James P. Boyd
Stanley in Africa The Wonderful Discoveries and Thrilling Adventures of the Great African Explorer, and Other Travelers, Pioneers and Missionaries

INTRODUCTION

A volume of travel, exploration and adventure is never without instruction and fascination for old and young. There is that within us all which ever seeks for the mysteries which are bidden behind mountains, closeted in forests, concealed by earth or sea, in a word, which are enwrapped by Nature. And there is equally that within us which is touched most sensitively and stirred most deeply by the heroism which has characterized the pioneer of all ages of the world and in every field of adventure.

How like enchantment is the story of that revelation which the New America furnished the Old World! What a spirit of inquiry and exploit it opened! How unprecedented and startling, adventure of every kind became! What thrilling volumes tell of the hardships of daring navigators or of the perils of brave and dashing landsmen! Later on, who fails to read with the keenest emotion of those dangers, trials and escapes which enveloped the intrepid searchers after the icy secrets of the Poles, or confronted those who would unfold the tale of the older civilizations and of the ocean’s island spaces.

Though the directions of pioneering enterprise change, yet more and more man searches for the new. To follow him, is to write of the wonderful. Again, to follow him is to read of the surprising and the thrilling. No prior history of discovery has ever exceeded in vigorous entertainment and startling interest that which centers in “The Dark Continent” and has for its most distinguished hero, Henry M. Stanley. His coming and going in the untrodden and hostile wilds of Africa, now to rescue the stranded pioneers of other nationalities, now to explore the unknown waters of a mighty and unique system, now to teach cannibal tribes respect for decency and law, and now to map for the first time with any degree of accuracy, the limits of new dynasties, make up a volume of surpassing moment and peculiar fascination.

All the world now turns to Africa as the scene of those adventures which possess such a weird and startling interest for readers of every class, and which invite to heroic exertion on the part of pioneers. It is the one dark, mysterious spot, strangely made up of massive mountains, lofty and extended plateaus, salt and sandy deserts, immense fertile stretches, climates of death and balm, spacious lakes, gigantic rivers, dense forests, numerous, grotesque and savage peoples, and an animal life of fierce mien, enormous strength and endless variety. It is the country of the marvelous, yet none of its marvels exceed its realities.

And each exploration, each pioneering exploit, each history of adventure into its mysterious depths, but intensifies the world’s view of it and enhances human interest in it, for it is there the civilized nations are soon to set metes and bounds to their grandest acquisitions – perhaps in peace, perhaps in war. It is there that white colonization shall try its boldest problems. It is there that Christianity shall engage in one of its hardest contests.

Victor Hugo says, that “Africa will be the continent of the twentieth century.” Already the nations are struggling to possess it. Stanley’s explorations proved the majesty and efficacy of equipment and force amid these dusky peoples and through the awful mazes of the unknown. Empires watched with eager eye the progress of his last daring journey. Science and civilization stood ready to welcome its results. He comes to light again, having escaped ambush, flood, the wild beast and disease, and his revelations set the world aglow. He is greeted by kings, hailed by savants, and looked to by the colonizing nations as the future pioneer of political power and commercial enterprise in their behalf, as he has been the most redoubtable leader of adventure in the past.

This miraculous journey of the dashing and intrepid explorer, completed against obstacles which all believed to be insurmountable, safely ended after opinion had given him up as dead, together with its bearings on the fortunes of those nations who are casting anew the chart of Africa, and upon the native peoples who are to be revolutionized or exterminated by the last grand surges of progress, all these render a volume dedicated to travel and discovery, especially in the realm of “The Dark Continent,” surprisingly agreeable and useful at this time.

HENRY M. STANLEY

The news rang through the world that Stanley was safe. For more than a year he had been given up as lost in African wilds by all but the most hopeful. Even hope had nothing to rest upon save the dreamy thought that he, whom hardship and danger had so often assailed in vain, would again come out victorious.

The mission of Henry M. Stanley to find, succor and rescue Emin Pasha, if he were yet alive, not only adds to the life of this persistent explorer and wonderful adventurer one of its most eventful and thrilling chapters, but throws more light on the Central African situation than any event in connection with the discovery and occupation of the coveted areas which lie beneath the equatorial sun. Its culmination, both in the escape of the hero himself and in the success of his perilous errand, to say nothing of its far-reaching effects upon the future of “The Dark Continent,” opens, as it were, a new volume in African annals, and presents a new point of departure for scientists, statesmen and philanthropists.

Space must be found further on for the details of that long, exciting and dangerous journey, which reversed all other tracks of African travel, yet redounded more than all to the glory of the explorer and the advancement of knowledge respecting hidden latitudes. But here we can get a fair view of a situation, which in all its lights and shadows, in its many startling outlines, in its awful suggestion of possibilities, is perhaps the most interesting and fateful now before the eyes of modern civilization.

It may be very properly asked, at the start, who is this wizard of travel, this dashing adventurer, this heroic explorer and rescuer, this pioneer of discovery, who goes about in dark, unfathomed places, defying flood and climate, jungle and forest, wild beast and merciless savage, and bearing a seemingly charmed life?

Who is this genius who has in a decade revolutionized all ancient methods of piercing the heart of the unknown, and of revealing the mysteries which nature has persistently hugged since “the morning stars first sang together in joy?”

The story of his life may be condensed into a brief space – brief yet eventful as that of a conqueror, moved ever to conquest by sight of new worlds. Henry M. Stanley was born in the hamlet of Denbigh, in Wales, in 1840. His parents, who bore the name of Rowland, were poor; so poor, indeed, that the boy, at the age of three years, was virtually on the town. At the age of thirteen, he was turned out of the poor-house to shift for himself. Fortunately, a part of the discipline had been such as to assure him the elements of an English education. The boy must have improved himself beyond the opportunities there at hand, for in two or three years afterwards, he appeared in North Wales as a school-teacher. Thence he drifted to Liverpool, where he shipped as a cabin-boy on a sailing-vessel, bound for New Orleans. Here he drifted about in search of employment till he happened upon a merchant and benefactor, by the name of Stanley. The boy proved so bright, promising and useful, that his employer adopted him as his son. Thus the struggling John Rowland became, by adoption, the Henry M. Stanley of our narrative.

Before he came of age, the new father died without a will, and his business and estate passed away from the foster child to those entitled at law. But for this misfortune, or rather great good fortune, he might have been lost to the world in the counting-room of a commercial city. He was at large on the world again, full of enterprise and the spirit of adventure.

The civil war was now on, and Stanley entered the Confederate army. He was captured by the Federal forces, and on being set at liberty threw his fortunes in with his captors by joining the Federal navy, the ship being the Ticonderoga, on which he was soon promoted to the position of Acting Ensign. After the war, he developed those powers which made him such an acquisition on influential newspapers. He was of genial disposition, bright intelligence, quick observation and surprising discrimination. His judgment of men and things was sound. He loved travel and adventure, was undaunted in the presence of obstacles, persistent in every task before him, and possessed shrewd insight into human character and projects. His pen was versatile and his style adapted to the popular taste. No man was ever better equipped by nature to go anywhere and make the most of every situation. In a single year he had made himself a reputation by his trip through Asia Minor and other Eastern countries. In 1866 he was sent by the New York Herald, as war correspondent, to Abyssinia. The next year he was sent to Spain by the same paper, to write up the threatened rebellion there. In 1869 he was sent by the Herald to Africa to find the lost Livingstone.

A full account of this perilous journey will be found elsewhere in this volume, in connection with the now historic efforts of that gallant band of African pioneers who immortalized themselves prior to the founding of the Congo Free State. Suffice it to say here, that it took him two years to find Livingstone at Ujiji, upon the great lake of Tanganyika, which lake he explored, in connection with Livingstone, and at the same time made important visits to most of the powerful tribes that surround it. He returned to civilization, but remained only a short while, for by 1874 he was again in the unknown wilds, and this time on that celebrated journey which brought him entirely across the Continent from East to West, revealed the wonderful water resources of tropical Africa and gave a place on the map to that remarkable drainage system which finds its outlet in the Congo river.

Says the Rev. Geo. L. Taylor of this march: “It was an undertaking which, for grandeur of conception, and for sagacity, vigor, and completeness of execution, must ever rank among the marches of the greatest generals and the triumphs of the greatest discoverers of history. No reader can mentally measure and classify this exploit who does not recall the prolonged struggles that have attended the exploration of all great first-class rivers – a far more difficult work, in many respects, than ocean sailing. We must remember the wonders and sufferings of Orellana’s voyages (though in a brigantine, built on the Rio Napo, and with armed soldiers) down that “Mediterranean of Brazil,” the Amazon, from the Andes to the Atlantic, in 1540. We must recall the voyage of Marquette and Joliet down the Mississippi in 1673; the toils of Park and Landers on the Niger, 1795-1830; and of Speke and Baker on the Nile, 1860-1864, if we would see how the deed of Stanley surpasses them all in boldness and generalship, as it promises also to surpass them in immediate results.

The object of the voyage was two-fold: first, to finish the work of Speke and Grant in exploring the great Nile lakes; and, secondly, to strike the great Lualaba where Livingstone left it, and follow it to whatever sea or ocean it might lead.”

And again: – “The story of the descent of the great river is an Iliad in itself. Through hunger and weariness; through fever, dysentery, poisoned arrows, and small-pox; through bellowing hippopotami, crocodiles, and monsters; past mighty tributaries, themselves great first-class rivers; down roaring rapids, whirlpools, and cataracts; through great canoe-fleets of saw-teethed, fighting, gnashing cannibals fiercer than tigers; through thirty-two battles on land and river, often against hundreds of great canoes, some of them ninety feet long and with a hundred spears on board; and, at last, through the last fearful journey by land and water down the tremendous cañon below Stanley Pool, still they went on, and on, relentlessly on, till finally they got within hailing and helping distance of Boma, on the vast estuary by the sea; and on August 9, 1877, the news thrilled the civilized world that Stanley was saved, and had connected Livingstone’s Lualaba with Tuckey’s Congo! After 7,000 miles’ wanderings in 1,000 days save one from Zanzibar, and four times crossing the Equator, he looked white men in the face once more, and was startled that they were so pale! Black had become the normal color of the human face. Thus the central stream of the second vastest river on the globe, next to the Amazon in magnitude, was at last explored, and a new and unsuspected realm was disclosed in the interior of a prehistoric continent, itself the oldest cradle of civilization. The delusions of ages were swept away at one masterful stroke, and a new world was discovered by a new Columbus in a canoe.”

It was on that memorable march that he came across the wily Arab, Tippoo Tib, at the flourishing market-town of Nyangwe, who was of so much service to Stanley on his descent of the Lualaba (Congo) from Nyangwe to Stanley Falls, 1,000 miles from Stanley Pool, but who has since figured in rather an unenviable light in connection with efforts to introduce rays of civilization into the fastnesses of the Upper Congo. This, as well as previous journeys of Stanley, established the fact that the old method of approaching the heart of the Continent by desert coursers, or of threading its hostile mazes without armed help, was neither expeditious nor prudent. It revolutionized exploration, by compelling respect from hostile man and guaranteeing immunity from attack by wild beast.

For nearly three years Stanley was lost to the civilized world in this trans-continental journey. Its details, too, are narrated elsewhere in this volume, with all its vicissitude of 7,000 miles of zigzag wandering and his final arrival on the Atlantic coast – the wonder of all explorers, the admired of the scientific world.

Such was the value of the information he brought to light in this eventful journey, such the wonderful resource of the country through which he passed after plunging into the depths westward of Lake Tanganyika, and such the desirability of this new and western approach to the heart of the continent, not only for commercial but political and humanitarian purposes, that the cupidity of the various colonizing nations, especially of Europe, was instantly awakened, and it was seen that unless proper steps were taken, there must soon be a struggle for the possession of a territory so vast and with such possibilities of empire. To obviate a calamity so dire as this, the happy scheme was hit upon to carve out of as much of the new discovered territory as would be likely to embrace the waters of the Congo and control its ocean outlet, a mighty State which was to be dedicated for ever to the civilized nations of the world.

In it there should be no clash of foreign interests, but perfect reciprocity of trade and free scope for individual or corporate enterprise without respect to nationality. The king of Belgium took a keen interest in the project, and through his influence other powers of Europe, and even the United States, became enlisted. A plan of the proposed State was drafted and it soon received international ratification. The new power was to be known as the Congo Free State, and it was to be, for the time being, under control of an Administrator General. To the work of founding this State, giving it metes and bounds, securing its recognition among the nations, removing obstacles to its approach, establishing trading posts and developing its commercial features, Stanley now addressed himself. We have been made familiar with his plans for securing railway communication between the mouth of the Congo and Stanley Pool, a distance of nearly 200 miles inland, so as to overcome the difficult, if not impossible, navigation of the swiftly rushing river. We have also heard of his successful efforts to introduce navigation, by means of steamboats, upon the more placid waters of the Upper Congo and upon its numerous affluents. Up until the year 1886, the most of his time was devoted to fixing the infant empire permanently on the map of tropical Africa and giving it identity among the political and industrial powers of earth.

