When time shall be ripe for a bona fide emigration, the position of Boma, at the head of the delta, a charming station, with healthy air and delicious climate, points it out as the head-quarters.  Houses can be built for nominal sums, the neighbouring hills offer a sanatorium, and due attention to diet and clothing will secure the white man from the inevitable sufferings that result from living near the lower course.

With respect to the exploration of the upper stream, these pages, compared with the records of the “First Congo Expedition,” will show the many changes which time has brought with it, and will suggest the steps most likely to forward the traveller’s views.  At some period to come explorers will follow the line chosen by the unfortunate Tuckey; but the effects of the slave-trade must have passed away before that march can be made without much obstruction.  When Lieutenant Grandy did me the honour of asking my advice, I suggested that he might avoid great delay and excessive outlay by “turning” the obstacle and by engaging “Cabindas” instead of Sierra Leone men.  At the Royal Geographical Society (Dec. 14th, 1874) he thus recorded his decision:  “For the guidance of future travellers in the Congo country, I would suggest that all the carriers be engaged at Sierra Leone, where any number can be obtained for 1s. 3d. a day.  From my experience of them I can safely say they will be found to answer every requirement, and the employment of them would render an expedition entirely independent of the natives, who, by their cowardice and constant desertion, entailed upon us such heavy expenses and serious delays.  My conviction, after nearly four years of travel upon the West African coast, is this:  if Sierra Leone men be used, they must be mixed with Cabindas and with Congoese “carregadores,” registered in presence of the Portuguese authorities at S. Paulo de Loanda.

I conclude with the hope that the great Nzadi, one of the noblest, and still the least known of the four principal African arteries, will no longer be permitted to flow through the White Blot, a region unexplored and blank to geography as at the time of its creation, and that my labours may contribute something, however small, to clear the way for the more fortunate explorer.

Appendix

I.

METEORLOGICAL

Instruments used for altitudes:—­
          Pocket aneroid, corrected +0.55, “R.G.S”
          Casella’s Alpine Sympiesometer, corrected to 67deg. (F.).

N.B.—­ Returning to Fernando Po, found that part of the liquid has lodged in upper
          bulb, and therefore corrected index error by standard aneroid 1.15 (Symp. =
          29.258, and standard, 30.400).

Observations at the Congo mouth in February, 1863 (from log of H.M.S.  “Griffon").