At this moment a line is being constructed between Stanleyville (left bank) and Ponthierville. This line will be 140 kilometres in length. The rails have been placed over ten kilometres, and the embankment finished for fifty kilometres. This line will permit of transports being made on the river above Ponthierville. As soon as this first line is finished, others will be constructed along the unnavigable parts of the river. At the present moment surveys are also being made for a railway connecting a point on the southern frontier of the Congo Independent State (Katanga) with a point situated on the Lualaba, south of the junction of that river with the Lufila. The approximate length of this line, the survey of which commenced as far back as 25th April, 1903, will be about 500 kilometres. Having regard to those articles of the Berlin General Act which relate to the free navigation of the Congo and its affluents, the legal status of railways within the Conventional Basin of the Congo becomes a matter of considerable importance, especially in view of the growing controversy as to the proper construction of the Act. Baron Descamps has ably treated this subject in his _New Africa_, a volume of exceptional interest at this time. After pointing out that the “freedom of navigation” declared by the Berlin Act must not be confounded with freedom of railway traffic, inasmuch as the latter admits of grants of monopoly and the former does not, this eminent writer on questions of general and special law says: The idea of considering railways as continuations of water-courses, or as junctions between water-courses, was quite a new one, as was pointed out at the Berlin Conference. The Conference realised the necessity of providing for the logical consequences of such an idea, and therefore it drew up special regulations which are worthy of careful examination. The general legal standing of railways in the Congo, the essential rights of the authorities as to their construction, their concession, their running powers, their charges, their position as public highways, their administrative and judicial policy are the same as those of railways in other countries. The Berlin Act, as regards railways destined to provide transport where the Congo and the Niger become unnavigable, made special provision in clauses 16 and 23 on the one hand, and 29 and 33 on the other—the only clauses which are concerned with railways—for certain details of these communications. After declaring that these railways, as means of communication, are considered as auxiliaries of the rivers, the Act dwells on the legal consequences attaching to the introduction of this new idea, this conventional innovation in international relations. The consequences are as follows: