United States or Georgia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Congestion of the lungs vies with sleeping sickness as the ravager of Middle Africa, and especially certain parts of the Congo. Kinshassa is situated on Stanley Pool, a lake-like expansion of the Congo more than two hundred square miles in area. It is dotted with islands. Nearly one-third of the northern shore is occupied by the rocky formations that Stanley named Dover Cliffs.
Speaking of water brings to mind one of the useful results of such a trip as mine. Isolation in the African wilds gives you a new appreciation of what in civilization is regarded as the commonplace things. Take the simple matter of a hair-cut. There are only two barbers in the whole Congo. One is at Elizabethville and the other at Kinshassa, on the Lower Congo, nearly two thousand miles away.
With this he purchased a sufficient quantity of food, which included dozens of pieces of chikwanga, to realize two hundred and twenty francs at Kinshassa. These river natives are genuine profiteers. They invariably make it a rule to charge the white man three or four times the price they exact from their own kind. No white man ever thinks of buying anything himself.
His German almost had a Potsdam flavour. He told me that he had danced before the former Kaiser and had met many members of the Teutonic nobility. Yet the thing that stood out most vividly in his memory was the taste of German beer. He sighed for it daily. Six days after leaving Kinshassa I reluctantly bade farewell to Peter and the "Lusanga" at Dima.
We are increasing our river fleets and we propose to introduce on them a type of barge similar to that used on the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers. "An imposing program of railway expansion is blocked out. For one thing we expect to run a railway from the Katanga copper belt straight across country to Kinshassa on the Lower Congo. It is already surveyed.
The seasoned residents of the Congo would never think of calling Kinshassa by any other name than "Kin." In the same way Leopoldville is dubbed "Leo." Kinshassa is laid out in streets, has electric lights, and within the past twelve months about twenty automobiles have been acquired by its residents.
It was founded by Stanley in the early eighties and named in honour of the Belgian king. It commands the river, cataracts, forests and mountains. Commerce, however, fixed Kinshassa as its base of operation, and its expansion has been astonishing for that part of the world. It is a bustling port and you can usually see half a dozen steamers tied up at the bank.
Matadi is the administrative center of the Lower Congo railway which has extensive yards, repair-shops, and hospitals for whites and blacks. Nearby are the storage tanks and pumping station of the oil pipe line that extends from Matadi to Kinshassa. It was installed just before the Great War and has only been used for one shipment of fluid.
My progress was thenceforth steady and uninterrupted, and in due time the wagons and good-columns arrived at their destination. Kinshassa was an accident. Leopoldville, which is situated about ten miles away and the capital of the Congo-Kasai Province, was expected to become the center of white life and enterprise in this vicinity.
But so much time had been consumed in reaching Tshikapa that I determined to return to Kinshassa, go on to Matadi, and catch the boat for Europe at the end of August. There were two ways of getting back to Kabambaie. One was to go in an automobile through the jungle, and the other by boat down the Kasai.
Word Of The Day