In reading of Stanley and studying the characteristics of his work one naturally gravitates to the thought, that in all things respecting him, the older countries of Europe are indebted to the genius of the newer American institution. We cannot yet count upon the direct advantages of a civilized Africa upon America. In a political and commercial sense our activity cannot be equal to that of Europe on account of our remoteness, and because we are, as yet, but little more than colonists ourselves. Africa underlies Europe, is contiguous to it, is by nature situated so as to become an essential part of that mighty earth-tract which the sun of civilization is, sooner or later, to illuminate. Besides Europe has a need for African acquisition and settlement which America has not. Her areas are small, her population has long since reached the point of overflow, her money is abundant and anxious for inviting foreign outlets, her manufacturing centres must have new cotton and jute fields, not to mention supplies of raw material of a thousand kinds, her crowded establishments must have the cereal foods, add to all these the love of empire which like a second nature with monarchical rulers, and the desire for large landed estates which is a characteristic of titled nobility, and you have a few of the inducements to African conquest and colonization which throw Europe in the foreground. Yet while all these are true, it is doubtful if, with all her advantages of wealth, location and resource, she has done as much for the evangelization of Africa as has America. No, nor as much for the systematic and scientific opening of its material secrets. And this brings us to the initial idea of this paragraph again. Though Stanley was a foreign waif, cast by adverse circumstances on our shores, it seemed to require the robust freedom and stimulating opportunities of republican institutions to awaken and develop in him the qualities of the strong practical and venturesome man he became. Monarchy may not fetter thought, but it does restrain actions. It grooves and ruts human energy by laws of custom and by arbitrary rules of caste. It would have repressed a man like Stanley, or limited him to its methods. He would have been a subject of some dynasty or a victim of some conventionalism. Or if he had grown too large for repressive boundaries and had chosen to burst them, he would have become a revolutionist worthy of exile, if his head had not already come to the block. But under republican institutions his energies and ambitions had free play. Every faculty, every peculiarity of the man grew and developed, till he became a strong, original and unique force in the line of adventure and discovery. This out-crop of manhood and character, is the tribute of our free institutions to European monarchy. The tribute is not given grudgingly. Take it and welcome. Use it for your own glory and aggrandizement. Let crowned-heads bow before it, and titled aristocracy worship it, as they appropriate its worth and wealth. But let it not be forgotten, that the American pioneering spirit has opened Africa wider in ten years than all the efforts of all other nations in twenty.

CONGO FREE STATE

In 1877, Stanley wrote to the London Daily Telegraph as follows: —

“I feel convinced that the question of this mighty water-way (the Congo) will become a political one in time. As yet, however, no European power seems to have put forth the right of control. Portugal claims it because she discovered its mouth; but the great powers, England, America, and France, refuse to recognize her right. If it were not that I fear to damp any interest you may have in Africa, or in this magnificent stream, by the length of my letter, I could show you very strong reasons why it would be a politic deed to settle this momentous question immediately. I could prove to you that the power possessing the Congo, despite the cataracts, would absorb to itself the trade of the whole enormous basin behind. This river is and will be the grand highway of commerce to West Central Africa.”

When Stanley wrote this, with visions of a majestic Congo Empire flitting through his brain, he was more than prophetic; at least, he knew more of the impulse that was then throbbing and permeating Europe than any other man. He had met Gambetta, the great French statesman, who in so many words had told him that he had opened up a new continent to the world’s view and had given an impulse to scientific and philanthropic enterprise which could not but have material effect on the progress of mankind. He knew what the work of the International Association, which had his plans for a Free State under consideration, had been, up to that hour, and were likely to be in the future. He was aware of the fact that the English Baptist missionaries had already pushed their way up the Congo to a point beyond the Equator, and that the American Baptists were working side by side with their English brethren. He knew that the London and Church Missionary Societies had planted their flags on Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika, and that the work of the Free Kirk of Scotland was reaching out from Lake Nyassa to Tanganyika. He had seen Pinto and Weissman crossing Africa and making grand discoveries in the Portuguese possessions south of the Congo. De Brazza had given France a West African Empire; Germany had annexed all the vacant territory in South-west Africa, to say nothing of her East African enterprises; Italy had taken up the Red Sea coast; Great Britain had possessed the Niger delta; Portugal already owned 700,000 square miles south of the Congo, to which no boundaries had been affixed.

Stanley knew even more than this. His heroic nature took no stock in the “horrible climate” of Africa, which he had tested for so many years. He was fully persuaded that the plateaus of the Upper Congo and the central continent were healthier than the lands of Arkansas, which has doubled its population in twenty-five years. He treated the coast as but a thin line, the mere shell of an egg, yet he saw it dotted with settlements along every available water-way – the Kwanza, Congo, Kwilu, Ogowai, Muni, Camaroon, Oil, Niger, Roquelle, Gambia and Senegal rivers. He asked himself, What is left? And the answer came – Nothing, except the basins of the four mighty streams – the Congo, the Nile, the Niger and the Shari (Shire), all of which require railways to link them with the sea. His projected railway from Vivi, around the cataracts of the Congo, to Stanley Pool, 147 miles long, would open nearly 11,000 miles of navigable water-way, and the trade of 43,000,000 people, worth millions of dollars annually.

The first results of Stanley’s efforts in behalf of a “Free Congo State” were, as already indicated, the formation of an international association, whose president was Colonel Strauch, and to whose existence and management the leading powers of the world gave their assent. It furnished the means for his return to Africa, with plenty of help and with facilities for navigating the Congo, in order to establish towns, conclude treaties with the natives, take possession of the lands, fix metes and bounds and open commerce – in a word, to found a State according to his ideal, and firmly fix it among the recognized empires of the world.

In January, 1879, Stanley started for Africa, under the above auspices and with the above intent. But instead of sailing to the Congo direct, he went to Zanzibar on the east coast, for the purpose of enlisting a force of native pioneers and carriers, aiming as much as possible to secure those who had accompanied him on his previous trips across the Continent and down the river, whose ascent he was about to make. Such men he could trust, besides, their experience would be of great avail in so perilous an enterprise. A second object of his visit to Zanzibar was to organize expeditions for the purpose of pushing westward and establishing permanent posts as far as the Congo. One of these, under Lieut. Cambier, established a line of posts stretching almost directly westward from Zanzibar to Nyangwe, and through a friendly country. With this work, and the enlistment of 68 Zanzibaris for his Congo expedition, three-fourths of whom had accompanied him across Africa, he was engaged until May, 1879, when he sailed for the Congo, via the Red Sea and Mediterranean, and arrived at Banana Point at the mouth of the Congo, on Aug. 14, 1879, as he says, “to ascend the great river with the novel mission of sowing along its banks civilized settlements, to peacefully conquer and subdue it, to mold it in harmony with modern ideas into national States, within whose limits the European merchant shall go hand in hand with the dark African trader, and justice and law and order shall prevail, and murder and lawlessness and the cruel barter of slaves shall forever cease.”

Once at Banana Point, all hands trimmed for the tropical heat. Heads were shorn close, heavy clothing was changed for soft, light flannels, hats gave place to ventilated caps, the food was changed from meat to vegetable, liquors gave place to coffee or tea – for be it known a simple glass of champagne may prove a prelude to a sun-stroke in African lowlands. The officers of the expedition here met – an international group indeed, – an American (Stanley), two Englishmen, five Belgians, two Danes, one Frenchman. The steamer Barga had long since arrived from Europe with a precious assortment of equipments, among which were building material and a flotilla of light steam launches. One of these, the En Avant was the first to discover Lake Leopold II, explore the Biyeré and reach Stanley Falls.

In seven days, August 21st, the expedition was under way, braving the yellow, giant stream with steel cutters, driven by steam. The river is three miles wide, from 60 to 900 feet deep, and with a current of six miles an hour. On either side are dark walls of mangrove and palm, through which course lazy, unknown creeks, alive only with the slimy reptilia of the coast sections. For miles the course is through the serene river flood, fringed by a leafy, yet melancholy nature. Then a cluster of factories, known as Kissinga, is passed, and the river is broken into channels by numerous islands, heavily wooded. Only the deeper channels are now navigable, and selecting the right ones the fleet arrives at Wood Point, a Dutch trading town, with several factories. Up to this point, the river has had no depth of less than 16 feet, increased to 22 feet during the rainy season. The mangrove forests have disappeared, giving place to the statelier palms. Grassy plains begin to stretch invitingly down to the water’s edge. In the distance high ridges throw up their serrated outlines, and seemingly converge toward the river, as a look is taken ahead. Soon the wonderful Fetish Rocks are sighted, which all pilots approach with dread, either through superstition or because the deep current is broken by miniature whirlpools. One of these granite rocks stands on a high elevation and resembles a light-house. It is the Limbu-Li-Nzambi – “Finger of God” – of the natives.

Boma is now reached. It is the principal emporium of trade on the Congo – the buying and selling mart for Banana Point, and connected with it by steamers. There is nothing picturesque hereabouts, yet Boma has a history as old as the slave trade in America, and as dark and horrible as that traffic was infamous. Here congregated the white slave dealers for over two centuries, and here they gathered the dusky natives by the thousand, chained them in gangs by the dozen or score, forced them into the holds of their slave-ships, and carried them away to be sold in the Brazils, West Indies and North America. Whole fleets of slave-ships have anchored off Boma, with their loads of rum, their buccaneer crews and blood-thirsty officers, intent on human booty. Happily, all is now changed and the Arab is the only recognized slave-stealer in Africa. Boma has several missions, and her traders are on good terms with the surrounding tribes. Her market is splendid, and here may be found in plenty, oranges, citrons, limes, papaws, pine-apples, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, onions, turnips, cabbage, beets, carrots and lettuce, besides the meat of bullocks, sheep, goats and fowls.

After establishing a headquarters at Boma, under the auspices of the International Commission, the expedition proceeded to Mussuko, where the heavier steamer, Albion, was dismissed, and where all the stores for future use were collected. This point is 90 miles from the sea. River reconnoissances were made in the lighter steamers, and besides the information picked up, the navigators were treated to a hippopotamus hunt which resulted in the capture of one giant specimen, upon whose back one of the Danish skippers mounted in triumph, that he might have a thrilling paragraph for his next letter to Copenhagen.

Above Boma the Congo begins to narrow between verdure-clad hills rising from 300 to 1100 feet, and navigation becomes more difficult, though channels of 15 to 20 feet in depth are found. Further on, toward Vivi is a splendid reach of swift, deep water, with an occasional whirlpool, capable of floating the largest steamship. Vivi was to be a town founded under the auspices of the International Commission – an entrepôt for an extensive country. The site was pointed out by De-de-de, chief of the contiguous tribe, who seemed to have quite as keen a commercial eye as his European visitors. Hither were gathered five of the most powerful chiefs of the vicinity, who were pledged, over draughts of fresh palm-juice, to recognize the newly established emporium. It is a salubrious spot, surrounded by high plateaus, affording magnificent views. From its lofty surroundings one may sketch a future, which shall abound in well worn turnpike roads, puffing steamers, and columns of busy trades-people. As Vivi is, the natives are by no means the worst sort of people. They wear a moderate amount of clothing, take readily to traffic, keep themselves well supplied with marketing, and use as weapons the old fashioned flint-lock guns they have secured in trade with Europeans. At the grand assemblage of chiefs, one of the dusky seniors voiced the unanimous sentiment thus: – “We, the big chiefs of Vivi are glad to see the mundelé (trader). If the mundelé has any wish to settle in this country, as Massala (the interpreter) informs us, we will welcome him, and will be great friends to him. Let the mundelé speak his mind freely.”

Stanley replied that he was on a mission of peace, that he wanted to establish a commercial emporium, with the right to make roads to it and improve the surrounding country, and that he wanted free and safe intercourse with the people for all who chose to come there. If they would give guarantees to this effect, he would pay them for the right. Then began a four hour’s chaffer which resulted in the desired treaty. Apropos to this deal Stanley says: – “In the management of a bargain I should back the Congo native against Jew or Christian, Parsee, or Banyan, in all the round world. I have there seen a child of eight do more tricks of trade in an hour than the cleverest European trader on the Congo could do in a month. There is a little boy at Bolobo, aged six, named Lingeuji, who would make more profit out of a pound’s worth of cloth than an English boy of fifteen would out of ten pound’s worth. Therefore when I write of the Congo natives, Bakougo, Byyanzi or Bateke tribes, I associate them with an inconceivable amount of natural shrewdness and a power of indomitable and untiring chaffer.”

Thus Vivi was acquired, and Stanley brought thither all his boats and supplies. He turned all his working force, a hundred in number, to laying out streets to the top of the plateau, where houses and stores were erected. The natives rendered assistance and were much interested in the smashing and removal of the boulders with the heavy sledges. They called Stanley Bula Matari – Rock Breaker – a title he came to be known by on the whole line of the Congo, up to Stanley Falls. Gardens were planted, shade trees were set out, and on January 8, 1880, Stanley wrote home that he had a site prepared for a city of 20,000 people, at the head of navigation on the lower Congo, and a center for trade with a large country, when suitable roads were built. He left it in charge of one of his own men, as governor, or chief, and started on his tedious and more perilous journey through the hills and valleys of the cataract region. This journey led him through various tribes, most of whom lived in neat villages, and were well supplied with live animals, garden produce and cotton clothing. They were friendly and disposed to encourage him in his enterprise of making a good commercial road from Vivi, around the cataracts, to some suitable station above, provided they were well paid for the right of way. A melancholy fact in connection with many of these tribes is that they have been decimated by internecine wars, mostly of the olden time, when the catching and selling of slaves was a business, and that thereby extensive tracts of good land have been abandoned to wild game, elephants, buffaloes, water-buck and antelopes, which breed and roam at pleasure. It was nothing unusual to see herds of half a dozen elephants luxuriously spraying their sunburnt backs in friendly pools, nor to startle whole herds of buffaloes, which would scamper away, with tails erect, for safety – cowards all, except when wounded and at bay, and then a very demon, fuller of fight than a tiger and even more dangerous than the ponderous elephant.

Owing to the fact that the Congo threads its cataract section with immense falls and through deep gorges, this part of Stanley’s journey had to be made at some distance from its channel, and with only glimpses of its turbid waters, over lofty ridges, through deep grass-clothed or densely forested valleys, and across various tributaries, abounding in hippopotami and other water animals. Many fine views were had from the mountains of Ngoma. He decided that a road could be made from Vivi to Isangila, a distance of 52 miles, and that from Isangila navigation could be resumed on the Congo. And this road he now proceeded to make, for, though years before in his descent of the river he had dragged many heavy canoes for miles overland, and around similar obstructions, he now had heavier craft to carry, and objects of commerce in view. He had 106 men at his disposal at Vivi, who fell to work with good will, cutting down the tall grass, removing boulders, corduroying low grounds, bridging streams, and carrying on engineering much the same as if they were in a civilized land – the natives helping when so inclined. The workmen had their own supplies, which were supplemented by game, found in abundance, and were molested only by the snakes which were disturbed by the cutting and digging; of these, the spitting snake was the most dangerous, not because of its bite, but because it ejects its poison in a stream from a distance of six feet into the face and eyes of its enemy. The ill effects of such an injection lasts for a week or more. The tall grass was infested with the whip-snake, the bulky python was found near the streams, while a peculiar green snake inhabited the trees of the stony sections and occasionally dangled in unpleasant proximity to the faces of the workmen.

As this road-making went on, constant communication was kept up with Vivi. The steamers were mounted on heavy wagons, and were drawn along by hand-power as the road progressed. Stores and utensils of every kind were similarly loaded and transported. The mules and asses, belonging to the expedition, were of course brought into requisition, but in nearly all cases their strength had to be supplemented by the workmen. Accidents were not infrequent, but fatal casualties were rare. Some died of disease, yet the general health was good. One of the coast natives fell a victim to an enraged hippopotamus, which crushed him and his bark as readily as an egg-shell.

Thus the road progressed to Makeya Manguba, a distance of 22 miles from Vivi, and after many tedious trips to and fro, all the equipments of the expedition were brought to that point. The time consumed had been about five months – from March to August. Here the steel lighters were brought into requisition, and the equipments were carried by steam to a new camp on the Bundi river, where road making was even more difficult, because the forests were now dense and the woods – mahogany, teak, guaiacum and bombax – very hard. Fortunately the natives kept up a fine supply of sweet potatoes, bananas, fowls and eggs, which supplemented the usual rice diet of the workmen. It was with the greatest hardship that the road was completed between the Luenda and Lulu rivers, so thick were the boulders and so hard the material which composed them. The Europeans all fell sick, and even the natives languished. At length the Bula river was reached, 16 miles from the Bundi, where the camp was supplied with an abundance of buffalo and antelope meat.

The way must now go either over the steep declivities of the Ngoma mountains, or around their jagged edges, where they abut on the roaring Congo. The latter was chosen, and for days the entire force were engaged in cutting a roadway along the sides of the bluffs. This completed, a short stretch of navigable water brought them to Isangila, 52 miles from Vivi. It was now January 2, 1881. Thither all the supplies were brought, and the boats were scraped and painted, ready for the long journey to Manyanga. Stanley estimated that all the goings and comings on this 52 miles of roadway would foot up 2,352 miles of travel; and it had cost the death of six Europeans and twenty-two natives, besides the retirement of thirteen invalids. Verily, it was a year dark with trial and unusual toil. But the cataracts had been overcome, and rest could be had against further labors and dangers.

The little steel lighters are now ready for their precious loads. In all, there has been collected at Isangila full fifty tons of freight, besides wagons and the traveling luggage of 118 colored carriers and attendants and pioneers. It is a long, long way to Manyanga, but if the river proves friendly, it ought to be reached in from seventy to eighty days. The Congo is three-quarters of a mile wide, with rugged shores and tumultuous currents. The little steamers have to feel their way, hugging the shores in order to avoid the swift waters of the outer channels, and starting every now and then with their paddles the drowsy crocodiles from their habitat. The astonished creatures dart forward, at first, as if to attack the boats, but of a sudden disappear in the flood, to rise again in the rear and give furious chase at a distance they deem quite safe. This part of the river is known as Long Reach. These reaches, or stretches, some of them five miles long, are expansions of the river, between points of greater fall, and are more easily navigable than where the stream narrows or suddenly turns a point. The cañon appearance of the shores now begins to disappear, and extensive grass-grown plains stretch occasionally to the water’s edge.

At the camp near Kololo Point, where the river descends swiftly, the expedition was met by Crudington and Bentley, two missionaries, who were fleeing in a canoe from the natives of Kinshassa, where they had been surrounded by an armed mob and threatened with their lives. They were given protection and sent to Isangila. Stanley had now to mourn the loss of his most trustworthy messenger, Soudi. He had gone back to Vivi for the European mail and on the way had met a herd of buffaloes; selecting the finest, he discharged his rifle at it and killed it, as he thought. But when he rushed up to cut its jugular vein, the beast arose in fury, and tossed and mangled poor Soudi so that he died soon after his companions came to his rescue.

Stretch after stretch of the turbulent Congo is passed, and camp after camp has been formed and vacated. At all camps, where practicable, the natives have been taken into confidence, and the intent of the expedition made known. With hardly an exception they fell into the spirit of the undertaking, and gladly welcomed the opportunity to open commerce with the outer world. The Nzambi rapids now offer an obstacle to navigation, but soon a safe channel is found, and a magnificent stretch of water leads to a bay at the mouth of the Kwilu river, a navigable stream, with a depth of eight feet, a width of forty yards and a current of five miles an hour. The question of food now became pressing. Each day the banks of the river were scoured for rations, by gangs of six men, whose duty it was to purchase and bring in cassava, bread, bananas, Indian corn, sweet potatoes, etc., not forgetting fowls, eggs, goats, etc., for the Europeans. But these men found it hard work to obtain fair supplies.

By April 7th the camp was at Kimbanza opposite the mouth of the Lukunga and in the midst of a land of plenty, and especially of crocodiles, which fairly infest the river and all the tributaries thereof. Here, too, are myriads of little fish like minnows, or sardines, which the natives catch in great quantities, in nets, and prepare for food by baking them in the sun. The population is quite dense, and of the same amiable mood, the same desire to traffic, and the same willingness to enter into treaties, as that on the river below.

Further up are the Ndunga people and the Ndunga Rapids, where the river is penned in between high, forbidding walls and where nature has begrudged life of every kind to the scene. But out among the villages all is different. The people are thrifty and sprightly. Their markets are full of sweet potatoes, eggs, fish, palm-wine, etc., and the shapely youths, male and female, indulge in dances which possess as much poetry of motion as the terpsichorean performances of the more highly favored children of civilization.

The next station was Manyanga, a destination indeed, for here is a formidable cataract, which defies the light steamers of the expedition, and there will have to be another tedious portage to the open waters of Stanley Pool. It was now May 1, 1881. Manyanga is 140 miles from Vivi. The natives were friendly but adverse to founding a trading town in their midst. Yet Stanley resolved that it should be a station and supply point for the 95 miles still to be traversed to Stanley Pool. He fell sick here, of fever, and lay for many days unconscious. Such was his prostration, when he returned to his senses, that he despaired of recovery, and bade his attendants farewell.

In the midst of hardship which threatened to break his expedition up at this point, he was rejoiced to witness the arrival of a relief expedition from below, other boats, plenty of provisions and a corps of workmen. Then the site of the town of Manyanga was laid out, and a force of men was employed to build a road around the cataract and haul the boats over it. This point is the center of exchange for a wide territory. Slaves, ivory, rubber, oil, pigs, sheep, goats and fowls are brought in abundance to the market, and it is a favorite stopping-place for caravans from the mouth of the Congo to Stanley Pool. But the natives are crusty, and several times Stanley had to interfere to stop the quarrels which arose between his followers and the insolent market people. At length the town was fortified, provisioned and garrisoned, and the expedition was on its way to Stanley Pool, around a portage of six miles in length, and again into the Congo; then up and up, with difficult navigation, past the mouths of inflowing rivers, around other tedious portages, through quaint and curious tribes, whose chiefs grow more and more fantastic in dress and jealous of power, till they even come to rival that paragon of strutting kingliness, the famed Mtesa of Uganda. Though not hostile, they were by no means amiable, having made a recent cession of the country on the north of the Congo to French explorers. King Itsi, or Ngalyema, was among the most powerful of them and upon him was to turn the fortune of the expedition in the waters of the upper Congo. Stanley made the happy discovery that this Ngalyema was the Itsi, of whom he had made a blood brother on his descent of the river, and this circumstance soon paved the way to friendship and protection, despite the murmurs and threats of neighboring chiefs.

The last king of note, before reaching Stanley Pool, was Makoko, who favored the breaking of rocks and the cutting down of trees in order to pass boats over the country, but who wanted it understood that his people owned the country and did not intend to part with their rights without due consideration. Scarcely had a treaty been struck with him when Stanley was informed that Ngalyema was on his track with two hundred warriors, and determined to wipe out his former negotiations with blood. Already the sound of his war-drums and the shouts of his soldiers were heard in the distance. Stanley ordered his men to arm quickly and conceal themselves in the bush, but to rush out frantically and make a mock attack when they heard the gong sounding. Ngalyema appeared upon the scene with his forces and informed Stanley that he could not go to Kintamo, for Makoko did not own the land there. After a long talk, the stubborn chief left the tent in anger and with threats of extermination on his lips; but as he passed the inclosure, he was attracted by the gong, swinging in the wind.

“What is this?” he asked.

“It is fetish,” replied Stanley.

“Strike it; let me hear it,” he exclaimed.

“Oh, Ngalyema, I dare not; it is the war fetish.”

“No, no, no! I tell you to strike.”

“Well, then!”

Here Stanley struck the gong with all his force, and in an instant a hundred armed men sprang from the bush and rushed with demoniac yells upon the haughty chief and his followers, keeping up all the while such demonstrations as would lead to the impression that the next second would bring an annihilating volley from their guns. The frightened king clung to Stanley for protection. His followers fled in every direction.

“Shall I strike the fetish again?” inquired Stanley.

“No, no! don’t touch it!” exclaimed the now subdued king; and the broken treaty was solemnized afresh over a gourd of palm-wine. Makoko was jolly over the discomfiture of his powerful rival.

These Kintamo people, sometimes called the Wambunda, now gave to Stanley some 78 carriers and greatly assisted him in making his last twelve miles of roadway and in conveying his boats and wagons over it. The expedition was now in sight of Stanley Pool, beyond the region of the cataracts, and at the foot of navigation on the upper Congo. It was now Dec. 3, 1881, the boats were all brought up and launched in smooth water, a station was founded, and the expedition prepared for navigation on that stupendous stretch of water between Stanley Pool and Stanley Falls.

The Kintamo station was called Leopoldville, in honor of king Leopold of Belgium, European patron of the Congo Free State, and to whose generosity more than that of any other the entire expedition was due. It was the most important town thus far founded on the Congo, for it was the center of immense tribal influence, a base of operations for 5000 miles of navigable waters, and a seat of plenty if the chiefs remained true to their concessions. It was therefore well protected with a block-house and garrison, while the magazine was stocked with food and ammunition. Gardens were laid out and planted, stores were erected in which goods were displayed, and soon Stanley had the pleasure of seeing the natives bringing ivory and marketing for traffic. The stay of the expedition at Leopoldville was somewhat lengthy and it was April, 19, 1882, before it embarked for the upper Congo, with its 49 colored men, four whites, and 129 carrier-loads of equipments.

The boats passed Bamu Island, 14 miles in length, which occupies the center of Stanley Pool, the stream being haunted by hippopotami and the interior of the island by elephants and buffaloes, adventures with which were common. The shores are yet bold and wooded, monkeys in troops fling themselves from tree to tree, white-collared fish eagles dart with shrill screams across the wide expanse of waters, and crocodiles stare wildly at the approaching steamers, only to dart beneath them as they near and then to reappear in their wake. Says Stanley, of this part of the river:

“From the Belize to Omaha, on the line of the Mississippi, I have seen nothing to excite me to poetic madness. The Hudson is a trifle better in its upper part. The Indus, the Ganges, the Irrawaddy, the Euphrates, the Nile, the Niger, the La Platte, the Amazon – I think of them all, and I can see no beauty on their shores that is not excelled many fold by the natural beauty of this scenery, which, since the Congo highlands were first fractured by volcanic caprice or by some wild earth-dance, has remained unknown, unhonored and unsung.”

