The Belgian Congo / [prepared ... under the direction of K. Mason].

  • Great Britain. Naval Intelligence Division.
Date:
1944
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Belgian Congo / [prepared ... under the direction of K. Mason]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    provided the means of communication, as they do to-day. Obviously a dugout canoe is the most natural form of transport. The old trackways, or caravan routes, were little more than broad foot-paths, for nothing more elaborate was necessary to enable travellers to pass on their way in single file. It is a noticeable trait of Africans that they still continue to walk in single file along the broad new highways, or, indeed, up the main streets of the new towns. In some places an old track might be broad, but in bush-covered country, where the labour of clearing is great, 1t was generally narrow. There was no road authority other than a chief to order the clearing, or the maintenance, of roads, and a chief’s authority was limited to the confines of a few villages. Usually the tracks ran direct from camp to camp, or village to village, yet hardly 5 yards of their length were in a straight line. If a tree fell across the way nobody dreamed of moving it. It was far easier to go round the obstruction. A wild animal’s burrow, or the growth of an ant-hill, would divert a small part of the track, while the rumour that a herd of elephants, or a pride of lions, was in the neighbourhood would cause a considerable diversion. The removal of a village, or its destruction by slave- raiders, a common enough event, would put large sections out of use. Natives speak of a track “dying’, or as being already ‘dead’. As mentioned above, ancient, possibly very ancient, trackways followed the watershed of the Congo and the Zambezi, but over much of their length it is impossible to follow their exact trace, which swerved with the accidents of the day. That the track or road of yesterday is lost in bush to-morrow is the common discovery of those who travel in Africa, and old maps are dangerous guides to ways of communica- tion. Early Roads In 1880-1881 H. M. Stanley cleared a track, 15 feet wide, from Vivi (just above Matadi) to Isangila, and from Manyanga, some distance farther up the river, to Stanley Pool. Over this he man- hauled wagons carrying the machinery for two steamboats which were eventually used on the upper Congo. His was the first road-making enterprise on a large scale in the country. Later ‘the caravan road’ (the definite article was accentuated) was opened between Matadi and Stanley Pool and was in use over the whole, or part, of its length until the Congo railway was completed in July 1898. The new road was a great improvement on early tracks, as Plate 89 shows.