The story of the Congo Free State

by Henry Wellington Wack

In 1890 the shipping in the ports of Banana and Boma amounted to only 166,028 entries, and 163,716 departures. The present tonnage into and out of these ports is over 500,000.

On the Upper Congo a large flotilla carries on an excellent service. The State operates thirty-two of these vessels and the companies about forty-five, besides which there is a considerable number of smaller craft belonging to private individuals and to missions. The tonnage of the Upper Congo flotilla is 1675 tons. The marine service numbers 166 whites and 1300 blacks.

Zappo-Zapp Musicians, Luluabourg.

The first steamers launched on the Upper Congo were of only five tons, their component parts having been carried on men’s backs along caravan routes long before the construction of the railway of the Cataracts. Even before the completion of the railway from Matadi to Stanley Pool the State had launched twelve five-ton boats on the Upper Congo, each of which had a capacity of nearly 50,000 pounds. Besides these, the Government launched one steamer of twenty-three tons and four of forty tons burden.

With the completion of the railway, the necessity for considering the weight of the loads ceased, and a new type of craft, the stern-wheel, was chosen. Its system of propulsion offered greater advantages against the variable conditions of navigability with which the vessels had to contend. The ports and landings are in a state of complete organisation at numerous points on the river, and cargoes are now moved with great facility. At regular intervals along the watercourse, posts at which Government workmen gather wood, supply the steamers with this form of fuel. In order that the forests along the banks may not be denuded, a State law enforces the replanting of trees as fast as they are cut down.

In 1896 the Government established a regular fortnightly steamship service between Leopoldville and Stanley Falls. The three steamers, Brabant, Hainaut, and Flandre, have been assigned to this service. The dates of their departure from Stanley Pool have been fixed to correspond with the dates of arrival of European ships. In order to ensure service on the navigable stretches beyond the Falls, steamers have been launched on the rivers Lualaba, Itimbiri, and Ubanghi. A sailing vessel has been launched on Lake Tanganyika and a steamer on the Nile. Native rowing crews have been organised in many regions, and their services are often of great value. All in all, the 102 steamers plying the Congo River in the governmental and private service, the efficient port facilities, the means of transport up the navigable affluents, and the hydrographic surveys constantly going on constitute a condition of colonial development which truly merits the commendation of Herr Von Puttkamer, Governor of the Cameroons, in which, amongst other things, he says: “The energy and practical sense displayed here deserve the greatest admiration.”

As the Congo steamboat largely abolished the laborious native carrier system through the riverain districts of the State, so has the Congo Railway, popularly known as the Cataracts Railway, largely contributed to relieve the black man, under Belgian rule, from lugging fifty-six pounds dead weight through the African jungle. The iron horse in Central Africa has given great momentum to the industries of a fertile region. In constructing the railway from Matadi, near the mouth of the Congo River, to Stanley Pool, traversing a distance of 260 miles over as tortuous and steep a route as ever daring engineers ventured to follow; climbing the Pallaballa Mountains at gradients of 150 feet in the mile, and finally steaming over a summit 17,000 feet above the sea, Belgian skill has again manifested its extraordinary quality, a quality observed in all that it has accomplished in the Congo Basin.

To connect the navigable regions of the Lower and the Upper Congo by a line over the route just indicated seemed at first to be beyond the possibility of achievement. On July 6, 1898, after nine years of unremitting toil and the expenditure of sixty million francs, the line was in complete and regular operation through a region which, on account of its picturesque scenery, may be likened to the Simplon Pass in Switzerland.

Without a railway running round the thirty-two great cataracts which tumble furiously in their descent of eighty miles to the sea, the Congo River, in the opinion of Stanley, would not have much value in the development of the Basin.