The Portuguese, according to Vasconcello, shunning all fanciful derivations, were long satisfied to term the Congo "Rio de Patron" (Rio do Padrao) from the first of memorial columns built at its mouth. In 1816 Captain Tuckey's expedition learned with Maxwell that the stream should be called, not Zaire, but Moienzi Enzaddi, the "great river" or the "river which absorbs all other rivers." This thoroughly corrupted name, which at once found its way into popular books, and which is repeated to the present day even by scientific geographers, suggested to some theorists "Zadi," the name of the Niger at Wassenah according to Sidi Harriet, as related by the American, James Riley, of the brig "Commerce," wrecked on August 28, 1815: others remembered "Zad" which Shaykh Yusuf (Hornemann), misleading Mungo Park, learned to be the Niger east of Tinbuktu, "where it turns off to the southward." I need hardly say that this "Zadi" and "Zad" are evident corruptions of Bahr Shady, Shary, Shari, Chad, Tsad, and Chadda, the swampy lake, alternately sweet and brackish, which was formerly thrown by mistake into the Chadda River, now called the Binue or Bimúwe, the great eastern fork of the Negro-land Nile: the true drainage of the Chadda in ancient times has lately been determined by the adventurous Dr. Nachtigal. Mr. Cooley[12] applied, as was his wont, a superficial knowledge of Kibundo to Fiote or Congoese, and further corrupted Moienzi Enzaddi to Muenya (for Menha or Menya) Zinzádi-this Angolan "emendation," however, was not adopted.
The natives dwelling upon the Congo banks have, as usual in Africa, no comprehensive generic term for the mighty artery of the West Coast. Each tribe calls it by its own name. Thus even in Fiote we find "Mulángo," or "Lángo," the water; "Nkoko," the stream, "Mwánza," the river, and "Mwanza Nnenne," the great river, all used synonymously at the several places. The only proper name is Mwánza Nzádi, the River Nzadi: hence Zaire, Zaïre, Zahir, Zaira the "flumen Congo olim Zaida" (C. Barlé)—all corruptions more or less common.
The homogeneous form of the African continent causes a whimsical family resemblance, allowing for the difference of northern and southern hemispheres, in its four arterial streams—the Nile and Niger, the Congo and Zambeze. I neglect the Limpopo, called in its lower bed Espirito Santo, Maniça, Manhiça (Manyisa), and Delagoa River; the Cunene (Nourse) River, the Orange River, and others, which would be first-rate streams in Europe, but are mere dwarfs in the presence of the four African giants. The Nile and Niger, being mainly tenanted by Moslemized and comparatively civilized races, have long been known, more or less, to Europe. The Zambeze, owing to the heroic labours of Dr. Livingstone, is fast becoming familiar to the civilized world; and the Congo is in these days (1873) beginning at last to receive the attention which it deserves. It is one of the noblest known to the world. Whilst the Mississippi drains a basin of 1,244,000 English square miles, and at Carrollton, in Louisiana, discharges as its mean volume for the year 675,000 cubic feet of water per second, the Congo, with a valley area of 800,000 square miles, rolls at least 2,500,000 feet. Moreover, should it prove a fact that the Nzadi receives the Chambeze and its lakes, the Bangweolo (or Bemba), the Moero, near which stands the capital of the Cazembe, the Kamalondo, Lui or Ulenge, "Lake Lincoln" (Chibungo), and other unvisited waters, its area of drainage will nearly equal that of the Nile.
