The country is well watered, and the natural resources are very great. Cotton and coffee are both indigenous, the former yielding two crops per year. The oil palm is abundant, palm oil, ivory, India rubber and nuts being the chief exports.
CONGO FREE STATE.
The Act defining and constituting the Congo Free State was signed by the International Congo Conference at Berlin, February 26, 1885. The area of the State is estimated at 1,056,200 square miles, with a population of 27,000,000. While the Congo state is under the sovereignty of the King of Belgium, the latter country or government has no power or responsibility in relation to it. The state is divided into four Provinces,—the Lower Congo, the Upper Congo, Livingstone Falls and the Pool, and the district between the Pool and Equator. The government is in the hands of an Administrator General, under whom are a number of white subordinates, chiefs of Provinces and other officials.
Free commerce, in its widest sense, has been established in the basin of the Congo, and for a distance of 360 miles along the Atlantic. In this territory, no import duties can be levied for twenty years, and the Powers reserve the right to decide if freedom of entry shall be maintained beyond that period. The principal articles for export are said to be palm oil, ivory, rubber, gum copal, ground nuts, orchilla weed and cam-wood; principal imports are textiles, spirits, tobacco, guns and powder.
