Bolobo.
The upper portion of Bolobo presents many excellent
sites for stations, with commanding views, but unfortunately
they are at present beyond our means. To be
able to build healthy dwelling houses on these sites one
must he well assured that the natives will open their
markets to us. If a garrison of 100 men could he
stationed at Bolobo, then the place would become an
emporium of trade. Until that time, however, we are
forced to seek some village or villages, with the chiefs
of which we can live in mutual dependence.
Beyond Bolobo we have a bluff-faced highland extending
for about five miles in a north-easterly direction.
In a cove at its upper extremity, where it leaves
the river, there lives a tribe of Wa-nunu, who immediately
on seeing the flotilla advancing, disported themselves
along their sandy shore most ferociously, judging
by their manoeuvres. But, poor souls, how much we
were misjudged ! liven had they kept up the fierce
play till doomsday we would not have had aught of
unfriendliness for them. Such love as we possessed
for them was simply immeasureable.
The flotilla sheered off a little into deeper water, and
passed on with silent and unoffending crews and
passengers.
Beyond the village was low forested land, which
either came in dense black towering masses of impenetrable
vegetation to the waterside, or else ran in great
semicircles half enclosing grassy flats, whereon the
hippopotami fed at night time.
The Congo was now enormously wide; from five to
UPPER CONGO SCENERY. 5
eight channels separated one from another by as many
lines of islets (some of which were miles in length), on
which the Landoljiaflorida, or rubber plant, flourished,
of the value of which the natives as yet know nothing.
Tamarinds, baobab, bombax, redwood, Elais guineensis,
palm-tree, wild date-palm, Calamus indicus, with the
hardy stink-wood, made up a dense mass of trees and
creepers of such formidable thickness that no one was
even inspired to examine what treasures of plants
might be revealed by a closer investigation of the vegetable
life thriving on these humps of dark alluvium
in Mid-Congo. •
Few could imagine that a slow ascent up the Congo
in steamers going only two and a half knots against the
current of the great river could be otherwise than monotonous.
Taken as a whole, the scenery of the Upper
Congo is uninteresting ; perhaps the very slow rate of
ascent has left that impression. But we were also tired
of the highland scenery in the Lower Congo. We declared
ourselves tired of looking at naked rock cliffs,
and rufous ragged slopes 600 feet in height. Before
we were through the circular enlargement of the Congo
at Stanley Pool we also confessed ourselves wearied;
when we voyaged up along the base of the massive
mountain lines above it to Chumbiri we sighed for
a change; and now, when we have a month’s journey
by islets, low shores, of grassy levels, and banks of thick
; vegetation and forest, we are menaced with the same
\emui. But let us be just. Our feeling of weariness
I arises from the fact that our accommodations are so
1883.
May 28.
Bolobo.