adoption, France. It requires indeed some one who has personally sampled Africa to form a just estimate of the value of certain bits of work from what I may call an artistic standpoint. The "arm-chair explorer" may be impressed by the greatness of length of the red line route of an explorer; but the person locally acquainted with the region may know that some of those long red lines are very easily made in Africa—thanks to the exertions of travellers who have gone before, or to what one of my German friends once poetically called the lamblike-calfheadedness of the natives, or to the country itself being of a reasonably traversable nature. In other regions a small red line means 400 times the work and danger, and requires 4,000 times the pluck, perseverance and tact. These regions we may call choice spots.
I do not mean to depreciate the value of extensive travel in Africa, far from it. It has an enormous value and so obvious a one that I need not dwell on it; but the man who combines the two—who makes his long red line pass through great regions of choice spots—deserves especial admiration; and when in addition to traversing them, he attains power over their natives, and retains it, welding the districts into a whole, making the flag of his country respected and feared therein, he is a very great man indeed and such a man is de Brazza. Such a man Mr. Stanley might have been had it not been for matters I will not enter into here, for it would involve us in a discussion on the Congo Free State.
M. de Brazza's first journey into the interior[1] of Congo Français was made in 1875-78 when, accompanied by MM. Ballay and Marche he reached the upper waters of the Ogowé and then pushed east and northwards, discovering two new rivers, the Alima and the Licona, both of which he surmised were tributaries of the Congo. He at once saw the importance of these rivers to the French possessions; for, by them, access would be obtained to the Congo, above the great barrier of navigation on that river, the Livingstone rapids. He convinced the authorities at home of this and was commanded by the African Association (French Committee) and
- ↑ See Proceedings of Geographical Society of Paris for June 23rd, 1882, quoted in Proceedings of Royal Geographical Society, August, 1882.
