text: Russian explorer Wilhelm Junker arrived in the Lado area in 1884, fleeing the Mahdist uprising in the Sudan, and made it his base for his further explorations of the region. Junker wrote complimentarily of Lado town, in particular its brick buildings and neat streets.
  During the Mahdist rule of the region, Lado was allowed to fall into disuse but Rejaf was made into a penal settlement.
  Congo Free State rule
  British desire for a Cape to Cairo railway led them to negotiate with the Congo Free State to exchange the area that became known as the Lado Enclave for a narrow strip of territory in eastern Congo between Lakes Albert and Tanganyika. These negotiations resulted in the 1894 British-Congolese Treaty, signed on 12 May, under which the British leased all of the Nile basin south of the 10° north latitude to King Leopold II of the Belgians, sovereign of the Congo Free State, for the period of his lifetime. This area, called the Lado Enclave, linked the Congo with the navigable Nile.
  The treaty also dictated that the whole of the Bahr-el-Ghazal (with the exception of the Lado Enclave) be ceded to the Congo State during the lifetime of King Leopold "and his successors". The British knew that the Congo Free State would be unable to occupy Lado "for some time".