The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1878-11-30
THE PACIFIC
GOmmertlalADbGrtlsf
SATURDAY. NOVEMBER 30.
What Stanley Did.

The one great and Important fact established By
Stanley in his explorations " through the Dark
Continent, and lbe one most interesting to geo
g~raphers, was that the two broad rivers, Congo
and Lualaba. were one and the same. After
making a through survey OF the shores Of Lake
Tanganika, he braHched of TO the northwest and
journeyed until be reached the banks of the Lua-
laba at . place named Nyangwe. From this point
be made q detour TO avoid the two cataraets
which occur below Nyangwe, striking the river
again below the second fall, and following its
course on down through the Congo TO the Atlantic
Ocean, thus ascertaining beyond a doubt that the
two rivers were one. He gracefully renders q
tribute to Livingstone By adopting his name for
the river, and the compliment will and undoubt-
eddy be accepted by the entire geographical
world.
Livingstone had expressed his opinion that the
LGalaba, from its n~ortherly course below Lake
Bemba, really constituted the head waters of the
Nile but Stanley shows that this theory was an
error. The Lualaba's upward course has been
traced from Nyangwe to its course in Lake Bang
weolo, or Bemba, a lake lying between the paral-
lels of ii , and u > south. and the meridians of
% and 81 east, aud near the southern border
of which DR.. Livingstone is supposed to have died.
The lake lies at an elevation of 1858 feet above the
level Of the sea.
The following summarizes this interesting and
most important geographical discovery
Stanley gave nine months to the exploration of
the Lualaba, or rather to the Livingstone, as he
called 1t, and as 1t must be called for all time.
Before be went out on this mission we knew there
were two riVers-the Congo and Lualaba. We
knew that the Congo ran into the Atlantic Ocean,
but its source was lost in cataraets. The Por-
tuguese were content to scatter a few settlements
about its mouth, and trade for gums and ivory
along its banks. But it was an unknown river
beyond the cataracts. We knew there was a river
in the middle of Africa called the Lualaba we
knew it had a swift current, that it was a river of
large volume. But beyond that we knew nothing.
Some had one theory, others had another. Liv-
ingstone was convinced that it ran into the Nile,
was really the source of the Nile and who would
question even the theory of so great a master ?
What Stanley did was to show that the Congo and
Lualaba were one aud the same that the Congo,
instead of losing itself among the rapids, was to
force itself into the very heart of the continent
that the Lualaba, instead of going north and
submitting to the usurping waters OF the Nile, was
to turn to the west and force its way to the sea
that these rivers were to disappear from the map
and be known as one river-the Livingstone that
this river was to be 1900 miles in length that for
nearly ten degrees of longitude it was to be con-
tinuously navigable that its volume was l $780,
600 cubic feet a second that the entire area it
drains is 500, 900 square miles-in sther words,
that here was an immense waterway 5000 miles
into the center of Africa, navigable, with the ex-
ceptlon of two breaks engineering science can
easily surmount-a waterway into a tropical en-
pire, rich in woods and metals and gracious soil,
in fruits and grains, the sure home of a civilized
empire in the years to come. AS P~etermann. the
eminent German gecgrapher. puts it, Stanley's
work was to unite the fragments of Africa ex-
ploration-the achievements of Livingstone, Bur
ton, Spede, Du Chaillu, Baker, Cameron, of all the
heroic men who had gone before him-into one
consecutive whole. just as Bismarck united the
fragments of the German people, lying about I'M
der various princes and dukes, into one grand and
harmonious empire. Even as Bismarck had Great
ed imperial Germany, so Stanley created geogra-
phical Africa.