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Updated: June 18, 2025
It was clear that Matadi still entertained a wholesome, whole-souled distrust of us; for when he landed the troops of warriors were still left drawn up along the river bank, with the evident intention of preventing any attempt on our part to go ashore and satisfy our curiosity by an inspection of his town; we therefore accepted the palpable hint thus conveyed, and stuck to the ship, which, I need scarcely say, had been cleared for action and held ready for any emergency from the moment of our arrival abreast the town.
Like many other men I had an innate prejudice against the foreign church worker before I went to Africa. I left with a strong admiration for him, and with it a profound respect. Kinshassa looked good to me when we arrived after four days' travelling, but I did not tarry long. I was relieved to find that I was in ample time to catch the August steamer at Matadi.
But although we were enabled with the aid of our telescopes to follow Matadi and his little coterie of chiefs to a large building abutting on the square at the intersection of the cross streets, and which we took to be the "palace," we were unable to detect anything of an unusual character in the appearance or movements of the people until close upon sunset, when we observed a small canoe coming off to the schooner a craft propelled by four paddlers, with a single individual sitting in the stern.
Early in the morning of the 20th, we leave Matadi. The train consists of two engines, two open covered carriages for the second class passengers, who are mostly natives, a saloon and baggage wagon. The gauge is a very narrow one, so space is all-important, but the man who designed the chairs in the saloon must have exercised the most fiendish ingenuity to make them as uncomfortable as possible.
Grenfell, of the Upper Congo, told me in the same year, when I had the pleasure of travelling with her from Victoria to Matadi, that a similar practice was in vogue among several of the Upper Congo tribes. Again in 1893 I came across another instance of the post-mortem practice. A woman had dropped down dead on a factory beach at Corisco Bay. The natives could not make it out at all.
We continued firing until the last canoe had reached the shore, by which time eleven of them had been utterly destroyed and several others badly damaged, resulting in a loss to Matadi of, according to my estimate, not far short of three hundred men.
But he having been the first man to take an ocean-going steamer up to Matadi on the Congo, through the terrific currents that whirl and fly in Hell's Cauldron, knew about currents, and I remembered he had said regarding taking vessels through them, "Keep all the headway you can on her." Good! that hint inverted will fit this situation like a glove, and I'll keep all the tailway I can off her.
It was evident that my endeavour to excite Matadi's curiosity had been completely successful; for no sooner was the gig out of the water than a large canoe was launched, into which Matadi and three or four other negroes presumably subordinate chiefs scrambled, when she was at once shoved off and, paddled by twenty natives, brought to within about twenty yards of the schooner, that being considered, I suppose, about the shortest distance within which it would be safe to approach us.
It was at Matadi that Stanley received the designation because he blasted a road through the rocks with dynamite. With its winding and mountainous streets and its polyglot population, Matadi is a picturesque spot. It is the goal of every official through the long years of his service in the bush for at this place he boards the steamer that takes him to Europe.
His most enduring monument, however, is the Chemin de Fer du Congo Matadi-Stanley Pool. He felt with Stanley that there could be no development of the Congo without a railway between Matadi and Stanley Pool. The necessity was apparent.
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