From Stanley Pool to Mswata, a distance of 64 miles, the river has a width of 1500 yards, a depth sufficient to float the largest steamer, and heavily wooded banks. The people are of the Kiteké tribes and are broken into many bands, ruled by a high class of chieftains, who are not averse to the coming of the white man. The Congo receives an important tributary near Mswata, called the Kwa. This Stanley explored for 200 miles, past the Holy Isle, or burial place of the Wabuma kings and queens, through populous and pleasantly situated villages and onward to a splendid expanse of water, which was named Lake Leopold II.

It was during his exploration of the Kwa that Stanley fell sick; and on his return to Mswata, was compelled to return to Leopoldville and so back to Manyanga, Vivi, and the various stations he had founded, to the coast, whence he sailed for Loando, to take a steamer for Europe. The three-year service of his Zanzibaris was about to expire; and when he met at Vivi, the German, Dr. Peschnel-Loeche, with a large force of men and a commission to take charge of the expedition, should anything happen to him (Stanley), he felt that it was in the nature of a reprieve.

On August 17, 1882, he sailed from Loando for Lisbon. On his arrival in Europe, he laid before the International Association a full account of the condition of affairs on the Congo. He had founded five of the eight stations at first projected, had constructed many miles of wagon road, had left a steamer and sailing vessels on the Upper Congo, had opened the country to traffic up to the mouth of the Kwa, a distance of 400 miles from the coast, had found the natives amiable and willing to work and trade, and had secured treaties and concessions which guaranteed the permanency of the benefits sought to be obtained by the expedition and the founding of a great Free State. Yet with all this he declared that “the Congo basin is not worth a two-shilling piece in its present state, and that to reduce it to profitable order a railroad must be built from the lower to the upper river.” Such road must be solely for the benefit of Central Africa and of such as desire to traffic in that region. He regarded the first phase of his mission as over – the opening of communication between the Atlantic and Upper Congo. The second phase he regarded as the obtaining of concessions from all the chiefs along the way, without which they would be in a position to force an abandonment of every commercial enterprise.

The International Association heard him patiently and offered to provide funds for his more extensive work, provided he would undertake it. He consented to do so and to push his work to Stanley Falls, if they would give him a reliable governor for the establishments on the Lower Congo. Such a man was promised; and after a six weeks’ stay in Europe, he sailed again for Congo-land on November 23, 1882.

He found his trading stations in confusion, and spent some time in restoring order, and re-victualling the empty store-houses. The temporary bridges on his hastily built roads had begun to weaken and one at the Mpalanga crossing gave way, compelling a tedious delay with the boats and wagons he was pushing on to the relief of Leopoldville. Here he found no progress had been made and that under shameful neglect everything was going to decay. Even reciprocity with the natives had been neglected, and garrison and tribes had agreed to let one another severely alone. To rectify all he found wrong required heroic exertion. He found one source of gratification in the fact that two English religious missions had been founded on the ground of the Association, one a Baptist, the other undenominational. Dr. Sims, head of the Baptists, was the first to navigate the waters of the Upper Congo, and occupy a station above Stanley Pool, but soon after the Livingstone, or undenominational mission, established a station at the Equator. Both missions now have steamers at their disposal, and are engaged in peaceful rivalry for moral conquest in the Congo Basin.

The relief of Leopoldville accomplished, Stanley started in his steam-launches, one of which was new (May 9, 1883), for the upper waters of the Congo, with eighty men. Passing his former station at Mswata, he sailed for Bolobo, passing through a country with few villages and alive with lions, elephants, buffaloes and antelopes, proof that the population is sparse at a distance from the river. Beyond the mouth of the Lawson, the Congo leaves behind its bold shores and assumes a broader width. It now becomes lacustrine and runs lazily through a bed carved out of virgin soil. This is the real heart of equatorial Africa, rich alluvium, capable of supporting a countless population and of enriching half a world.

The Bolobo country is densely populated, but flat and somewhat unhealthy. The villages arise in quick succession, and perhaps 10,000 people live along the river front. They are peaceful, inclined to trade, but easily offended at any show of superiority on the part of white men. Ibaka is the leading chief. He it was who conducted negotiations for Gatula, who had murdered two white men, and who had been arraigned for his double crime before Stanley,

The latter insisted upon the payment of a heavy fine by the offending chief – or war. After long deliberation, the fine was paid, much to Stanley’s relief, for war would have defeated the whole object of his expedition. Ibaka’s remark, when the affair was so happily ended, was: “Gatula has received such a fright and has lost so much money, that he will never be induced to murder a man again. No, indeed, he would rather lose ten of his women than go through this scene again.” A Bolobo concession for the Association was readily obtained in a council of the chiefs.

And this station at Bolobo was most important. The natives are energetic traders, and have agents at Stanley Pool and points further down the river, to whom they consign their ivory and camwood powder, very much as if they were Europeans or Americans. They even acquire and enjoy fortunes. One of them, Manguru, is a nabob after the modern pattern, worth fully $20,000, and his canoes and slaves exploit every creek and affluent of the Congo, gathering up every species of merchandise available for the coast markets. Within two hours of Bolobo is the market place of the By-yanzi tribe. The town is called Mpumba. It is a live place on market days, and the fakirs vie with each other in the sale of dogs, crocodiles, hippopotamus meat, snails, fish and red-wood powder.

Negotiations having been completed at Bolobo, and the station fully established, Stanley started with his flotilla, May 28th, on his way up the river. The natives whom he expected to confront were the Uyanzi and Ubangi. He was well provided with guides from Bolobo, among whom were two of Ibaka’s slaves. The shores of the river were now densely wooded, and the river itself spread out to the enormous width of five miles, which space was divided into channels by islands, miles in length, and covered with rubber trees, tamarinds, baobab, bombax, red-wood, palms and date palms, all of which were interwoven with profuse creepers, making an impenetrable mass of vegetation, royal to look upon, but suggestive of death to any one who dared to lift the verdant veil and look behind.

Slowly the tiny steamers push against the strong currents and make their way through this luxuriant monotony, broken, to be sure, every now and then, by the flit of a sun-bird, the chirp of a weaver, the swish of a bamboo reed, the graceful nodding of an overgrown papyrus, the scurrying of a flock of parrots, the yawn of a lazy hippopotamus, the plunge of a crocodile, the chatter of a disturbed monkey colony, the scream of the white-collared fish eagle, the darting of a king-fisher, the pecking of wag-tails, the starting of jays and flamingoes. Yet with all these appeals to eye and ear, there is the sepulchral gloom of impervious forest, the sad expanse of grassy plain, the spectral isles of the stream, the vast dome of tropical sky, and the sense of slowness of motion and cramped quarters, which combine to produce a melancholy almost appalling. It is by no means a Rhine journey, with gay steamers, flush with food and wine. The Congo is one-and-a-half times larger than the Mississippi, and with a width which is majestic in comparison with the “Father of Waters.” It shows a dozen varieties of palm. Its herds of hippopotami, flocks of gleeful monkeys, troops of elephants standing sentry at forest entrances, bevies of buffaloes grazing on its grassy slopes, swarms of ibis, parrots and guinea-fowl fluttering everywhere – these create a life for the Congo, surpassing in variety that of the Mississippi. But the swift-moving, strong, sonorous steamer, and the bustling river town, are wanting.

At last night comes, and the flotilla is twenty miles above Bolobo. Night does not mean the end of a day’s work with the expedition, but rather the beginning of one, for it is the signal for all hands to put ashore with axes and saws to cut and carry a supply of wood for the morrow’s steaming. A great light is lit upon the shore, and for hours the ringing of axes is heard, varied by the woodman’s weird chant. The supply is borne back in bundles, the tired natives eat their cassava bread and boiled rice suppers, the whites partake of their roast goat’s meat, beans, bananas, honey, milk and coffee, and then all is silence on the deep, dark river. The camp is Ugende, still in the By-yanzi country. The natives are suspicious at first, but are appeased by the order that every member of the expedition shall make up his reedy couch in close proximity to the steamers.

The next day’s steaming is through numerous villages, banana groves, palm groups, and an agreeable alternation of bluff and vale. The Levy Hills approach the water in the airy red projections of Iyumbi. The natives gaze in awe upon the passing flotilla, as much as to say, “What does it all mean?” “Has doom indeed dawned for us?” Two hours above Iyumbi the steamers lose their way in the multitude of channels, and have to put back. On their return, twenty canoes are sighted in a creek. Information must be had, and the whale-boat is launched and ordered to visit the canoes. At sight of it, the occupants of the canoes flee. Chase is given, and five miles are passed before the whale-boat catches up. The occupants of the canoes are found to be women, who jump into the water and escape through the reeds to the shore. They prove dumb to all inquiries as to the river courses, and might as well have been spared their fright.

On May 31st the journey was against a head wind, and so slow that two trading canoes, each propelled by twenty By-yanzi paddles, bound for Ubangi, kept pace with the steamers all day. Provisions were now running low. Since leaving Bolobo, the eighty natives and seven Europeans had consumed at the rate of 250 pounds of food daily. It was therefore time to prepare for barter with the settlement which came into view on June 1st, and which the guides called Lukolela.

Lukolela is a succession of the finest villages thus far seen on the Congo. They are composed of substantial huts, built on a bold shore, and amid a primeval forest, thinned of its trees to give building spaces. The natives are still of the Wy-yanzi tribe, and whether friendly or not, could not be ascertained on first approach. Stanley took no chances with them, but steaming slowly past their five mile of villages, he ordered all the showy calicoes and trinkets to be displayed, and placed his guides and interpreters in the bows of the boats to harangue the natives and proclaim his desire to trade in peace. Though the throng gradually increased on the shore and became more curious as each village was passed, it gave no response except that the country had been devastated by frightful disease and was in a state of starvation. Horrid indeed was the situation, if they spoke the truth! But what of the fat, well-to-do looking people on the banks? Ah! there must be something wrong somewhere! The steamers passed above the villages and put up for the night. Soon the natives came trooping from the villages, bearing loads of fowls, goats, plantains, bananas, cassava, sweet-potatoes, yams, eggs, and palm-oil, and all eager for a trade. Barter was brisk that night, and was resumed the next morning, when canoe after canoe appeared, loaded down with rations. A supply of food for eight days was secured. They excused their falsehoods of the previous day to the fear they had of the steamers. On finding that they were not dangerous, their cowardice turned into admiration of a craft they had never seen before.

The Congo now ran through banks 100 feet high and a mile and a half apart, clothed with magnificent timber. Between these the flotilla sailed on June 2d, being visited occasionally by native fishermen with fish to sell. The camp this night was in a deserted spot, with nothing to cheer it except dense flocks of small birds, followed by straggling armies of larger ones resembling crows. On the evening of June 3d the steamers reached a point a few miles below Ngombé. Here Stanley was surprised to hear his name called, in good English, by the occupants of two canoes, who had fish and crocodiles to sell. He encouraged the mongers by making a purchase, and on inquiry found that the natives here carry on quite a brisk trade in young crocodiles, which they rear for the markets. They procure the eggs, hatch them in the sand, and then secure the young ones in ponds, covered with nets, till they are old enough to market.

Ngombé was now sighted, on a bank 40 feet above the river, amid a wealth of banana groves and other signs of abundance. Above and below Ngombé the river is from four to five miles wide, but here it narrows to two miles and flows with a swift current. The sail over the wide stretch above Ngombé was through the land of the Nkuku, a trading people. At Butunu the steamers were welcomed with delight, and the shores echoed with shouts of “Malamu!” Good! But it remained for the Usindi to greet the travelers with an applause which was ridiculously uproarious. Hundreds of canoes pushed into the stream, followed and surrounded the steamers, their occupants cheering as though they were frantic, and quite drowning every counter demonstration. At length a dozen of them sprang aboard one of the steamers, shook hands with all the crew, and gratified their curiosity by a close inspection of the machinery and equipments. Then they would have the steamers put back to their landing at Usindi, where the welcome was continued more obstreperously than ever. The secret of it all was that these people were great river traders, and many of them had been to Leopoldville and Kintamo, 300 miles below, where they had seen houses, boats and wagons. They were a polished people, not given to show of their weapons for purposes of terrorizing their visitors, and kindly in the extreme. Iuka, their king, besought Stanley to make a station at Usindi and enter into permanent trade relations with his people.

A very few miles above Usindi the flotilla entered a deep channel of the Congo, which seemed to pass between fruitful islands, whose shores were lined with people. They were ominously quiet till the steamers passed, when they gave pursuit in their canoes. The steamers stopped, and the pursuers made the announcement that they bore an invitation from King Mangombo, of Irebu, to visit him. Mention of the Irebu was enough to determine Stanley. They are the champion traders of the Upper Congo, and are equalled only by the powerful Ubanzi who live on the north side of that great flood. The Irebu have, time and again, borne down upon the Lukolela, Ngombé, Nkuku, Butunu and Usindi, and even the fierce Bengala, and taught them all how to traffic in peace and with credit.

When the steamers came to anchor at Mangambo’s village, the aged king headed a procession of his people and welcomed Stanley by shaking his hand in civilized fashion. There were cheers, to be sure, but not the wild vociferations of those who looked upon his flotilla as something supernatural. There was none of that eager curiosity which characterizes the unsophisticated African, but a dignified bearing and frank speech. They had an air of knowledge and travel which showed that their intercourse with the trading world had not been in vain. They know the Congo by heart from Stanley Pool to Upoto, a distance of 600 miles; are acquainted with the military strength and commercial genius of all the tribes, and can compute the value of cloth, metals, beads and trinkets, in ivory, livestock and market produce, as quickly as the most skillful accountant. Blood brotherhood was made with Mangombo, valuable gifts were interchanged, and then the chief, in a long speech, asked Stanley to intercede in his behalf in a war he was waging with Magwala and Mpika, – which he did in such a way as to bring about a truce.

The large tributary, Lukanga, enters the Congo near Irebu, with its black waters and sluggish current. The flotilla left the mouth of the Lukanga on June 6th, and after a sail of 50 miles, came to Ikengo on June 8th. The route had been between many long islands, heavily wooded, while the shores bore an unbroken forest of teak, mahogany, gum, bombax and other valuable woods. At Ikengo the natives came dashing into the stream in myriad of canoes shouting their welcomes and praising the merits of their respective villages. Here it was, “Come to Ikengo!” There it was, “Come to Itumba!” Between it was, “Come to Inganda!” With all it was, “We have women, ivory, slaves, goats, sheep, pigs,” etc. It was more like a fakir scene in Constantinople or Cairo than a pagan greeting in the heart of the wilderness. Perhaps both their familiarity and importunity was due in great part to the fact they remembered Stanley on his downward trip years before.

Having, in 1877, been royally received at Inganda, Stanley landed there, and stopped temporarily among those healthy, bronze-colored denizens, with their fantastic caps of monkey, otter, leopard or goat skin, and their dresses of grassy fibre. From this point Stanley made a personal exploration to the large tributary of the Congo, called the Mohindu, which he had mapped on his trip down the Congo. He found what he had conceived to be an affluent of 1,000 yards wide, to be one of only 600 yards wide, with low shores, running into extensive timber swamps. He called it an African Styx. But further up it began to develop banks. Soon villages appeared, and by and by came people, armed, yellow-bodied, and dancing as if they meant to awe the occupants of the boat. But the boat did not stop till it arrived at a cheerful village, 80 miles up the river, where, on attempting to stop, it was warned off with the threat that a landing would be a sure signal for a fight. Not wishing to tempt them too far, the steamer put back, receiving as a farewell a volley of sticks and stones which fell far short of their object.

On the return of the steamer to Inganda, preparation was made for the sail to the next station up the Congo, which being in the latitude of only one minute north of the Equator, or, in other words, as nearly under it as was possible, was called Equator Station. This station was made a permanent one by the appointment of Lieut. Vangele as commander, with a garrison of 20 men. Lieut. Coquilhat, with 20 men, was also left there, till reinforcements and supplies should come up from Leopoldville. After remaining here long enough to prepare a station site and appease the neighboring chiefs with gifts, the balance of the expedition returned down the river to Inganda, or rather to Irebu, for it had been determined that Inganda was too sickly a place for a station. Yet how were these hospitable people to be informed of the intended change of base without giving offence? Stanley’s guide kindly took the matter in hand, and his method would have done credit to a Philadelphia lawyer. Rubbing his eyes with pepper till the tears streamed down his cheeks, and assuming a broken-hearted expression, he stepped ashore among the assembled natives, as the boat touched at Inganda, and took a position in their midst, utterly regardless of their shouts of welcome and their other evidences of hearty greeting. To all their anxious inquiries he responded nothing, being wholly engaged in his role of sorrow. At last, when their importunity could not be further resisted, he told them a pitiful story of hardship and death in an imaginary encounter up the river, and how Mangombo’s boy, of Irebu, had fallen a victim, beseeching them to join in a war of redress, etc., etc. The acting of the native guide was complete, and all Inganda was so deceived by it and so bent on a war of revenge that it quite forgot to entertain any ill-feeling at the departure of the steamer and the abandonment of the station. So Stanley sailed down to Irebu, where he found his truce broken and Mangombo plunged again into fierce war with his neighbors – Mpika and Magwala.

Once more Stanley interceded by calling a council of the chiefs on both sides. After an impressive speech, in which he detailed the horrors of war and the folly of further slaughter over a question of a few slaves, he induced the hostile chiefs to shake hands and exchange pledges of peace. They ratified the terms by firing a salute over the grave of the war, and disbanded. Irebu is a large collection of villages extending for fully five miles along the Congo and Lukanga, and carrying a depth of two miles into the country. These closely knitted villages contain a population of 15,000 people, with as many more in the immediate neighborhood.

The Lukanga was now explored. Its sluggish, reed-obstructed mouth soon brought the exploring steamer into a splendid lake with village-lined shores. This was Lake Mantumba, 144 miles in circumference. The inhabitants are experts in the manufacture of pottery and camwood powder and carry on a large ivory trade with the Watwa dwarfs.

Stanley then returned to the Congo and continued his downward journey, rescuing in one place the occupants of a capsized canoe; at another giving aid to a struggling Catholic priest on his way to the mouth of the Kwa to establish a mission; trying an ineffectual shot at a lion crouching on the bank and gazing angrily at the flotilla, pursuing its fleeing form, only to stumble on the freshly-slain carcass of a buffalo which the forest-king had stricken down while it was drinking, and at length arriving at Leopoldville, after an absence of 57 days, to find there several new houses, erected by the commandant, Lieut. Valcke, who had also founded the new station of Kinshassa. Where two months before all was wilderness, now fully 500 banana-trees were flourishing, terms of peace had been kept with the whimsical Ngalyema, and the store-rooms of the station were regular banks, that is, they were well stocked with brass rods, the circulating medium of the country.

Stanley remained at Leopoldville for some time, rectifying mischiefs which had occurred at Vivi and Manyanga, and dispatching men and supplies up to Bolobo. Here incidents crowded upon him. Having commissioned a young continental officer to establish a station on the opposite side of the river, the fellow no sooner arrived on the ground than he developed a homicidal mania and shot one of his own sergeants. He was brought back in a tattered and dazed condition and dismissed down the river. Word came of the destruction of a canoe by a gale near the mouth of the Kwa, and the drowning of Lieut. Jansen and twelve people, among whom was Abbé Guyot, the Catholic priest above mentioned. From Kimpoko station came word that a quarrel had broken out there with the natives and that relief must be had. A visit showed the station to have been deserted, and it was destroyed and abandoned. More and more awful grew the situation. A canoe courier brought the harrowing word that Bolobo had been burned, with all the freshly dispatched goods.

This news spurred Stanley to a hasty start for the ill-fated station on August 22d. Arriving opposite Bolobo, Stanley’s rear steamers were fired upon from an ambush on the shore, and forced to administer a return fire. His steamers had never been fired upon before. He effected a landing at Bolobo, only to find a majority of the villages hostile to him, and bent on keeping up a desultory fire from the bush. So, unloading one of the steamers, he sent it back to Leopoldville to bring up quickly a Krupp cannon and ammunition. Despite his endeavors to bring about a better feeling, Stanley’s men were fired upon daily, and they returned it as best they could, occasionally killing a native, and doing damage to their banana trees, beer pots and chicken coups. At length the wounding of a chief brought about a parley and offers of peace tokens, but Stanley replied that since they seemed to be so fond of fighting, and were not doing him any particular harm, he proposed to keep it up from day to day till his monster gun arrived from Stanley Pool, when he would blow them all sky-high. This awful threat was too much for them. A nine days’ palaver ensued, which resulted in their payment of a fine and renewed peace. But when the great gun arrived, they saw, in the absence of trigger, stock and ramrod, so little likeness to a gun, that they claimed Stanley had deceived them, and refused to be propitiated till he proved it to be what he had represented. The Congo at Bolobo is 4,000 yards wide. Stanley ordered the cannon to be fired at a range of 2,000 yards, and when they saw a column of water thrown up by the striking of the charge at that distance, and witnessed the recoil of the piece, they began to think it was indeed a terrible weapon. They were still further convinced of the truth of his representations by a second shot, which carried the charge to a distance of 3,000 yards.

It was by such manœuvres as these that Stanley established fresh relations with these Wy-yanzi tribes. They are naturally wild and turbulent. A dispute over a brass rod, or a quarrel over a pot of beer, is a signal for war. Superstition rules them, as few tribes are ruled. A bad dream by a chief may lead to the suspicion that he is bewitched, and some poor victim is sure to suffer burning for witchcraft. Ibaka caused a young girl to be strangled because her lover had sickened and died. At an upper village forty-five people were slaughtered over the grave of their chief – a sort of propitiatory sacrifice.

After all matters had been settled, Stanley read them a lecture on the folly of fighting friendly white men, who had never done them an injury, and did not intend to. To show his appreciation of the situation, he made them a present of cloth and brass rods, and offered to pay for a treat of beer. They went out and held a palaver, and then returned with a request that the gifts be duplicated. “Never!” shouted Stanley. “Ibaka, this land is yours. Take it. I and my people depart from Bolobo forever!”

To this all the chiefs remonstrated, saying they had no intention of driving him away, and explaining that their demand was only according to the custom of the Wy-yanzi to always ask for twice as much as was offered them. Despite this rather surprising commercial spirit, they are not a vindictive people – simply superstitious and quarrelsome.

After these difficulties, Stanley resumed his up-river journey for Lukolela, passing on the way the mouths of the Minkené river, of the Likuba, and of the larger river Bunga, whose banks are thickly strewn with villages. Once at Lukolela, a station was formed by clearing away the tall forest trees. Though the forests were magnificent, and capable of furnishing timber for generations, the soil was hard, stony and forbidding, and Stanley despaired of ever getting a garden of sufficient dimensions and fertility to support a garrison. He, however, left a Mr. Glave, a young Englishman, in charge, who seemed to think he could force nature to promise subsistence and comfort.

On September 22d Stanley started for Usindi, having on board Miyongo, of that place, and his shipwrecked crew. On their safe arrival, there was no show of gratitude for the favor done, but blood-brotherhood was made with Miyongo. This provoked the jealousy of the senior chief, Iuka, a dirty old fellow, of wicked mien, whose grievance seemed to be that Miyongo was too popular in the community. A short palaver reconciled him to the situation, and Stanley departed with the assurance that Usindi might be counted on as a safe stopping-place in the future. Miyongo favored him with a guide who was well acquainted with the upper waters of the Congo.

Irebu was now passed, and then the mouth of the Bauil, whose people are a piratical crew, dreaded by all their neighbors. By September 29th the flotilla was at Equator Station again, after an absence of one hundred days. What a transformation! The jungle and scrub had disappeared, and in their stead was a solid clay house, roomy, rain-proof and bullet-proof, well lighted and furnished. Around it were the neat clay huts of the colored carriers and soldiers, each the centre of a garden where grew corn, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, etc. Then there was a grand garden, full of onions, radishes, carrots, beans, peas, beets, lettuce, potatoes and cabbages, and also a servants’ hall, goat-houses, fowl-houses and all the et-ceteras of an African plantation. It was Stanley’s ideal of a Congo station, and sight of it gave him greater heart for his enterprise than any thing he had yet seen. The native chief, Ikengé, was at first disposed to be troublesome, but was soon appeased. On October 11th Stanley congratulated himself that he had passed so much of the river limit, leaving peace behind him with all the nations, and stations abounding in means of support, if they exerted themselves in the right direction.

Equator Station is 757 miles from the Atlantic Ocean and 412 miles above Leopoldville, on Stanley Pool. Stanley’s initial work was really done here, but in response to earnest wishes from Brussels, he continued it in the same spirit and for the same purpose for 600 miles further, with a view of making a permanent station at Stanley Falls. With 68 colored men and 5 Europeans on board, and with his steamers well freighted with necessaries, he left Equator Station on October 16th. The first place of moment passed was at Uranga, near the confluence of the Lulunga with the Congo. The country around is flat, densely wooded, and the villages close together. The Uranga people were anxious for a landing and palaver, but the steamers pushed on to Bolombo, where a famine prevailed, and where the natives were peaceable and anxious to make blood-brotherhood.

