Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1907-01-08
PIERCING HEART OF AFRICA.
Steel Highway of the White Man In
the Congo Jungle.

In the heart of Africa, LOO miles
from the Atlantic, a little band Of
white men, not 200 in all, directs the
labors of 5000 negroes in one of the
most remarkable conquests Of nature
to the credit Of civilization. They
press forward. step by step. clearing
the tropical forests and surveying the
land, throwing up embankments and
laying the ties and steel rails of an
iron highway as they go.
In front Is a country rich in gold
and copper and the diamond fields Of
the Transvaal. Behind them are 1,400
miles Of railroad and waterway, which
nine years ago were yelled in the mys-
terry of Stanley's Darkest Africa"
The scream of the locomotive pierces
the jungles where lions and leopards
had their lairs, and droves Of wild ele-
ph1nts stripped the palm trees for
their yellow fruit.
Telephone bells wrangle with gray
parrots. Churning steamboat wheels
invade the dwellings places Of hippo
potami among the reeds on the river
banks. A saw mill sings at the spot
where Henry NJ. Stanley twenty years
ago heard the horns, drums and saw
age yells of the cannibals and told his
men they must go down the river be-
fore them or die.
The story of this conquest Of the
jungles OF the Dark Continent Is so
romantic and amazing and the dis
tances are so vast that this greatest
Of romances seems like q dream in a
land of dreams. The Africa Of the
school books and history must be cast
aside. The story belongs to the last
fifteen years. Turning to the map Of
Africa new divisions appear in the ter
ritory south of the Sahara tableland
comprising 100000 square miles. or
100000 square miles more than the
area of the United States, Alaska and
our colonial possessions.
The conquest Of the jungle here re-
lated refers to the very heart Of the
Dark Continent under the Equator, the
900, 900 square miles Of the Congo Free
State, which, If laid on the map OF
the United States, would cover the
New England and Middle Atlantic
states and extend westward on paral-
lei lines nearly to the Rocky Noun
tains. The topography Of the country
at once suggests the more familiar
contour Of Mexico. They are alike In
the strip Of low, unhealthy, tropical
forest near the Atlantic and beyond
the mountain chains, with the table
lands between them.
The heart of this continent was in
deed Darkest Africa" when Living
stone cast the first glimmer Of light
upon 1t in 1867. Stanleys journeys
across it in 1874 and 1877 and on the
Emin Pasha relief expedition Of 1887
1888 are so recent that nearly everyone
remembers how they set the white
mans world by the ears. Africa was
then to the nineteenth century what
American was to the fifteenth-a new
Ell Dorado, a land of mysteries and
wonders.
without a railway I do not value
the Congo State as worth a dollar"
declared Stanley after one Of his vis-
its to the Dark Continent. He knew
Of the vast riches in the table land
behind the mountain ranges, which
commerce could only approach along
one highway-the Congo river. 1t Is
second in the great streams OF the
world, $500 miles long and seven miles
wide at its mouth. Only the Amazon
is greater in the volume Of water; only
the Mississippi and Missouri combined
exceed it In length.
The nation that controlled the Congo
river, said Stanley, would be mistress
of Central Africa Sailing up this wa
terway from the Atlantic through ITO
miles of swamp and tropical forest, the
trader was halted at the mountains by
a series of cataracts. In all they
covered 200 miles Of the rivers course.
When Stanley said this vast empire
was not worth dollar without rail-
way he meant that bands of steel must
pass these cataracts and others further
I'D the stream before Central Africa
would be open to the commerce OF the
world.
Could such q railway be built? In
the face of the obstacles it seemed to
be an enterprise with insuperable diff
culties-still the dream Of the explorer
in the land Of dreams. The white man
must conquer marshes and jungles,
with their wild beasts and serpents,
mountains unknown except by name,
the vast tableland, drenched with
rains that bore disease and death in
their train, the poison arrows OF saw
ages 1000 miles Of open water, cata-
racts and jungle again.
King Leopold of Belgium listened and
dreamed. Then Stanley's wonder tales
infiamed the imagination Of men and
others dreamed. Their cupidity was
aroused. The world is not so large
that such an empire, even under the
Equator, CdH De llt6lSClcu' Si6 iiho -
policy foreshadowed her approach to
it from the valley Of the Nile. Portu-
gal claimed the land south of the
mouth of the Congo and France that
on the north. Englishman and Boer
were advancing on the south. The In
terest aroused by Stanley's tale ter
minated in 1885 in the treaty Of Ber-
lin, whereby the Congo Free State
became neutral territory for a num-
Der Of years.
The conquest Of Darkest Africa,
began at Matadi at the head Of the
navigable waters Of the Congo on the
Atlantic side. Before the would-be
conquerors rose mountains 5000 feet
high and the first series Of cascades.
The distance to Stanley Pool, at which
is now Leopoldville. was 200 miles.
There the Congo becomes navigable
again.
The building of 26O miles Of railway
around the cascades from Matadi to