Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1894 — THE GORGE OF THE LUALABA. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE GORGE OF THE LUALABA.

An Interesting Stretch of River, Unlike Anxlhing Seen Elsewhere in Africa. New York Sun. The western head sources of the Congo river were visited for the first time by white men last year, and the story they have told of the great gorge they saw and of the stream that plunges through it, almost as swift as an arrow for many a mile, was entirely out of the common in Congo explorations. The explorers were Lieutenant Francqui and Dr. Cornet, in the service of the Congo Free State. They traced the Lualaba river from its fountain bead, and made a discovery that, as far as is known, is duplicated nowhere in Africa.

Imagine a narrow stream flowing placidly between its rather low banks. It has gradually been gathering volumes from little contributions that a dozen or fifteen tributaries have supplied. The channel is quite deep, though not wide. Nearer and nearer the water approaches a mountain pass to the north, which at a distance appears , to have no passage through. Suddenly the 1 water rushes into a rift in these hills and for many a mile it tumbles along, zigzagging between two gigantic, perpendicular walls of solid rock. Sometimes it falls headlong as a cataract, and then again it is merely a rapid, with a speed five times as great as that with which it enters the hills. This great® gorge has a tortuous course bending first to the east and then to the west. It is nowhere, over 120 to 150 feet wide, and it rises 1,000 to 1,200 feet above the level of the stream. The walls rise nearly perpendicular in every part, and are formed of bare crystalline rock. Here and there in some crevice a little soil has formed, just enough for a tuft of grass or a puny tree to take root. At the level of the stream one can see only a little ribbon of the sky above, for at that great height the ton of the walls seem almost to touch one another, and the trees at the top overhang the edge and shut out nearly every glimpse of daylight. At the bottom of the narrow gorge the little river glides swiftly, sometimes almost with an unbroken surface, and then again lashed into foam by thousands of rocks, whose tops rise above the surface; and then again the water pours tumultuously over the edge of a declivity, and then plunges on in a series of rapids. In a distance of forty-three miles the river drops 1.500 feet, and then it emerges upon the plain, and, forget: ing its mad career, it flows placidly along to join the Luapula River, and at the junction of the two rivers the true Congo begins. No other tributary of the Congo or even the great river itself, where it tumbles along in rapids for 235 miles, between Leopoldville and Matadi, presents a so savage and so violent.

A noted Chicago pickpocket, recently pardoned by Governor Altgeld while serving a term at Joliet. The Adams woman has been arrested eight times since her release. As a pickpocket she is an expert, and her feats in this direction prove her to be possessed of uncommon sleight-of-hand abilities.

ENTRANCE TO THE GORGE OF THE LUALABA.

KITTIE ADAMS,