As the Congo steamboat largely abolished the laborious native carrier system through the riverain districts of the State, so has the Congo Railway, popularly known as the Cataracts Railway, largely contributed to relieve the black man, under Belgian rule, from lugging fifty-six pounds dead weight through the African jungle. The iron horse in Central Africa has given great momentum to the industries of a fertile region. In constructing the railway from Matadi, near the mouth of the Congo River, to Stanley Pool, traversing a distance of 260 miles over as tortuous and steep a route as ever daring engineers ventured to follow; climbing the Pallaballa Mountains at gradients of 150 feet in the mile, and finally steaming over a summit 17,000 feet above the sea, Belgian skill has again manifested its extraordinary quality, a quality observed in all that it has accomplished in the Congo Basin. To connect the navigable regions of the Lower and the Upper Congo by a line over the route just indicated seemed at first to be beyond the possibility of achievement. On July 6, 1898, after nine years of unremitting toil and the expenditure of sixty million francs, the line was in complete and regular operation through a region which, on account of its picturesque scenery, may be likened to the Simplon Pass in Switzerland. Without a railway running round the thirty-two great cataracts which tumble furiously in their descent of eighty miles to the sea, the Congo River, in the opinion of Stanley, would not have much value in the development of the Basin. The first estimate of the cost of constructing the line was twenty-five million francs. This was based on the surveys of Major Cambier for the Compagnie du Congo pour la Commerce et l’Industrie, which, as early as the year 1887, had been granted certain rights and privileges if it would undertake to build the railway. On July 29, 1889, the Belgian Chamber agreed to provide ten million francs of the Company’s first capital, the remaining fifteen million francs having been subscribed chiefly by Belgian investors. The work so enthusiastically undertaken met with one setback after another, owing mainly to the engineering difficulties encountered in the rocky side of the mountain of Pallaballa, forming a spur of the great Crystal range, the western rampart of the Central African plateau. It required four years and indomitable perseverance to construct the section of the line from Matadi over the summit of Pallaballa, a distance of only twenty-six miles. In December, 1893, Colonel Wahis opened this part of the line with appropriate ceremonies, which many Europeans interested in Congo affairs attended. In the _Mouvement Géographique_ appeared the following interesting description of this unique engineering triumph: