Nkenge. From here he began the ascent of the plateau, where the villagers no longer received him and his party with the friendliness he had encountered along the valley of the Niari. The mistrust with which he had to contend led at last to an hostile encounter at the village of Kimbendge, in which six of his men were wounded, and the expedition was obliged to beat a retreat. They marched without taking food, in a pouring rain all night long, going south, finding themselves in the morning at the summit of a mountain range at the foot of which extended a verdant plain through which flowed the Lundima (Loema). In the plain they passed a group of villages named Mboko, where copper ore is found on the surface; and then journeying westwards arrived at Kimbunda, a Basundi village situated between Lundima and the Loango. This place is within five days' march of Boma (Emboma) on the Congo on one side and Landana on the Atlantic. The party arrived, exhausted with the fatigues of their long and difficult march, at Landana on the 17th of April, 1882.
M. de Brazza claimed by this expedition a tract of country one-third the area of France as an addition to his previous discoveries, and he insisted on the importance of the position at Ntamo (Brazzaville) which he said was the key to the whole western interior of Equatorial Africa. It was in the hands of France and the route viâ the Niari was the best road to it and the best line for a railway, which ought to be undertaken by the French as the most effectual means of opening up the country.
The construction of this railroad has been undertaken, and that it has not been already completed I think, no doubt, arises from the idea that the Congo Free State will shortly fall into the hands of France, and then the route up the Congo, with a railway round the Livingstone rapids, will be the best and shortest way to Brazzaville, and things in general on the Middle Congo. However until that day dawns France has done much to utilise the Niari valley route and regular convoys now use it to the interior. De Brazza has of late years been ceaselessly working at the development and expansion of Congo Français to the north and east, particularly to the establishment of a safe and easy line of transport to the
