Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1889 — Stanley’s Labors on the Congo. [ARTICLE]

Stanley’s Labors on the Congo.

St. Nicholas. ' A railroad has been planned to carry freight around the cataracts. Soon, trading-stations will be scattered along the five thousand miles of navigable waters of the great river. Stanley found a vast country that had no own«r. The river drains a region containing more than a hundred square miles, much of which is well peopled. The Congo Free State, fourded by Stanley’s friend, Leopold 11., King of the Belgians, lies chiefly south of the great bend of the river, and contains an area of one million five hundred and eight thousand square miles; its population is more than forty-two millions. The articles collected from the African trade are ivory, palm-oil. gum-copal, rubber, beee. wax, cabinet woods, hippopotamus teeth and hides, monkey skins, and divers other things. These are bought with goods, such as colored beads, brass and copper wire, cotton cloth, cutlery, guns, ammunition, and a great variety of articles known as “notions” or “trvde goods.’” The basis of all buying and selling-in the Congo Free State is free trade; all notions that participated in the Berlin Congo Conference have right to trade and barter and establish Dosts within the boundaries of that territory, vast and rich, made accessible through the labors of Stanley.