The St. Johns herald., 1891-12-17
WHITE MEN ON TIE CONGO.
They Have Increased Fourfoid Witllil
 the Past Few Years.

! They Have IncreaSe7 EourIodu HltIA1
 the Past Few Years.
 The white population on the Congo is increasing rapidly. When Stanley left the river, after having planted his twenty stations, there were only about i two hundred white men left to cen. tinue the various phases Of his work. There are now, says the New York ] Sun, over eight hundred white men on the Congo. Over one-third of them are in the service of the Congo state, while the others are engaged in trading and missionary enterprises. In 1889 Boma. the capital of the Free state, contained the greatest number of whites, but last year it was surpassed by Matadi, which is at the head of navigation on the lower Congo. Matadi has gone ahead because it is the starting point of the Congo railroad, and most of the whites at that place are engaged in building the road.
 Matadi now has white population of one hundred and sixty-nine souls, while Bona has ten less. Bona is the seat of government, and also the place where number of important European trading firms make their headquarters. Ithas a railroad leading from the wharf up to the sanitarium, the hotel, and the government buildings on the heights away from the river. With its consid- erable native population and the large variety of business transacted there, Bona is very busy little place.
 Leopoldville, the chief settlement on the upper river at Stanley Pool, has eighty-two whites. There are only if teen Americans on the river, nearly all of whom are missionaries. Thirty-two Danes and Swedes are among the cm- ployes of the Congo state, and al- most to man they are engaged in the steamboat service, many of them being engineers. The sixty-three Italians on the river are at work on the railroad. They were taken from southern Italy, because the climate there is warm, and it was thought they would endure hard service in Africa better than workmen from north Europe. They are bosses or section hands, who teach the native track graders how to perform their labor, and they superintend the work, often taking . hand themselves to show the natives how the work should be done.
 The forty-fve Egyptians are soldiers imported from Egypt for the purpose of setting good military example to the native soldiery organized by the state. Half the Egyptians are in the garrison at Bona, and the other half are at Leopoldville.
 Banana, the settlement at the mouth of the Congo, has now a population o1 only eighty-three whites, and has been surpassed by Leopoldville in the in- terior. There are now more white men at each of half a dozen posts on the up per Congo than there were at Leopold vile, the chief point on the river, five years ago.
 White men on the Congo are finding that with the introduction of more com forts from Europe, with supply of better food on their tables, and with medical attendance at number of the more important stations, they can live on the river in far better health tan a few years ago. The mortality now that the river has a white population of over eight hundred people is hardly greater than it was five years ago, when only about two hundred white men lived