Above Bolombo the steamers were met by a fleet of canoes, whose occupants bore the news that the Bengala were anxious for a stop and palaver. These were the terrible fighters who harassed Stanley so sorely on his descent of the Congo in 1877. He had heard further down the river that they had threatened to dispute every inch of water with the white man if ever he came that way again. But he had also heard from Mangombo, of Irebu, that the lesson they had learned was so severe that all the white men would have to do would be to shake a stick at them. Still Stanley approached anxiously. The Bengala villages stretch for miles along the Congo. He did not stop his steamers, which were soon surrounded by hundreds of canoes, but kept slowly moving past the countless villages for fully five hours. The canoe-men seemed impelled wholly by curiosity, and no sign of hostility appeared. The guide held frequent talks with the natives, none of which evoked other than friendly replies. They are a tall, broad-shouldered, graceful people, shading off from a dark bronze to a light complexion. The steamers came to a halt for the night at an island, two hours’ sail from the upper end of the villages, and 500 yards from the shore, and thither the guide came in the evening with a young chief, Boleko, who invited a landing the next day. In the morning he came with an escort of canoes and took Stanley to his village, through the identical channel whence had issued the hostile canoes in 1877. Here trading was carried on briskly and satisfactorily, till a message came from old Mata Bwyki to the effect that he regarded it as an insult on the part of a boy like Boleko to be extending the tribal honors in that way. The only way out of this was for the steamers to drop back two miles and spend a day opposite the village of the old chief – Lord-of-many-guns. Old Mata was found to be a Herculean fellow, nearly eighty years old, and walking with a staff that resembled a small mast. By his side appeared seven sons, all fine-looking fellows, but the gray shock of the old man towered above them all when he straightened himself up. Around them was a throng which numbered thousands. The assembly place and place of welcome was laid with grass mats. Stanley and his men marched into it, ogled on every side, and not knowing whether the end would be peace or war. The guide presented them with a speech which described Stanley’s work and objects – all he had done below them on the river, the advantages it would be to treat and trade with him, winding up with an intimation that it might be dangerous, or at least useless, to prove unfriendly, for his steamers were loaded with guns and ammunition sufficient for the extermination of the entire people. The result was a treaty, sealed with blood-brotherhood, and a promise on the part of Stanley to return at no distant day and establish a permanent station among the Bengala. This village was Iboko.

The Congo here is literally filled with islands which render a passage from one shore to the other almost impossible. These islands are all richly verdure-clad and present a scene of rare loveliness, draped in a vegetable life that finds a parallel no where else in nature. It took the steamers thirteen hours to work their way across to the left, or Mutembo side. But Mutembo was deserted. The steamers made Mkatakura, through channels bordered with splendid copal forests, whose tops were covered with orchilla – fortunes for whole civilized nations, if possessed and utilized. Mkatakura was also deserted. Where were these people? Their places had been populous and hostile in 1877. Had they fallen a prey to stronger tribes? Alas! such must have been their fate in a country where wars never end, and where provocations are the slightest.

Many deserted settlements were now passed, when Mpa, ruled by Iunga, was reached, 744 miles from Leopoldville. The people were peaceful and disposed to make all necessary concessions. The next day brought them to Nganza, ruled by old Rubanga, who had received Stanley with cordiality in 1877. The people were exceedingly anxious to trade, and offered their wares, especially their ivory, of which they had plenty, at ridiculously low figures. The people are known as the Langa-langa – the upper country – and they go almost entirely naked. Their bodies are cross-marked and tattooed. The country is regarded as a paradise for ivory traders, owing to the ignorance of the natives as to the real commercial value of the article. Here is the turning-point in African currency. The cloth and brass-rods of the Atlantic coast no longer hold good, but the Canton bead and the cowry of Ujiji are the measure of exchange. Langa-langa is therefore the commercial water-shed which divides the Atlantic and Pacific influence.

On November 4th Ikassa was passed, whose people fled on the approach of the steamers. It was the same at Yakongo. Then came a series of deserted villages. Presently appeared the newly-settled towns of Ndobo and Ibunda, with their wattled huts. Bumba came next, with whose chief, Myombi, blood-brotherhood was made amid a throng of curious sight-seers. It was the fiftieth time Stanley’s arm had been punctured for treaty purposes since he entered upon his journey. There was little opportunity for trading here owing to the curiosity of the people over the steamers. They could hardly be persuaded that the dreaded Ibanza – devil – did not live down in the boats. It must be he who required so much wood for food and gave such groans. If not, what was it that lived in that great iron drum and made those wheels spin round so rapidly? In this mood they forgot the art of exchange so natural with African natives. Their curiosity was such that the crowds about and upon the steamers became not only a drawback to exchange, but to work. At length one of the cabin-boys tried the effect of a practical joke. He opened the cabin door and pushed forward the form of a splendid Bengal tiger, as Ibanza, which was creating all the noise and trouble in the boat. The frightened natives shrieked and ran at glance of the terrible figure, and the river bank was cleared in a moment. Yells of laughter followed them from the boat’s crew. Being assured by this that nothing harmful was intended, they began to cluster back, and really joined heartily in the merriment, as they saw that the source of their terror was only a tiger skin hurriedly stuffed for the purpose of giving them a scare. Trade was more active after that, and provisions were plenty.

Above Bomba the steamers neared the equally populous town of Yambinga. The chief was Mukuga, who wore an antelope-skin cap adorned with cock’s feathers, a broad shoulder-belt with leopard-skin attachment, and strings of tags, tassels and fetish mysteries. He was a timid chief, notwithstanding his gaudy apparel, and quite willing to make blood brotherhood. All of these later villages were plentifully supplied with war-canoes, the count being 556 at Lower and Upper Yambinga, and 400 at Buruba.

Above Yambinga the flotilla got lost in an affluent of the Congo and had to put back to the main stream. The stream was supposed to be the Itimbiri. For many days both shores of the Congo had not appeared at once. But on the 12th both sides could be seen, and on the right was a wide plain once inhabited by the Yalulima, a tribe of artisans skilled in the manufacture of iron, including swords, spears, bells and fetishes of various devices. On an island above dwelt the Yambungu, who were disposed to trade and who brought fine sweet-potatoes, fowls, eggs, and a species of sheep with broad, flat tails.

The districts were now very populous, and the affluents frequent and very complicated as to name and direction of flow. The Basaka, Bahamba and Baru villages were passed without a stop. At all of these there were canoe demonstrations, but whether for hostile purpose or not was not inquired after. The flotilla was now nearing the great Congo affluent, the Aruwimi, out of whose mouth issued the enormous canoe-fleet which so nearly annihilated Stanley in 1877. He gave orders to be on the alert, but to resort to hostilities only when all hope of self-preservation otherwise had failed. Scarcely had these orders passed when a stream of long, splendid-looking war-canoes, filled with armed men, dashed out from behind an island, and began to reconnoitre the steamers. They pushed over to the right bank, and kept an upward course, without show of resistance and at a safe distance. The steamers plunged ahead, and soon the mouth of the Aruwimi opened its spacious jaws to receive them. High on the bank appeared the town of Mokulu, whose Basoko inmates had fought the battle with Stanley years before. He knew their disposition then, but what was it now? Was the meeting to be one of war or friendship?

The Congo has a majestic flow where it receives its great tributary, the Aruwimi. Rounding a point, the steamers entered the affluent, to find the villagers in force, dressed in war-paint, armed with spear and shield, beating their war-drums, and disporting themselves fantastically on the banks. The canoes of observation were speedily joined by others. The three steamers were put across to a clearing on the divide between the Congo and Aruwimi, and two of them brought to anchor. The Eu Avant was then steamed up the Aruwimi past Mokulu. Then her head was turned down stream, and the guide was stationed on the cabin to proclaim the words of peace and friendship as the steamer slowly returned. The drums on shore ceased to beat. The battle-horns were hushed. The leaping forms were still. The guide was eloquent in his speech and dramatic in his action. He had the ear of all Mokulu. At length a response came that if all the steamers anchored together, the Basoko would soon come as friends. The canoes hovered about, but could not be persuaded to come within 250 yards. Hours elapsed before they mustered up sufficient courage to approach the shore within hailing distance of the camps at the anchorage. Thither the guide and three companions went, and the ceremony of blood-brotherhood was performed. The town of Mokulu heard the shouts of satisfaction at this result, and a response came in the shape of drum-beats and horn-toots. Intercourse with the fierce Basoko was a possibility.

These Basokos received Stanley’s guide, Yumbila, first and loaded him with presents. They then told him of Stanley’s former approach and battle, also of a second visitation far worse than Stanley’s, which must have been one by an Arab gang of slave-stealers, judging from its barbarity. They were averse to a journey up the Aruwimi, though willing that the expedition should proceed up the Congo. It was impossible to get information from them respecting their river. They proved to be willing traders, and possessed products in abundance. Their spears, knives, paddles and shields showed remarkable workmanship, being delicately polished, and carved with likenesses of lizards, crocodiles, canoes, fish and buffaloes. Their headdresses were of fine palm materials, decorated, and a knit haversack formed a shoulder-piece for each man. Physically they are a splendid people, industrious after their style, fond of fishing, and not given to that ignorant, childish curiosity so common among other tribes. They are adepts at canoe construction, and some of their vessels require a hundred stout warriors to propel them in a fight.

Notwithstanding opposition, Stanley determined to explore the Aruwimi, which is 1,600 yards wide at its mouth, and narrows to 900 yards above Mokula. He found in succession the Umaneh, the Basongo, the Isombo, all populous, timid, and friendly. After passing Yambua and Irungu, he came to the quite populous metropolis of Yambumba, on a bluff 40 feet high, containing 8,000 people living in steeply conical huts, embowered by bombax, palms, banana-trees and fig-trees. The puffing of the steamers put the whole town to flight. Further on came the rapids of the river and the Yambuya people and town. These shrewd people declined to trade on the plea of poverty, and even refused to give the correct name of their village. Their appearance belied their assertions. Stanley found the rapids of the Aruwimi a bar to steam navigation. They are 96 miles from the mouth of the river, which runs nearly westward thus far. It was this brief exploration of the river which determined him to use it as a route to Albert Nyanza on his search for Emin Pasha. Should it keep its course and continue its volume, it could not but find a source far to the east in the direction of the lake, and very near to its shores. As one of the fatalities which overhang explorers, Stanley mistook it for the Welle, described by Schweinfurth, just as Livingstone mistook the Lualaba for the Nile.

This Welle, or Wellemakua, river about which Stanley indulges in surmises, is the celebrated river brought into notice by Schweinfurth’s discoveries, and over which a geographical controversy raged for seventeen years. The question was whether it was the Shari river, which emptied into Lake Tchad, or whether its mysterious outlet was further south. Stanley’s last journey in search of Emin Pasha pretty definitely settled the controversy by ascertaining that the Welle is the upper course of the Mobangi, a tributary of the Congo.

And while speaking of Schweinfurth, we must use him as authority to settle any misapprehension likely to arise respecting the nature of the dwarfs which Stanley encountered on the waters of the Upper Aruwimi. He calls them Monbuttus, thereby giving the impression that the tribe is one of dwarfs. It was Schweinfurth’s province to set at rest the long disputed question of the existence of a dwarf race in Central Africa. He proved, once for all, that Herodotus and Aristotle were not dealing with fables when they wrote of the pygmies of Central Africa. One day he suddenly found himself surrounded by what he conjectured was a crowd of impudent boys, who pointed their arrows at him, and whose manner betokened intentional disrespect. He soon learned that these hundreds of little fellows were veritable dwarfs, and were a part of the army of Munza, the great Monbuttu king. These are the now famous Akka, who, so far as we know, are the smallest of human beings. It is these same Akka who, wandering in the forest a little south of Schweinfurth’s route, picked off many a carrier in Stanley’s late expedition, using arrows whose points were covered with a deadly poison, and refusing all overtures of friendship.

Schweinfurth’s description of the Niam-Niams (Great-Eaters) and of their southern neighbors, the Monbuttus, is the best that has yet appeared in print. He approached the country through the powerful Dinka tribes on the north, whom he found rich in cattle, experts in iron-working and highly proficient in the art of pottery ornamentation, especially as to their smoking-pipes. Competent authorities agree with his opinion that the ornamental designs upon their potteries and iron and copper wares, now exhibited in the Berlin Museum of Ethnology, would not discredit a European artist, and among these people, so far advanced in some respects, Schweinfurth discovered the first evidences of cannibalism which is said to prevail, on very doubtful authority, however, in a very large part of the Congo Basin. It is a noteworthy fact that, in all his travels, Livingstone never saw evidence of this revolting practice except on one or two occasions, and in all his voluminous writings he hardly refers to the topic. Dr. Junker, however, draws a distinction between the Niam-Niam and Monbuttu cannibals which Schweinfurth in his briefer visit failed to observe. Junker says the Niam-Niam use human flesh as food only because they believe that in this way they acquire the bravery and other virtues with which their victims may have been endowed. The Monbuttu, on the other hand, make war upon their neighbors for no other purpose than to procure human flesh for food, because they delight in it as a part of their cuisine. With methodical care they dry the flesh they do not immediately use, and add it to their reserve supplies of food.

Schweinfurth’s journey into Niam-Niam was through a prairie land covered with the tallest grasses he had yet seen in Africa. The people are given to cattle-raising and the chase. They are not of stalwart size, and their color is dark-brown rather than black. What they lack in stature they make up in athletic qualities. They took a keen interest in showing the traveler their sights, and in the evening regaled his camp with music, dispensed by a grotesque singer, who accompanied his attenuated voice with a local guitar of thin, jingling sound. The drums and horns of the Niam-Niams are used only for war purposes. Everything testified to the fruitfulness of the soil. Sweet potatoes and yams were piled up in the farmsteads, and circular receptacles of clay for the preservation of corn were erected upon posts in the yards. The yards are surrounded by hedges of paradise figs; back of these are the plantations of manioc and maize, and beyond their fields of eleusine. The women are modest and retiring in the presence of white men, and their husbands hold them in high respect. The people are great believers in magic. The best shots, when they have killed an unusual number of antelopes or buffaloes, are credited with having charmed roots in their possession. The Niam-Niam country is important as being the water-shed between the Nile and the rivers which run westward into the Congo, the Welle being the largest, which runs nearly parallel with the recently discovered Aruwimi. The Niam-Niam are great ivory traders and take copper, cloth, or trinkets at a cheap figure for this valuable ware. The southern and western part of their country becomes densely wooded and the trees are gigantic. Here the shape of the huts change, becoming loftier and neater, the yards having posts in them for displaying trophies of war and the chase. The characteristics of the Niam-Niam are pronounced and they can be identified at once amidst the whole series of African races.

