STANLEY'S GREAT CONGO EXPEDITION 
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interior; an opening for the manufactures of Europe. By the medium 
of roads, rivers and bridges, by the founding of settlements and the 
cultivation of land, by the pacification of hostile tribes and the estab- 
lishment of a secure main route, by means of the exchange of goods 
and other commercial methods, the Association was to achieve the 
gradual civilization of the Congo tribes and the opening of a vast field 
for the commercial energies of the world. 
Proceeding first to Zanzibar, in the spring of 1879, Stanley 
engaged the services of about seventy Wangwana, most of whom 
were veterans who had crossed Africa with him. They were now to 
aid him in founding a state on the great river they had helped him to 
discover. Banana Point, at the mouth of the Congo, was reached on 
August 14th, from which point the expedition proceeded up the stream 
to Wood Point, thirty-four miles inland, where navigation for sea¬ 
going vessels ends. A few miles farther up begin the rapids, down 
which for fifty-two miles the river rushes from the plateau of interior 
Africa. 
Here the expedition met with its first great labor. A road fifty 
miles long needed to be made to the upper level for the transport of 
the great supply of material of every kind which had been brought, 
including a number of steamers for navigation of the interior waters, 
portable wooden houses, and minor goods innumerable. A huge moun¬ 
tain mass stood in the way, and the roadway had here to be made by 
blasting the cliffs, a few feet above the surging rapids. The work 
to be done with the small force at command was so great that it took a 
year to complete it, during which six of the whites of the expedition 
died and thirteen retired invalided. Even many of the natives suc¬ 
cumbed to the heat of the Congo canyon. But Stanley held his own 
and by May 1, 1880, the fifty tons of baggage brought had been 
transported over the well-built road to Manyanga, two hundred and 
fifty miles above the river's mouth. 
At Manyanga, ninety miles above the lower rapids, the Upper 
Livingstone Rapids were reached and a new road had to be built to 
Stanley Pool, where the station of Leopoldville was built. Here 
begins the Upper Congo, which is navigable for the enormous distance 
of one thousand miles, forming a grand highway for commerce into 
