At Matadi the Congo makes one of her lightning changes. Her banks,
which have been low and woody, with, on the Portuguese side,
glimpses of boundless plateaux, become towering hills of rock. At
Matadi the cataracts and rapids begin, and for two hundred miles
continue to Stanley Pool, which is the beginning of the Upper Congo.
Leopoldville is situated on Stanley Pool, just to the right of where
the rapids start their race to the south. With Leopoldville above
and Boma below, still nearer the mouth of the river, Matadi makes a
centre link in the chain of the three important towns of the Lower
Congo.
When Henry M. Stanley was halted by the cataracts and forced to
leave the river he disembarked his expedition on the bank opposite
Matadi, and a mile farther up-stream. It was from this point he
dragged and hauled his boats, until he again reached smooth water at
Stanley Pool. The wagons on which he carried the boats still can be
seen lying on the bank, broken and rusty. Like the sight of old gun
carriages and dismantled cannon, they give one a distinct thrill.
Now, on the bank opposite from where they lie, the railroad runs
from Matadi to Leopoldville.
The Congo forces upon one a great admiration for Stanley. Unless
civilization utterly alters it, it must always be a monument to his
courage, and as you travel farther and see the difficulties placed
in his way, your admiration increases. There are men here who make
little of what Stanley accomplished; but they are men who seldom
leave their own compound, and, who, when they do go up the river,
travel at ease, not in a canoe, or on foot through the jungle, but
in the smoking-room of the steamer and in a first-class railroad
carriage.
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