The most remarkable among the vegetable growths are the palms, of which there are an immense variety; but the most useful to commerce is the oil-palm. Its nut supplies the dark red palm-oil so well known on the west coast, while its kernel is valuable for oil-cake for cattle. Not a grove, nor an island scarcely, can be found without this beautiful and most useful palm; in some places, such as the district between the lower Lumani and Congo, there are entire forests of it.
The next most valuable product of the forest, as yet untouched in this region, is the india-rubber plant. There are three kinds of plants producing this article, but that which exudes from Euphorbia is not so elastic in quality, although it may have its uses. “On the islands of the Congo,” says Stanley, “which in the aggregate cover an area of 3000 square miles with 800 square miles of the banks of the main river, I estimate that enough rubber could be collected in one year to pay for a Congo railway.”
Vast extents of forest are veiled with the orchilla moss. Between Iboko and Langa-Langa, Stanley saw a forest of about sixty miles in length draped with orchilla lying on the woods like a green veil. Every village contains its manufactured rolls of redwood powder, and few settlements between the equator and the Kwa could not furnish a few hundredweights at short notice. Every trading canoe floating on the upper Congo possesses among its salable wares a certain store of this universally-demanded article.
“For purely tropical scenes,” says Stanley, “I commend the verdurously rich isles in mid-Congo, between Iboko on the right bank and Mutembo on the left bank, with the intricate and recurrent river channels meandering between. There the rich verdure reflects the brightness of the intense sunshine in glistening velvet sheen from frond and leaf. The underwood presents varied colors, with their tufted tops or the climbing serpentine form of the llianes and their viny leaves. Each and all have their own separate and particular beauties of coloring that renders description impossible. At all times I believe the same refreshing gladness and vigor of tropical nature may be observed about this latitude. Some of the smallest islets seemed to be all aflame with crimson coloring, while the purple of the ipomœa and the gold and white of the jasmine and mimosa flowered, bloomed and diffused a sweet fragrance. Untainted by the marring hand of man, or by his rude and sacrilegious presence, these isles, blooming thus in their beautiful native innocence and grace, approached in aspect as near Eden’s loveliness as anything I shall ever see on this side of Paradise. They are blessed with a celestial bounty of florid and leafy beauty, a fulness of vegetable life that cannot possibly be matched elsewhere save where soil with warm and abundant moisture and gracious sunshine are equally to be found in the same perfection. Not mere things of beauty alone were these isles. The palms were perpetual fountains of a sweet juice, which when effervescing affords delight and pleasure to man. The golden nuts of other trees furnish rich yellow fat, good enough for the kitchen of an epicure, when fresh. On the coast these are esteemed as an article of commerce. The luxuriant and endless lengths of calamus are useful for flooring and verandah mats, for sun-screens on river voyages, for temporary shelters on some open river terrace frequented by fishermen, for fish-nets and traps, for field baskets, market hampers, and a host of other useful articles, but more especially for the construction of neat and strong houses, and fancy lattice-work. Such are the strong, cord-like creepers which hang in festoons and wind circuitously upward along the trunk of that sturdy tree. The pale white blossom which we see is the caoutchouc plant, of great value to commerce, and which some of these days will be industriously hunted by the natives of Iboko and Bolombo. For the enterprising trader, there is a ficus, with fleshy green leaves; its bark is good for native cloth, and its soft, spongy fibre will be of some use in the future for the manufacture of paper. Look at the various palms crowding upon one another! Their fibres, prepared by the dexterous natives of Bangala, will make the stoutest hawsers, the strength of which neither hemp, manilla fibre, nor jute can match; it is as superior to ordinary cord-threads as silk is to cotton. See that soft, pale-green moss draping those tree-tops like a veil! That is the orchilla weed, from which a valuable dye is extracted. I need not speak of the woods, for the tall, dark forests that meet the eye on bank and isle seem to have no end. We are banqueting on such sights and odors that few would believe could exist. We are like children ignorantly playing with diamonds. Such is the wealth of colors revealed every new moment to us, already jaded with the gorgeousness of the tropic world.”
THE AFRICAN CACTUS.
The vegetation of the upper Congo is also remarkable for the quantities of fibres it produces for the manufacture of paper, rope, basket-work, fine and coarse matting and grass cloths.
In this region, among the many minor items available which commercial intercourse would teach the natives to employ profitably, are monkey, goat, antelope, buffalo, lion, and leopard skins; the gorgeous feathers of the tropic birds, hippopotamus teeth, beeswax, frankincense, myrrh, tortoise-shell, cannabis sativa, and lastly, ivory, which to-day is considered the most valuable product. “It may be presumed,” says Stanley, “that there are about 200,000 elephants in about 15,000 herds in the Congo basin, each carrying, let us say, on an average fifty pounds weight of ivory in his head, which would represent, when collected and sold in Europe, £5,000,000.
“For climate,” says Stanley, “the Mississippi Valley is superior; but a large portion of the Congo basin, at present inaccessible to the immigrant, is blessed with a temperature under which Europeans may thrive and multiply. There is no portion of it where the European trader may not fix his residence for years, and develop commerce to his profit with as little risk as is incurred in India.”
Thus we find Stanley has succeeded in solving the Congo problem. While other travellers have only speculated on the probable identity of the Lualala with the Congo, he has put the matter beyond a possible doubt. To his deeds of discovery on the Nyanza and Tanganyika, which have already been recounted, Stanley has, by his second tour of the Congo, added a fresh and incomparable triumph which will forever link his name with the history of the continent that his irresistible zeal has done so much to open up to civilization. His explorations will also have most important commercial and, it may be, political, results.