Page:The National geographic magazine, volume 1.djvu/153

 into the Kongo some distance above Stanley Pool on the south. The mouths of the Sankuru were discovered by Stanley, who was struck by the size and beauty of the river, and by the lakes which probably connect it by a second outlet with the Kongo; but he little realized the magnitude of the river. Even before the journey of Stanley, Portuguese explorers had crossed several large streams far to the south of the Kongo,―the Kuango, the Kassai, and the Lomami,―and explored them for several hundred miles, but were unable to follow them to their mouths. In 1885 and 1886, Wissman and the Belgian explorers sailed up the Sankuru to the streams discovered by the Portuguese. The next largest branch is the Obangi, now called the Obangi-Welle, which flows into the Kongo on the westerly side of the continent, a little south of the equator. An expedition organized by the Kongo Free State steamed up this river in the winter of 1887 and 1888, and solved the problem so long discussed, of the outlet of the Welle. The expedition left the Kongo in the steamer "En Avant," October 26, 1887. It passed several rapids, and steamed to 21° 55' east longitude, when it was stopped by the "En Avant" running on a rock, and the opposition of hostile natives. Here it was only 66 miles from the westernmost point on the Welle reached by Junker, and in the same latitude, each stream running in the same direction, leaving no room to doubt that the two waters unite.

The Little Kibali, which rises a little to the west of Wadelai in the mountains of Sudan, is the initial branch of this river, which bears successively the name of "Kibali" "Welle" and "Doru," and empties into the Kongo under the name of "Obangi," after a course of 1,500 miles.

The discharge of water from the Kongo is only a little less than that from the Amazon, and is said to be three times as great as the discharge from the Mississippi. Grenfel, the English missionary and traveler, says there is no part of the Kongo basin more than one hundred miles from navigable water. What the railroad does for America, the steamboat will do for the Kongo Free State on its seventy-two hundred miles of navigable water.

The English, French, Germans, and Belgians have within a few years planted colonies in Africa. They believe it is more for their interest to colonize Africa than to permit their