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Updated: May 8, 2025
We spent the night at the hotel at Thysville high in the mountains and where it was almost freezing cold. This place is named for General Albert Thys, who was attached to the colonial administration of King Leopold and who founded the Compagnie du Congo Pour le Commerce et l'Industrie, the "Queen-Dowager," as it is called, of all the Congo companies.
But it runs a passenger train only three times a week, and though the distance is so short, and though the train starts at 6:30 in the morning, it does not get you to Leopoldville the same day. Instead, you must rest over night at Thysville and start at seven the next morning. That afternoon at three you reach Leopoldville.
In this respect it suffered the same experience as all the other pioneering African railways and especially those of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Uganda, and the Soudan. The scenery between Thysville and Matadi is noble and inspiring. The track winds through grim highlands and along lovely valleys.
Already this morning one was at Sariski Station and another at Sipeto." And instead of looking out of the window I had been reading an American magazine, filched from the smoking-room, which was one year old! At Thysville the railroad may have opened a hotel, but when I was there to hunt for a night's shelter it turned you out bag and baggage.
But, nevertheless, the night I slept at Thysville was the only cool one I knew in the Congo. It was as cool as is a night in autumn at home. Thysville, between the Upper and the Lower Congo, with its fresh mountain air, is an obvious site for a hospital for the servants of the State. To the Congo it should be what Simla is to the sick men of India; but the State is not running hospitals.
There is a population of several hundred white people and many thousands of natives. The Banque du Congo Belge has its principal establishment here and there are scores of well-stocked mercantile establishments. With the exception of Matadi and Thysville it has the one livable hotel in the Congo.
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