Two American Boats to be Added to the Fleet

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 200, 23 April 1887, Page 1

Two American Boats to be Added to the Fleet

Two American steamers arc about to be launched upon the Upper Congo, above the cataracts. Lieutenant Taunt, who resigned from the navy to take charge of the Congo trading enterprise of which Mr Sanfoid, formerly Minister to Belgium, is at the head, left the Lower Congo a few weeks ago with aboxit 1,000 natives, who were divided into several caravans and carried the steamboat in sections on their heads. The steamer was built in England, and recently arrived at the Congo, It is believed that Lieutenant Taunt and his steamer reached Kinsbassa, on Stanley Pool, about two weeks ago. A year and a half ago Lieutenant Taunt made a journey about 1,300 miles up the Congo to Stanley Falls, and our Government has published the very favourable report he made upon tho resources and prospects of trade on the upper river. Ho expects to send his steamer up the Kussai tributary, among the densest populations of the Congo, to barter, trade goods for ivory, palm kernels, and other products. The Bishop William Taylor, a little steamer which has been building in England, is completed and is about to be taken to the Congo. The steamer will be about sixty feet long, and it will posses two novelties not seen before, at leabt on a Congo vessel. It will have on board a little sawmill to be run by steam from the boiler. The saw will be used both for cutting of wood for the steamer's furnace and also to saw lumber for the cabins of the missionaries, which Bishop Taylor expects to build here and there in a native villages. Another innovation that will hardly fail to make a deep impression upon the savages of the Upper Congo is that during the night the steamer will be illuminated by a large electric light.. There are now upon the Upper Congo seven steamers, of which four are owned by the Congo State, one by France and two by the missionaries. The fleet will soon be nearly doubled by the addition of the Vilto de JBruxelles, which the Congo State has just had built, the .steamers of Bishop Taylor and of the Compagnie Beige clv Congo, which expects to build the Congo Railroad, and the boats of the American, Dutch and Frence trading companies. « Boston Tribune."

St. Petersburg, April 10. A man named Gill, with bombs in his possession, was arrested on Wednesday last in a street in this city through which the Emperor and Empress were about to pass.