The story of the Congo Free State

by Henry Wellington Wack

Ss. “Leopoldville” Bound for Boma.

On the south promontory of the Delta the Portuguese erected a pillar to commemorate their discovery. This promontory is still known as the Padrão Foreland. It is certain that these Portuguese, who were missionaries before they were explorers, remained a considerable time in the Delta; for they converted the King of Ekongo, as the country was then called, to Christianity. It was to this king that the sovereigns of Angolo traced descent, and it is significant that their blue banner with the golden star is to-day the flag of the Congo Free State.

About seven years after the first expedition a second was sent out from Portugal, and the ruins of the trading posts then established, called San Antonio and Salvador, are still to be seen. The old Kingdom of Ekongo continued a hundred miles into the interior. It was bounded on the north by N’zadi, the modern Congo, and on the south by the river Coanza. The accounts of the early traders, some of which are still preserved in the State archives of Portugal, abound in fanciful descriptions. To the mediæval mind the forest was peopled with mythical monsters. It was probably for this reason that the superstitious Portuguese kept so near the coast.

In 1534 San Salvador, which until the arrival of the Portuguese was known as Ambassa, became the seat of a bishopric. Here a cathedral was erected, but later the see was transferred to St. Paul de Loanda, which thus became the capital of the Portuguese authority.

In 1784, to maintain their occupation of the Congo, the Portuguese built a fort at Kabinda, about thirty miles north of the mouth of the river. Several slave stations also were established in the interior. From this position they were soon driven by the French, though the latter made no attempt to found a colony.

In 1816 the British Government despatched an expedition to the Congo. James Kingston Tuckey, the leader, explored the river from its mouth to a distance of 170 miles into the interior. In his description of the country Tuckey speaks of the numerous slave stations along the banks. At this period two thousand slaves were exported annually. Fifty years later this number had increased to over one hundred thousand!

The Congo with its multitudinous branches forms a river-basin unequalled even by that of the Mississippi. This great territory, over fourteen hundred miles in breadth, covers an area of nearly a million square miles. Though mere size is not always a measure of importance, yet this region is unsurpassed, in respect to natural resources, by any part of the world. Second only to the Amazon in volume, the Congo precipitates about 2,000,000 cubic feet of water each second into the Atlantic.

This immense basin has been divided by geographers into three gradual terraces: the first and lowest is near the coast; the second, in the region of the Upper Congo; and the highest in the vicinity of the great lakes. According to the official Act the basin is bounded by the watersheds of the neighbouring basins of the Niari, the Ogowe, the Shari, and the Nile on the north; by the eastern watershed line of the affluents of Lake Tanganyika on the east; and by the watersheds of the basins of the Zambesi and the Loge on the south. Congoland is about 1,500,000 square miles in extent. From its western frontage of 400 miles it broadens eastward until at Lake Tanganyika it has a frontier of about 1500 miles.

The numerous ramifications of the Congo open rapid and economic channels of communication to the interior. To this magnificent system of waters the country also owes its unequalled fertility. Many of the rivers now practically useless can in time be rendered navigable by the skill of the engineer. Where blasting out channels is not feasible canals can be built to connect the navigable parts of the stream. It is obvious, too, that the effects on that torrid climate of these great rivers, from one to twenty miles in breadth, must be considerable. Without them the country would be an arid desert, another Sahara, deadly to life, both animal and vegetable.

We shall first follow the successive stages of the Congo, as the Chambesi, the Luapula, and the Lualaba, in the huge watershed on the eastern border between Lakes Nyassa and Tanganyika.