CORRECTING A GREAT GEOGRAPHICAL BLUNDER.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXXII, Issue 5450, 20 March 1886, Page 4

CORRECTING A GREAT GEOGRAPHICAL BLUNDER.

The journey which Lieutenant Wissmann regently completed in tbe region south of the Congo river is of unusual interest, because his discoveries have upset all our previous notions of the hydrography of that part of the Congo Basin, and have also proved the great Kassai affluent of the Congo to be, in all probability, the largest of the second class rivers of Africa. Several explorers have visited the Kassai in its upper and middle course, but Wissmann followed the lower river for about four hundred miles to its mouth through a country that was unknown. He brings back a most remarkable report of this region, which lies between 2 i deg. and 6 deg. south latitude, and 40 deg. ! and 20 deg. east longitude. As his fleet of twenty large canoes, manned by 150 ■blacks, floated down the stream, the banks were lined by thousands of natives, who gazed Avith great astonishment upon the five whites in the party. The population, he asserts, is as dense as that of some parts of Belgium. He speaks enthusiastically of the fertility of the soil, of its rich variety of product?, of the extraordinary abundance of game, including elephants, and of the friendliness of the people, who, although they had never before seen a white man, gave him a very affable reception. Further down the river, however, the expedition paddled for four days through the territory of a ferocious tribe, which Wissman believes to be cannibal. On the nineteenth day of his voyage Wissmann made a discovery which, if he is correct, makes all our present maps of the South Congo Basin practically valueless. It was known that the Kassai and the Lubilash rivers were the greatest southern affluents of the Congo, for all the longest of these tributaries have been visited by explorers in their upper course. Stanley found two large rivers, one of them 1000 feet wide, emptying into the Congo. He believed, and so did geogra- | pliers generally, that they were the Kassai and Lubilash. They were explored for some distance south, and were united on the maps by dotted lines with the known parts of those riveis. But Lieutenant Wissmann has suddenly caused a flutter among geographical theorists by announcing that the Lubilash empties into the Kassai, that the united streams, now over a mile wide, flow north-west until they fall into Lake Leopold, which Stanley discovered ; emerging from that lake they absorb the large Quango River, and finally reach the Congo at Kwamouth, about 240 mile 3 west of the supposed mouth of the Kassai and 600 miles west of the place where the Lubilash was thought to join the great river. This shows that geographical theories, like Wall street speculation are hazardous and uncertain, and that dotted lines show where rivers ought to be are often found very wide of the mark when explorers, come home with the facts. — Neio York Sun.