The four arteries all arise in inner regions of the secondary age, subtended east and west by ghats, or containing mountains mostly of palaeozoic or primary formation, the upheaval of earthquakes and volcanoes. These rims must present four distinct water-sheds. The sea-ward slopes discharge their superabundance direct to the ocean often in broad estuaries like the Gambia and the Gaboon, still only surface drains; whilst the counterslopes pour inland, forming a network of flooded plains, perennial swamps, streams, and lakes. The latter, when evaporation will not balance the supply to a "sink," "escape from the basin of the central plateau-lands, and enter the ocean through deep lateral gorges, formed at some ancient period of elevation and disturbance, when the containing chains were subject to transverse fractures." All four head in the region of tropical rains, the home of the negro proper, extending 35° along the major axis of the continent, between Lake Chad (north latitude 14° to 15°), and the Noka a Batletle or Hottentot Lake, known to the moderns as Ngami (south latitude 20° to 21°). Consequently all are provided with lacustrine reservoirs of greater or smaller extent, and are subject to periodical inundations, varying in season, according as the sun is north or south of the line. Those of the northern hemisphere swell with the "summer rains of Ethiopia," a fact known in the case of the Nile to Democritus of Abdera (5th cent. B.C.), to Agatharchidas of Cnidos (2nd cent. B.C.) to Pomponius Nida, to Strabo (xvii. 1), who traces it through Aristotle up to Homer's "heaven-descended stream" and to Pliny (v. 10). For the same reason the reverse is the case with the two southern arteries; their high water, with certain limitations in the case of the Congo, is in our winter.
By the condition of their courses, all the four magnates are broken into cataracts and rapids at the gates where they burst through the lateral chains; the Mosi-wa-túnya (smoke that thunders) of the Zambeze, and the Ripon Falls discovered by Captains Speke and Grant upon the higher Nile, are the latest acquisitions to geography, whilst the "Mai waterfall," reported to break the Upper Congo, still awaits exploration. This accident of form suggests a division of navigation on the maritime section and on the plateau-bed which, in due time, will be connected, like the St. Lawrence, by canals and railways. All but the Nzadi, and perhaps even this, have deltas, where the divided stream, deficient in water-shed, finds its sluggish way to the sea.
The largest delta at present known is the Nigerian, whose base measures 155 direct geographical miles between the Rivers Kontoro east, and Benin west. Pliny (v. 9) makes the Nile delta extend 170 Roman miles, from the Canopic or African to the Pelusiac or Asiatic mouth, respectively distant from the apex 146 and 166 miles; the modern feature has been reduced to 80 miles from east to west, and a maximum of 90 from north to south. The Zambeze extends 58 miles between the Kilimani or northern and the west Luabo, Cuama or southern outlet-at least, if these mouths are not to be detached. The Nzadi is the smallest, measuring a maximum of only 12 to 15 miles from the Malela or Bananal Creek to the mangrove ditches of the southern shore.
In these depressed regions the comparatively salubrious climates of the uplands become dangerous to the European; the people also are degraded, mostly pirates and water-thieves, as the Nigerian Ibos, the Congoese Musulungus, and the Landim (Amalandi) Kafirs about the lower Zambeze. There is a notable similarity in their productions, partly known to Pliny (v. 8), who notices "the calamus, the papyrus, and the animals" of the Nigris and the Nile. The black-maned lion and the leopard rule the wold; the gorilla, the chimpanzee, and other troglodytes affect the thinner forests; the giraffe, the zebra, and vast hosts of antelopes scour the plains; the turtle swims the seas; and the hippopotamus, the crocodile, and various siluridae, some of gigantic size, haunt the lakes and rivers. The nymphæa, lotus or water-lily, forms rafts of verdure; and the stream-banks bear the calabash, the palmyra, the oil-palm, and the papyrus. Until late years it was supposed that the water-lily, sacred to Isis, had been introduced into Egypt from India, where it is also a venerated vegetable, and that it had died out with the form of Fetishism which fostered it. It has simply disappeared like the crocodile from the Lower Nile. Finally, to conclude this rapidly outlined sketch, all at the present moment happily share the same fate; they are being robbed of their last mysteries; the veil of Isis is fast yielding to the white man's grasp.