Every Niam-Niam soldier carries a lance, trumbash, and dagger, made by their own smiths. Wooing is dependent on a payment exacted from the suitor by the father of the intended bride. When a man resolves on matrimony, he applies to the sub-chieftain who helps him to secure his wife. In spite of the practice of polygamy, the marriage bond is sacred, and unfaithfulness is generally punished with death. The trait is paramount for this people to show consistent affection for their wives. Schweinfurth doubts the charge of cannibalism brought against this people, and thinks their name “Great Eaters” might have given rise to the impression that they were “man-eaters.”

The festivities that occur in case of marriage are a bridal procession, at the head of which the chieftain leads the bride to the home of her future husband, accompanied by musicians, minstrels and jesters. A feast is given, of which all partake in common, though in general the women are accustomed to eat alone in their huts. This marriage celebration, with slight variations, is usual with the tribes of Central Africa. Livingstone describes one among the Hamees of the Lualaba river, in which the bride is borne to the home of her husband on the shoulders of her lover or chieftain. The domestic duties of a Niam-Niam wife consist mainly in cultivating the homestead, preparing the daily meals, painting her husband’s body and dressing his hair. Children require very little care in this genial climate, being carried about in a band or scarf till old enough to walk, and then left to run about with very little clothing on.

They are lovers of music, as are their neighbors, especially the Bongo people, who possess a variety of quaint instruments capable of producing fairly tuneful concerts. Their language is an up-shoot of the great root which is the original of every native tongue in Africa north of the Equator. They always consult auguries before going to war. In grief for the dead they shave their heads. A corpse is adorned for burial in dyed skins and feathers. They bury the dead with scrupulous regard to the points of the compass, the men facing the east and the women the west.

Stanley now steamed back to the Congo, and once more breasted its yellow flood. He was now in the true heart of Africa, 1,266 miles from the sea and 921 from Leopoldville, and upon a majestic flood capable of carrying a dozen rivers like the Aruwimi. It was a region of deep, impenetrable forests, fertile soil, and few villages, for the fierce Bahunga seemed to have terrorized and devastated all the shores. The river abounds in large, fertile islands, the homes of fishermen and stalwart canoemen, who carry their products to clearings on the shores, and there exchange them for the inland products. This makes the shore clearings kind of market-places – sometimes peopled and sometimes deserted.

In the distance a fleet of canoes is sighted, bearing down on the steamers. Are they the hostile Bahunga? The En Avant is sent forward on a reconnoissance, and soon makes out the fleet to consist of a thousand canoes, extending a mile and a half in length. Five men to a canoe gave a force of 5,000 men, an army of sufficient size to overwhelm a hundred such tiny steamers as composed the Stanley flotilla. A storm arose, accompanied by vivid lightning and heavy thunder shocks. The elements cleared the river of all fragile barks and left the steamers to their course.

The old town of Mawembé came into view. It was not such as Stanley had mapped it, but a burned and nearly deserted spot. The Arab slave merchant had evidently penetrated thus far, and these ashes were the marks of his cruelty. Another town, higher up, and entirely in ashes, proved the sad conjecture to be true, for before it sat at least 200 woe-begone natives, too abject in their desolation to even affect curiosity at the approaching steamers. On being hailed, they told the pitiful tale of how a strange people, like those in the steamers, and wearing white clothes, had come upon them in the night, slaughtered their people, and carried off their women and children. The fleet of canoes, seen among the islands below, contained their own people, gathered for protection, forced to live on the islands in the day-time and to go ashore at night for food. All this had happened but eight days before, and the marauders had retreated up the river in the direction of Stanley Falls.

A few miles above, the charred stakes, upright canoes, poles of huts, scorched banana groves and prostrate palms indicated the ruins of the site of Yavunga, the twelfth devastated town and eighth community passed since leaving the mouth of the Aruwimi. Opposite Yavunga were the Yaporo, a populous tribe, but now stricken by fire, sword and famine as were their brothers. These had charged on Stanley six years before, but they were now in no mood to dispute his way.

Floating by is an object which attracts attention. A boat-hook is thrown over, and to it clings the forms of two women bound together by a cord. The ghastly objects are raised, and a brief inspection shows that they could not have been drowned more than twelve hours before. The steamers push on, round a point, and in the distance appear white objects. A glass is brought to bear, and they prove to be the tents of the Arab thieves. They are from Nyangwé, above the Falls, the capital of Tippoo Tib’s empire, unholy conquest from the Manyuema people, founded in flame, murder and kidnapping. The camp was palisaded and the banks were lined with canoes, evidence that the marauders had managed somehow to pass the Falls in force. The first impulse of Stanley was to attempt a rescue and wreak a deserved vengeance on these miscreants. But on second thought, his was a mission of peace, and he was without authority to administer justice. He represented no constituted government, but was on a mission to found a government. To play the rolé of judge or executioner in such an emergency might be to defeat all his plans and forever leave these wretches without a strong arm to cling to in time of future need. Had he come upon an actual scene of strife and burning, it would have been his to aid the weaker party, but now the law of might must have its way, till a sturdier justice than was at his disposal could come to tread in majesty along those dark forest aisles.

And now what a meeting and greeting there was! The steamers signalled the arrival of strangers. A canoe put out from the shore and hailed in the language of the Eastern coast. Both sides understood that the meeting was one of peace. The steamers made for shore below the tents, and a night encampment was formed. Soon Stanley’s Zanzibaris were shaking hands with the Manyuema slaves of Abed bin Salim, who constituted the band that had been ravaging the country to obtain slaves and ivory. They had been out for sixteen months, and for eleven months had been raiding the Congo. The extent of country they had plundered was larger than Ireland, and contained a population of 1,000,000 souls. They numbered 300 men, armed with shot-guns and rifles, and their retinue of domestic slaves and women doubled their force. Their camp, even then, was on the ruins of the town of Yangambi, which had fallen before their torches, and many of whose people were prisoners on the spot where they were born.

Stanley took a view of the stockade in which they had confined their human booty. This is the horrible story as he writes it:

“The first general impressions are that the camp is much too densely peopled for comfort. There are rows upon rows of dark nakedness, relieved here and there by the white dresses of the captors. There are lines or groups of naked forms upright, standing or moving about listlessly; naked bodies are stretched under the sheds in all positions; naked legs innumerable are seen in the perspective of prostrate sleepers; there are countless naked children, many were infants, forms of boyhood and girlhood, and occasionally a drove of absolutely naked old women, bending under a basket of fuel, or cassava tubers, or bananas, who are driven through the moving groups by two or three musketeers. In paying more attention to details, I observe that mostly all are fettered; youths with iron rings around their necks, through which a chain like one of our boat-anchor chains is rove, securing the captives by twenties. The children over ten are secured by three copper rings, each ringed leg brought together by the central ring, which accounts for the apparent listlessness of movement I observed on first coming in presence of the curious scene. The mothers are secured by shorter chains, around whom their respective progeny of infants are grouped, hiding the cruel iron links that fall in loops or festoons over mamma’s breasts. There is not one adult man-captive amongst them.

“Besides the shaded ground strewn over so thickly by the prostrate and upright bodies of captives, the relics of the many raids lie scattered or heaped up in profusion everywhere, and there is scarcely a square foot of ground not littered with something, such as drums, spears, swords, assegais, arrows, bows, knives, iron ware of native make of every pattern, paddles innumerable, scoops and balers, wooden troughs, ivory horns, whistles, buffalo and antelope horns, ivory pestles, wooden idols, beads of wood, berries, scraps of fetishism, sorcerers’ wardrobes, gourds of all sizes, nets, from the lengthy seine to the small hand-net; baskets, hampers, shields as large as doors (of wood or of plaited rattan), crockery, large pots to hold eight gallons, down to the child’s basin; wooden mugs, basins, and mallets; grass cloth in shreds, tatters and pieces; broken canoes, and others half-excavated; native adzes, hatchets, hammers, iron rods, etc., etc. All these littering the ground, or in stacks and heaps, with piles of banana and cassava peelings, flour of cassava, and sliced tubers drying, make up a number of untidy pictures and details, through all of which, however, prominently gleam the eyes of the captives in a state of utter and supreme wretchedness.

“Little perhaps as my face betrayed my feelings, other pictures would crowd upon the imagination; and after realizing the extent and depth of the misery presented to me, I walked about as in a kind of dream, wherein I saw through the darkness of the night the stealthy forms of the murderers creeping towards the doomed town, its inmates all asleep, and no sounds issuing from the gloom but the drowsy hum of chirping cicadas or distant frogs – when suddenly flash the light of brandished torches; the sleeping town is involved in flames, while volleys of musketry lay low the frightened and astonished people, sending many through a short minute of agony to that soundless sleep from which there will be no waking. I wished to be alone somewhere where I could reflect upon the doom which has overtaken Bandu, Yomburri, Yangambi, Yaporo, Yakusu, Ukanga, Yakonda, Ituka, Yaryembi, Yaruche, populous Isangi, and probably thirty scores of other villages and towns.

“The slave-traders admit they have only 2,300 captives in this fold, yet they have raided through the length and breadth of a country larger than Ireland, bearing fire and spreading carnage with lead and iron. Both banks of the river show that 118 villages and 43 districts have been devastated, out of which is only educed this scant profit of 2,300 females and children, and about 2,000 tusks of ivory! The spears, swords, bows, and the quivers of arrows show that many adults have fallen. Given that these 118 villages were peopled only by 1,000 each, we have only a profit of two per cent.; and by the time all these captives have been subjected to the accidents of the river voyage to Kirundu and Nyangwé, of camp-life and its harsh miseries, to the havoc of small-pox and the pests which miseries breed, there will only remain a scant one per cent. upon the bloody venture.

“They tell me, however, that the convoys already arrived at Nyangwé with slaves captured in the interior have been as great as their present band. Five expeditions have come and gone with their booty of ivory and slaves, and these five expeditions have now completely weeded the large territory described above. If each expedition has been as successful as this, the slave-traders have been enabled to send 5,000 women and children safe to Nyangwé, Kirundu and Vibondo, above the Stanley Falls. Thus 5,000 out of an assumed million will be at the rate of a half per cent., or five slaves out of 1,000 people.

“This is poor profit out of such large waste of life, for originally we assume the slaves to have mustered about 10,000 in number. To obtain the 2,300 slaves out of the 118 villages they must have shot a round number of 2,500 people, while 1,300 more died by the wayside, through scant provisions and the intensity of their hopeless wretchedness. How many are wounded and die in the forest or droop to death through an overwhelming sense of their calamities, we do not know; but if the above figures are trustworthy, then the outcome from the territory with its million of souls is 5,000 slaves obtained at the cruel expense of 33,000 lives! And such slaves! They are females, or, young children who cannot run away, or who with youthful indifference, will soon forget the terrors of their capture! Yet each of the very smallest infants has cost the life of a father and perhaps his three stout brothers and three grown-up daughters. An entire family of six souls would have been done to death to obtain that small, feeble, useless child!

“These are my thoughts as I look upon the horrible scene. Every second during which I regard them the clink of fetters and chains strikes upon my ears. My eyes catch sight of that continual lifting of the hand to ease the neck in the collar, or as it displays a manacle exposed through a muscle being irritated by its weight or want of fitness. My nerves are offended with the rancid effluvium of the unwashed herds within this human kennel. The smell of other abominations annoys me in that vitiated atmosphere. For how could poor people, bound and riveted together by twenties, do otherwise than wallow in filth? Only the old women are taken out to forage. They dig out the cassava tuber, and search for the banana, while the guard, with musket ready, keenly watches for the coming of the vengeful native. Not much food can be procured in this manner, and what is obtained is flung down in a heap before each gang, to at once cause an unseemly scramble. Many of these poor things have been already months fettered in this manner, and their bones stand out in bold relief in the attenuated skin, which hangs down in thin wrinkles and puckers. And yet who can withstand the feeling of pity so powerfully pleaded for by those large eyes and sunken cheeks?

“What was the cause of all this vast sacrifice of human life – of all this unspeakable misery? Nothing but the indulgence of an old Arab’s ‘wolfish, bloody, starved and ravenous instincts.’ He wished to obtain slaves to barter away to other Arabs, and having weapons – guns and gunpowder – enough, he placed them in the hands of three hundred slaves, and despatched them to commit murder wholesale, just as an English nobleman would put guns in the hands of his guests and permit them to slaughter the game upon his estate. If we calculate three quarts of blood to each person who fell during the campaign of murder, we find that this one Arab caused to be shed 2,850 gallons of human blood, sufficient to fill a tank measurement of 460 cubic feet, quite large enough to have drowned him and all his kin!”

