CHAPTER I.
The Discovery of the Congo.
In 1484 Diogo Cam, a Portuguese navigator, first sighted the mouth of the Congo River. Four centuries have since elapsed, and only now have we the definite knowledge of the course of that mighty flood. Seven years after the discovery of the river, an embassy was sent to the capital of the Congo country, known as San Salvador; Roman Catholic missionaries followed, who in time penetrated some 250 miles into the interior. They made, however, San Salvador their head-quarters and cathedral city, but were finally expelled by the Governor of Angola some 130 years ago. They appear to have kept away from the river; what records of their work remain throw no light as to its course. The slave trade flourished in the mouth of the river, but interiorwards the land remained unknown.
In 1816 Captain Tuckey was commissioned by the Admiralty to endeavour to solve the mystery, and was instructed to ascertain whether there was any connection between the Niger and the Congo. This ill-fated expedition penetrated to a distance of 150 miles from the coast. And this was the extent of our knowledge of its lower course until recently.
In 1871 Dr. Livingstone, travelling westward from the Lake Tanganika, discovered a great river flowing northward, called by the natives Lualaba. After three and a half months he returned to the Tanganika, and finally striking south, died at Ilala, on the south of Lake Bangweolo, the upper waters of the Congo-Lualaba, in April, 1873.
Lieut. Cameron, commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society to carry fresh supplies and aid to Dr. Livingstone, met his dead body being conveyed to the coast by his faithful servants. Continuing his journey with the material he hoped to deliver to the Doctor, he crossed the Tanganika, and reached Nyangwe, the point where Dr. Livingstone had first sighted the Lualaba. He would have followed the course of the mysterious river; but was unable to induce his men to attempt the solution of the problem, and striking southwards skirted the lower edge of the Congo Basin, and reached the west coast at Benguela in November, 1875.
In 1874 the Daily Telegraph and New York Herald combined to send Mr. Stanley to Africa, to complete the geographical discoveries of Dr. Livingstone.
In Les Belges au Congo, the excellent Christmas number of Le Mouvement Géographique, the official organ of the International African Association, we have a sketch of the life of the greatest living explorer. Born at Denbigh, in North Wales, in 1840, John Rowlands lost his father at two years of age; he was educated at the parish school of St. Asaph. At the age of sixteen he worked his passage to New Orleans, where he obtained employment in the house of a merchant named Stanley. He rose rapidly in favour and esteem, until the sudden death of his employer destroyed his hopes. Assuming the name of his benefactor, Henry Moreland Stanley was enrolled in the Confederate army when the War of Secession broke out in 1861. He was made prisoner at the battle of Pittsburg, in 1862, but effected his escape. Constantly exposed to arrest as an escaped prisoner, he engaged himself as a sailor in the Federal Marine, in which he obtained rapid promotion, becoming secretary to the Captain of the Ticonderoga, and later held the same position under the Admiral.
He accompanied his vessel on a European cruise, and obtained his discharge at the end of the war. He was next correspondent of the Missouri Democrat, and the New York Tribune, and later became travelling correspondent to the New York Herald, for which he accompanied the British forces during the Abyssinian and Ashantee wars. After those he made a journey through Asia Minor, the Caucasus and Persia to India, thence by Egypt to Spain, where he received his commission to find Livingstone.
That successful expedition marked him as the man to carry on further exploratory work in Africa; and when the news of Dr. Livingstone’s death reached Europe, fired with the desire to carry on the work of the great Doctor, he gladly accepted the commission of the Daily Telegraph and New York Herald.
Starting from Zanzibar November 17, 1874, he circumnavigated the Lakes Victoria Nyanza and Tanganika for the first time, carefully charting. Thence he struck across to Nyangwe. In spite of the obstacles and difficulties that had hindered others, his immense determination, his resources, and knowledge of the Swahili language, enabled him to induce his men to follow him down the river.