376 TEE GONGO,
The Kernel to the immigrant is b-lessed with a temperature under
Argument, which Europeans may thrive and multiply. There
is no portion of it where the European trader may
not fix his residence for years, • and develop commerce
to his own profit with as little risk as is incurred
in India. -
- It is specially with a view to rouse the spirit of trade
that I dilate upon the advantages possessed by the
Congo basin, and not as a field for the pauper immigrant.
There are over 40,000,000 native paupers within
the area described, who are poor and degraded already,
merely because they are encompassed round about by
hostile forces of nature and man, denying them contact
and intercourse with the elements which might
have ameliorated the unhappiness of their condition.
European pauperism planted amongst them would soon
degenerate to the low level of aboriginal degradation.
It is the cautious trader who advances, not without
the means of re tre a t; 1he enterprising mercantile
factor who with one hand receives the raw produce
from the native, in exchange for the finished product
of the manufacturer’s loom—the European middleman
who has his home in Europe but has his heart
in Africa is the man who is wanted. These are they
who can direct and teach the black pauper what to
gather of the multitude of things around him and in
his neighbourhood. They are the missionaries of commerce,
adapted for nowhere so well as for the Congo
basin, where are so many idle hands, and such abundant
opportunities all within a natural “ ring fence.’
Those entirely weak-minded, irresolute, and senile people The Kernel
who profess scepticism, and project it before them Argument,
always as a shield to hide their own cowardice from
general observation, it is not my purpose to attempt
to interest in Africa. Of the 325,000,000 of people in
civilised Europe there must be some surely to whom
the gospel of enterprise preached in this book through
the medium of eight languages will present a few
items of fact worthy of retention in the memory, and
capable of inspiring a certain amount of action. I am
encouraged in this belief by the rapid absorption of
several ideas which I have industriously promulgated
during the last few years respecting the Dark Continent.
Pious missionaries have set forth devotedly to
instil into the dull mindless tribes the sacred germs
of religion; but their material difficulties are so great
that the progress they have made bears no proportion
to the courage and zeal they have exhibited. I now
turn to the worldly wise traders, for whose benefit and
convenience a railway must be constructed.