368 CONGO FRANÇAIS
unless Providence in the shape of death, or Sir George Goldie
de Brazza’s only rival in administrative ability in West Africa
—-intervenes, he will succeed in uniting Congo Français with the
French Soudan. De Brazza has done so much and done it
so well that I, as a woman, may be excused a sentimental hope
that he may live to see his edifice of power completed.
After sketching the work of de Brazza the completer, we
must turn to the work of Du Chaillu, the inaugurator of
geographical knowledge in this region ; but I will only briefly
sketch Du Chaillu’s work, because his books are accessible
to English readers and not given in scattered journals of
geographical societies, as are the notices of de Brazza.
Du Chaillu’s works should be read carefully by every one interested
in the forest region of Africa, for you find in them a
series of wonderfully vivid pictures of life, both of man and
beast, and of the country itself with its dense, gloriously
beautiful, gloomy forests and its wild rivers, as true in all these
things as on the day on which Du Chaillu wrote. On his
return to England great doubt was cast upon his accounts ;
but I have no hesitation in saying that I never came across
anything while in his region that discredited Du Chaillu’s
narrative on the whole. His deductions from the things he
saw are a matter apart, for no two West African travellers
will ever be found to agree in their deductions ; but his descriptions
of the country and the animals are truthful yes, including
those gorillas ; I know places where the gorilla population
is every bit as thick as he says and the individuals every bit as
big; and his account of the natives and their ways are recognisable
by any one having personal knowledge in the
matter. Nor am I alone, I am glad to say ; for one of the
greatest authorities on this matter, Dr. Nassau, who was op
the Coast when Du Chaillu was, says there is nothing Du
Chaillu relates that might not have happened in this country.
More can be said of no one of the school of travellers of which
Du Chaillu, Dr. Barth, Joseph Thomson, and Livingstone are
past masters, and of which I am an humble member. We have
not a set of white companions with us to confirm our statements
and say, “ Oui, oui, certainement, Monsieur’,' as the engineer and
his brother used to say on the Éclaireur to their captain; but we
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