We can hardly as yet answer the question whether the Congo was known to the ancients. Our acquaintance with the oldest explorations is at present fragmentary, and we are apt to assume that the little told us in our school-books is the sum-total of former exploits. But possibly inscriptions in the New World, as well as in the Old, may confirm the "first circumnavigation" so simply recounted by Herodotus, especially that of the Phoenicians, who set out from the Red Sea, and in three years returned to the Mediterranean. The expression, "they had the sun to the right," is variously explained. In the southern hemisphere the sailors facing west during our winter would see the sun at noon on the right, and in the northern hemisphere on the left. But why should they face west? In the "Chronicle" of Schedel (p. ccxc., printed in 1793, Pigafetta, Pinkerton, xi. 412) we read: "These two, (i.e. Jacob Cam and Martin Behem, or Behaim) by the help of the gods, ploughing the sea at short distance from shore, having passed the equinoctial line, entered the nether hemisphere, where, fronting the east, their shadow fell towards the south, and on their right hand." Perhaps it may simply allude to the morning sun, which would rise to port as they went southwards, and to starboard as they returned north. Again, the "First Overland Expedition" is related by the Father of History with all the semblance of truth. We see no cause to doubt that the Nasammones or Nasamones (Nás Amún), the five young Lybians of the Great Syrtis (Fezzan) crossed the (watered strip along the Mediterranean), passed through the (the "bush") on the frontier, still famed for lions, and the immeasurably sandy wastes (the Sahara proper, across which caravan lines run). The "band of little black men" can no longer be held fabulous, since Miani and Schweinfurth added the Akya to M. du Chaillu's Obongo. The extensive marshes were the northern limit of the tropical rains, and the "City of Enchanters" is the type of many still existing in inner Africa. The great river flowing from west to east, whose crocodiles showed it to be the Nile, must have been the Niger. The ancients knew middle Ethiopia to be a country watered by lakes and streams: Strabo (xvii. 3) tells us that "some suppose that even the Nile-sources are near the extremities of Mauritania." Hence, too, the Nilides, or Lake of Standing Water in Pliny (v. 10). For the most part they made a great central river traverse the northern continent from west to east, whereas the Arabian geographers of the middle ages, who were followed by the Portuguese, inverted the course. Both may be explained by the lay of the Quorra and the Binúwe, especially the latter; it was chronically confounded with the true Nile, whose want of western influents was not so well known then as now.
The generation which has discovered the "Moabite Stone," the ruins of Troy (Schliemann), and the key to the inscriptions of Etruria (Corssen), need not despair of further progress. It has been well remarked that, whereas the course of modern exploration has generally been maritime, the ancients, whose means of navigation were less perfect, preferred travelling by land. We are, doubtless, far better acquainted with the outlines of the African coast, and the immediately maritime region, than the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the Arabs. But it is still doubtful whether their information respecting the interior did not surpass ours. Eratosthenes, librarian of Alexandria (B. C. 276-196) expresses correct notions concerning the upper course of the Nile; Marinus of Tyre[13] had the advantage of borrowing from the pilot, Diogenes, who visited the Nile reservoirs of central inter-tropical Africa, and Ptolemy has been justified in certain important points by our latest explorations.
No trace of the Nzadi or Congo is to be found in the Pelusian geographer, whose furthest point is further north. In the "Tabula Rotunda Rogeriana" of A. D. 1154 (Lelewel, No. X.) two lakes are placed upon the equator, and the north-western discharges to the Atlantic the river Kauga or Kanga, which the learned Mr. Hogg suspected to be the Congo. Marino Sanudo (1321), who has an idea of Guinea (Ganuya) and of Zanzibar (Zinziber), here bends Africa to the south-east, and inscribes, "Regio inhabitabilis propter calorem." Fra Mauro (1457) reduces "Ethiopia Occidentalis et Australis" to the minimum, and sheds the stream into the F. Xebe (Webbe or Galla-Somal River). Martin von Behaim of Nürnberg (1492) in whose day Africa began to assume her present form, makes the Rio de Padron drain the western face of the Montes Lunae. Diogo Ribera, chief pilot of the Indies under Charles V. (Seville, 1529) further corrects the shape of the continent, and places the R. do Padrão north, and the Rio dos Boms Sinhaes (Zambeze) south of the Montes Lunae. Mercator and Henry Hondt (1623) make the Zaire Lacus the northern part of the Zembre Lacus. John Senex (circ. 1712) shows the "R. Coango," the later Quango, believed to be the great south-western fork of the Congo. It is not a little peculiar that the last of the classics, Claudius Claudianus, an Alexandrian Christian withal, describes the Gir, or Girrhaeus, with peculiarly Congoese features. In "De laud. Stilicho." (lib. i. 252) we have—