“Let us take North America for instance, and the richest portion of it, viz: the Mississippi basin, to compare with the Congo basin, previous to its development by that mixture of races called modern Americans. When De Soto navigated the Father of Waters, and the Indians were undisputed masters of the ample river basin, the spirit of enterprise would have found in the natural productions some furs and timber.
“The Congo basin is, however, much more promising at the same stage of undevelopment. The forests on the banks of the Congo are filled with precious red-wood, lignum vitæ, mahogany and fragrant gum trees. At their base may be found inexhaustible quantities of fossil gum, with which the carriages and furnitures of civilized countries are varnished; their foliage is draped with orchilla, useful for dye. The red-wood when cut down, chipped and rasped, produces a deep crimson colored powder, giving a valuable coloring; the creepers which hang in festoons from the trees
are generally those from which India rubber is produced, the best of which is worth fifty cents a pound in a crude state; the nuts of the oil palm give forth a butter which is a staple article of commerce; while the fibres of others will make the best cordage. Among the wild shrubs are frequently found the coffee-plant. In its plains, jungles and swamps, luxuriate the elephants, whose teeth furnish ivory worth from two to three dollars a pound in an unworked condition; its waters teem with numberless herds of hippopotami, whose tusks are also valuable; furs of the lion, leopard, monkey, otter; hides of the antelope, buffalo, goat and cattle, may also be obtained. But what is of more value, it possesses over 40,000,000 of moderately industrious and workable people, which the red Indians never were. And if we speak of prospective advantages and benefits to be derived from this late gift of nature, they are not much inferior in number or value to those of the well developed Mississippi valley. The copper of Lake Superior is rivalled by that of the Kwilu valley and of Bembé. Rice, cotton, tobacco, maize, coffee, sugar and wheat thrive equally well on the broad plains of the Congo. This is only known after the superficial examination of a limited line which is not much over fifty miles wide. I have heard of gold and silver, but the fact of their existence requires confirmation and I am not disposed to touch upon what I do not personally know.
“For climate, the Mississippi valley is superior, but a large part 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 own profit with as little risk as is incurred in India.
“It is specially with a view to rouse the spirit of trade that I dilate upon the advantages possessed by the Congo basin, and not as a field for the pauper immigrant. There are over 40,000,000 of native paupers within the area described, who are poor and degraded already, merely because they are compassed round by hostile forces of nature and man, denying them contact and intercourse with the elements which might have ameliorated the unhappiness of their condition. European pauperism planted amongst them would soon
degenerate to the low level of aboriginal degradation. It is a cautious trader who advances, not without the means of retreat; the enterprising mercantile factor who with one hand receives the raw produce from the native, in exchange for the finished product of the manufacturer’s loom—the European middleman who has his home in Europe but his heart in Africa—is the man who is wanted. These are they who can direct and teach the black pauper what to gather of the multitude of things around him and in his neighborhood. They are the missionaries of commerce, adapted for nowhere so well as for the Congo basin, where are so many idle hands, and such abundant opportunities all within a natural “ring fence.” Those entirely weak-minded, irresolute and servile people who profess scepticism, and project it before them always as a shield to hide their own cowardice from general observation, it is not my purpose to attempt to interest in Africa. Of the 325,000,000 of people in civilized Europe, there must be some surely to whom the gospel of enterprise I preach will present a few items of fact worthy of retention in the memory, and capable of inspiring a certain amount of action. I am encouraged in this belief by the rapid absorption of several ideas which I have promulgated during the last few years respecting the Dark Continent. Pious missionaries have set forth devotedly to instil in the dull mindless tribes the sacred germs of religion; but their material difficulties are so great that the progress they have made bears no proportion to the courage and zeal they have exhibited. I now turn to the worldly wise traders for whose benefit and convenience a railway must be constructed.”
THE WHITE MAN IN AFRICA.
On the bright, accessible side of Africa the Pharaohs built their temples, obelisks, pyramids and sphinxes. When history dawned the seats of Egyptian learning and splendor were already in decay. In her conquest and plunder of a thousand years, victorious Rome met her most valiant antagonists in Africa, and African warriors carried their standards to the very gates of the capitol on the Tiber. In later days the Italian republics which dotted the northern coasts of the Mediterranean found their commercial enterprise and their ascendency on the sea challenged by the Moorish States which comprised the Barbary coast. Still later, when Spain was intent on conquest in America, and the establishment of colonies which would insure the spread of the Catholic religion, Portugal, in a kindred spirit, was pushing her way down the western coast of Africa, acquiring titles by virtue of discovery, establishing empires of unknown extent, founding Catholic missions and churches, striving for commercial exaltation, till her mariners rounded the Cape of Good Hope, turned northward on the eastern shores, and again took up the work of colonizing, from Mozambique to the outlet of the Red Sea.