says, can scarcely be ap- 
plied, for it is a collection of dwellings, and there are towns in 
some places two miles long, with one or more broad streets, and 
rows of neat and well-built houses, superior to anything to be 
found in Eastern Africa. 
Fault has been found with Mr. Stanley, especially in England, 
for the warlike contests and destruction of savage life that at- 
tended his exploration, which it has been said will make it diffi- 
cult for any future explorer.to follow in the same direction, and 
which the objectors attribute to a too ready disposition on his 
_ part to employ fire arms instead of trying conciliatory measures. 
He was attacked in the beginning and continued to be attacked 
until he came to that part of the river where natives dwelt who 
had intercourse with the Atlantic coast, but as he has stated, and 
as there is évery reason to believe, he acted throughout entirely — 
on the defensive. et 
In no other way would it have been been possible for him to 
have followed the river as he did for 1,800 miles, and none but a 
. navigation of that great lake; the investigation of its tributaries, _ 
pes 
=] 
d what he ascertained in respect to Lake Tanganika, both on 
his first and his last examinations of it, it may be truthfully said 
. 
that no man has ever, in explorations upon the land, done so 
