Page:Science vol. 5.djvu/16

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��known to the slave-trader and tUe Englisb cruisers. Since the suppression of the slave- trade. Portuguese, English, Dutch, and Freni/b traders have established factories or trading- stations at many places on the coast from 17° north to the Cape. On the Niger and its tribu- tary, the Benue, are many English stations ; and small steamers nin regularly up and dona these rivers, carrying in the cotton of Man- chester, and bringing away the products of Africa. Within the last two years the Oer- mans have established ti'uding- stations at three different places on the western coast.

This country has been regarded as the most unhealthy portion of the world, lying under the equator ; the soil low and niarehy ; the rli-

��lioth sides of the equator, with n free nuviga- liou above Leopoldville, according to Stanley, of 4,i)'20 miles. In its vallej' there is an abun- dance of flowing streams. The drinking-water is magnificent ; the tempei'ature delightful, the thermometer ranging from 87° at noon, to C0° at two &.U. The land is rich, and adapted to the growth of most tropical and semi-tropical products, amongwhich are India-iiibber, gums, sugar, and cotton. The coimtry is probably as healthy as the fertile prairies of our own great west, and capable of raising immense crops of all the tropical productions.

There are two seasons, — a wet and a dry. In the r.-uny weather a large part of the day is pleasant, storms arise suddenly and with little

���mate moist, damp, and malarious ; the abode of nil kinds of tropical fevers. The Kongo was barred by great falls near its moutb. and was 80 unhealthy, that out of a party of flUj-one, under Knglisb officers, who explored the river in 181G, only one returned alive. Now on the Kongo, above the falls, are between forty and lifty trading-stations, with small steamboats rimning from Leopoldville on Stanley Pool,. three hundred miles from its mouth, to Stanley Falls, nine hundred miles ftom Leopoldville. While on the coast the country is low, flat, find unhealthy, south of the equator it rises .1 short distance from the coast, until it reaches a level of from twelve hundred to fifteen hun- dred feet. The Kongo, king of African rivers, and second only to the Amazon in the volume of its waters, occupies an elevated plateau on

��warning, thunder roars. lightning flashes, wind blows with gi'eat fury, rain pours down in sheets of water for au hour or two i then as suddenly the clouds pass away. On the const the rainy season lasts from Xov ember to March; but in the interior, rains commence earlier, and 'continue latei-.

There appeal's to be no great vaiiety of races among the natives ; though the tribes are very numerous, each, with a different dialect, living in constant warfare with its neighbors. Here are the dwarfs and many tribes of cannibals. The tribes inhabiting the coast have long been acquainted with the Portuguese and English traders; furnishing ivory and slaves in ex- change for beads, fire-arms, ammunition, rum. and a little cotton cloth. These tribes, though anxious to trade with the wliites, are opposed

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