Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/401

 selection has been subjected to a good deal of criticism, but it is clear that it is a commanding strategical position, for save with the goodwill of Brazzaville no one can pass from the Upper to the Lower Congo via the river. The Livingstone rapids of the Congo, that commence to the west-ward of it, are indeed permanent bars to steam vessels navigating the Congo, for about 200 miles; yet they are not bars to canoe transport because the banks of the Congo, unlike those of the Ogowé, permit of portage.

It must be confessed that these rapids of the Congo are a difficulty. The waters collected by the great river in its catchment basin of 1,600,000 square miles come through a narrow channel 170 miles in length, cut by them in the rocks of the Pallaballa range, and take the descent of 1,000 feet in fierce stretches of rushing water, broken by thirty-two distinct cataracts. But to overcome these a railway is in course of construction from Matadi to Stanley Pool; for the courage and good seamanship of Captain Murray demonstrated the fact that it was possible to take an ocean-going steamer up through the whirlpools of Hell's Cauldron, to Matadi, close to the foot of the last of the thirty-two cataracts, the Yellala, and 120 miles from the sea. But it is certain that the Congo Free State must soon be split up among the Powers in Africa; and then the long stretch of country from Brazzaville to the 'Ubanji confluence already in the possession of France, thanks to M. de Brazza, will give France command over the whole district of the Middle Congo, i.e. that district draining its trade into the Congo for the 1,000 miles that separate the Livingstone Falls from the Stanley Falls.

Access to the right bank of the Congo at Stanley Pool is undoubtedly easier; but those southern regions, not now in the possession of the Congo Free State, belong to Portugal, and Portugal would have little chance of obtaining a tract of country when her rival for it is France. Portugal has already been almost completely ousted from the Congo, which her great explorer Diogo Cão discovered in 1482, but she still holds the southern bank of the Congo, from the sea to a point (Nkoi) just below Matadi; and a very considerable quantity of the Congo trade filters into her country owing