Nyangwé, above mentioned, is an important market-town on the Congo, some distance above Stanley Falls, and the capital of the undefined possessions of which Tippoo Tib holds sway. Livingstone says he has seen fully 3,000 people at the Nyanwe market of a clear day, anxious to dispose of their fish, fruits, vegetables and fowls. Many of them had walked twenty-five miles, bearing their baskets, heavily laden with produce, and some had come even further in canoes. On one occasion a riot broke out, instigated either by jealousy among the surrounding tribes or by the Arab slave-dealers for the purpose of making captures. Three burly fellows began to fire their guns into the throng of women, who hastily abandoned their wares and dashed for the canoes. The panic was so great that the canoes could not be manned and pushed into the river. The frantic women, fired into continually from the rear, leaped and scrambled over the boats and jumped wildly into the river, preferring the chances of a long swim to an island rather than inevitable destruction on the shore. Many of the wounded wretches threw up their hands in despair ere they reached mid-stream, and sank to rise no more. Rescuing canoes put out into the water, and many were thus saved; but one poor woman refused to be rescued, saying she would take her chances of life in the water rather than return to be sold as a slave. The Arabs estimate the slaughter that day at 400 souls.

Stanley now fully understood the meaning of all he had heard below of the terrible visitations of these banditti – of the merciless character of the Bahunga, which name they had misunderstood, and of the desire of the dwellers on the lower waters that he should ascend the Congo, thereby hoping that all the whites would destroy one another in the clash which seemed inevitable. After an exchange of gifts with these cut-throats and the loan of an interpreter to speak with the people at the Falls, the steamers departed from a scene which nature had made beautiful, but which the hand of man had stained with crime and blood. The Congo here has bluffy, picturesque shores on the one side, and on the other lowlands adapted for sugar-cane, cotton, rice and maize.

Some critics of Stanley have expressed wonder at his failure to assert his usual heroism when made to witness these Arab barbarities while ascending the Congo. They think he should have attacked and driven off these thieves and murderers, no matter what the result might have been to himself and his enterprise. The same, or a similar class of critics, think that when he was making his last journey up the Congo and the Aruwimi in search of Emin Pasha, he showed entirely too much consideration for the Arab marauders, and especially for that cunning and depraved official, Tippoo Tib, whom he recognized as governor at Nyangwé.

Despite what are regarded by some impulsive people as the higher claims of humanitarianism, we are perfectly willing to trust to Mr. Stanley’s sense of right as modified by the exigencies of a situation about which no one else can know as much as himself. That situation was altogether new and peculiar on both his ascents of the Congo in behalf of the Congo Free State, and in search of Emin Pasha. In the first instance he bore a commission from a higher power, the International Commission, whose agent he was. He had instructions to do certain things and to leave others undone. To provoke hostilities with those he met, to quarrel and fight, except in self-preservation, were not only things foreign to his mission, as being sure to defeat it, but were expressly forbidden to him. Conquest was no part of the new policy of the Congo Free State, but its foundation was peace and free concession by all the tribes within its boundaries. Time will vindicate his leniency in the midst of such scenes as he was forced to witness at the mouth of the Aruwimi and on the Congo above, during his first ascent of the river.

And the same will prove true of his second ascent. To be sure, he was on a different mission and had greater freedom of action, but he knew well, from former experience, the character of the peoples upon the two great rivers near their jurisdiction. And if any events ever proved the wisdom of the steps which a man took, those surely did which clustered about and composed the eventful, if melancholy, history of Stanley’s “Rear Guard” on the Aruwimi. Several correspondents, some of whom accompanied Stanley on his two up-river journeys, and others who have been over the ground, have written fully of the Aruwimi situation, and their views are valuable, though space forbids more than a condensation of them here.

A fatal river, say they all, was the Aruwimi for Stanley. It was so in 1877. 1883 served to recall regretful memories of his canoe descent, and introduced him to sadder scenes than he had ever occasioned or witnessed. The details of the deserted and blackened camp of his “Rear Guard” on the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition will prove to be more tragic than any which went before. It was close to the confluence of the Aruwimi with the Congo, as narrated elsewhere in this volume, that Stanly was compelled, in 1877, to storm a native village; and, as we have just seen, when he passed the spot again in 1883, what wonder that the dusky warriors reassembled to receive him! Round the bend “where the great affluent gaped into view,” the river was thronged with war-canoes, and on the banks stood the villages of Basongo and Mokulu, where Stanley’s ancient foes resided. In fantastic array appeared long lines of fully armed warriors – a land force supporting the fighting men afloat. How, aided by a picturesque and showy interpreter, with a voice as powerful as his eloquence, Stanley, on this latter occasion, appeased their warlike ardor and made them friends, has just been told in these pages.

The reader will understand, however, from the number of the force against him and the ferocious character of the tribes, why Stanley was so careful when forming his latest camp on the Aruwimi, to have it well stockaded and efficiently sentinelled. The local natives had not only the incentive of their previous defeat by Stanley to keep their hostility alive, but they had had meanwhile some bitter experiences of the Arab raider. They are splendid races of men, the tribes of the Mokulu and the Basoko, picturesque in their yellow war-paint, their barbaric shields and decorative headdresses. They are skilled workmen. Their paddles are beautifully carved, their spears and knives artistic and of dexterous shapeliness. They have also broadswords, and in a general way their weapons are of wonderful temper and sharpness. Now and then the Arab raiders find their work of massacre and plunder a hot business among such natives as these; but the advantage of the rifle is, of course, tremendous, and can only have one result. The Arabs do not, however, always have it entirely their own way. They leave both dead and wounded sometimes in the hands of the enemy, who frequently condemn both to the pot, and make merry, no doubt, over their grilled remains.

Among the many hardships of the Aruwimi camp, established by Stanley for his “Rear Guard,” on his latest upward trip, and left under Major Barttelot, was the uncontrollable character of the Manyema carriers and escort. These people have for many years been the slave-hunting allies of the Arabs – their jackals, their cheetahs; and the Stanley camp had actually to be spectators of the attack and raiding of a native village, opposite their own quarters, on the other side of the river. It was towards night when the onslaught began. The sudden sound of the warlike drums of the surprised natives came booming across the water, followed by the fierce rattle of the Arab musketry. Dark figures and light were soon mixed together in the fray. The natives fought bravely – but they fell rapidly before the rifle. Pelted with the deadly hail of shot, they were soon vanquished. Then from hut to hut the flames of ruin began to spread, and in the lurid light women and children were marched forth to the slave-hunter’s stockade – some to be ransomed next day by the remainder of the ivory the natives had successfully hidden; others probably to be passed on from hand to hand until they eventually reached a slave-dealing market. And all this the officers and comrades of Mr. Stanley had the humiliation to witness without daring to interfere – not from any fear of losing their lives in the defence of the weaker – a death which has been courted by thousands of brave men on land and sea – but for reasons of policy. They were not there to protect the natives of the Aruwimi from Arab raiders, but to follow Mr. Stanley with the stores necessary for the success of his expedition. Nor is it likely that the force under Major Barttelot would have obeyed him if he had desired to intervene. Mr. Stanley himself more than once in his African experience has had to shut his eyes to Arab aggression and cruelty, although his influence with Tippoo Tib has no doubt paved the way for the realization of his humane ambition in the matter of slavery. From their stockade and on board their launch at Yambuya, Barttelot and his comrades could see the woefully unequal warfare on the raided village, and there is no need of the assurance that their hearts beat high with indignation and a desire to take a hand in it. Moreover, these lawless brutalities practiced upon the natives made the difficulties of the camp all the greater, not only affecting the dangers of the advance, but increasing the perils of the way to the Falls, as was experienced by Ward on his travels to and fro – his “aimless journeys” Mr. Stanley has called them, but undertaken nevertheless by order of Ward’s superior officer, Major Barttelot.

Whether or not the Arabs of the camp or the Manyuemas had a share in the tragedy on the other side of the river is a question perhaps of no serious moment; but confessions were made to Ward which rather tend to show that the Arabs, while waiting for the expected advance, fulfilled other engagements on the river. “I went to Selim’s camp to-day,” writes Mr. Ward in one of his private letters, “and they told me that two more of their men (Arabs) had been caught and eaten by the natives whose village they had raided and burnt some weeks ago.” The same correspondent again writes: “This morning some of the raiders came down from up-river with news of the defeat of ten of their number, cut to pieces by the natives, who sought refuge in their canoes above the rapids.” Selim and his men started off in pursuit, and returned at night lamenting that they had killed only two of the natives. On the next day he told Ward that where his men had fallen he found their fingers tied in strings to the scrub of the river-bank, and some cooking-pots containing portions of their bones. What a weary time it was waiting, and with only this kind of incident to ruffle the monotony of it – waiting for the promised carriers that did not come – waiting for news of Stanley that only came in suggestions of disaster! It is hardly a matter of surprise that the camp began to fear the worst. Their own experiences of the broken word of Tippoo Tib and the utter unreliability and ferocity of a portion of their force might well give a pessimistic tone to their contemplation of the awful possibilities of Stanley’s march. Every omen of the Aruwimi was unfavorable to success; and they must have been terribly impressed by such a scene as that which cast its murderous light upon the river not long previously to the forward march, with the assassination of the commander and the eventual dispersion of the rear-guard.

The above refers to Stanley’s Emin Pasha expedition, details of which are given further on. But it is introduced here as showing what he had to contend with every time he struck the confluence of the two great rivers, and how difficult it was for him to pursue any other policy than he did, as it is a bewildering spot in nature, and in its human forces, so it is in its diplomancy.

One of the writers above mentioned goes on to discuss the question of cannibalism whose existence on the Upper Congo, and in other parts of Africa, has been asserted by correspondents. He says his own description of these practices on the Aruwimi and the Congo are in no way connected with the reports which are criticised in Mr. Stanley’s letter from Msalala, on Lake Victoria, in August 1889. Mr. Ward in none of his letters has ever mentioned or suggested that the Manyuemas were cannibals, or in any way justified the extraordinary statement of the Rev. William Brooke in the Times to the effect that it was common in the Manyuema camp to see “human hands and feet sticking out of cooking-pots.” This is evidently a canard. Perhaps it would be well for Mr. Brooke to give his authorities, since Mr. Stanley asks who they are that have seen these extraordinary sights. The Manyuemas are a fierce race; but, personally, Mr. Stanley has found them loyal and true to his service, and they are not cannibals, so far as I can learn. The instances of cannibalism mentioned in letters from the Aruwimi camp refer to the natives of the district outside the camp, and against whom the camp was fortified. But if Mr. Brooke has been misled, so also has Mr. Stanley in regard to the report he seems to have found in his bundles of newspaper cuttings to the effect that an execution of a woman was delayed by Jameson or Barttelot in order that a photographer might make ready his apparatus for taking a negative of the incident. This gruesome anecdote does not belong to Africa at all; it comes from a different part of the world altogether; was discussed in Parliament as an allegation made against an English Consul; and turned out to be either untrue or a gross exaggeration. When Mr. Stanley has learnt all that was said and conjectured about his doings in the long intervals of the silence and mystery that enshrouded him he will find less and less material for serious criticism in the other packets of press extracts he may yet have to unfold: but he need hardly be told that those who knew him and those who have trusted him would not, whatever happened, be led into thinking for a moment that he would break his promise or neglect his duty.

Stanley’s upward bound steamers now pass several devastated districts which in 1877 were peopled by ferocious beings ready with their canoes to sweep down upon his descending flotilla. At length the island tribe of the Wenya is reached. These are expert fishermen, and had been left unharmed by the Arabs, – and for policy sake too, since their acquaintance with Stanley Falls had been turned to practical account. Their knowledge of the intricate channels had enabled them to pilot the Arab canoes down over the obstructions and return them in the same way, the owners making the portage afoot.

Here the steamers were at the foot of Stanley Falls. These Falls consist of seven distinct cataracts extending over a distance of fifty-six miles. The lower or seventh cataract is simply a rough interruption to navigation for a distance of two miles. Above this is a navigable stretch of twenty-six miles, when the sixth cataract is reached. This, on the left side, is an impassable fall, but on the right is a succession of rapids. From the sixth to the fifth cataract is a twenty-two mile stretch of navigable water. The fifth, fourth, third, second and first cataracts come in quick succession, and within a space of nine miles. They appear to be impassable, but the fact that the natives manage to pass the Arab canoes up and down them proves that there are channels which are open to light craft when dexterously handled.

The width of the Congo at the seventh cataract is 1330 yards, divided into several broken channels by islands and rocks. The inhabitants of the islands above and below are skillful fishermen belonging to two or three different tribes. They obstruct even the swiftest channels with poles from which are appended nets for catching fish and these are visited daily in their canoes, over waters of clashing swiftness and ever threatening peril. Portions of their catch they use for food, the rest is converted into smoked food with which they buy women and children slaves, canoes and weapons. They are impregnably situated as to enemies. Their villages are scenes of industry. Long lines of fish-curers may be seen spreading fish on the platforms; old men weave nets and sieves; able-bodied men are basket makers and implement makers of various fantastic designs; the women prepare meal and bread, etc., or make crockery; the watermen are skillful canoe builders.

This was the spot upon which Stanley desired to erect a trading station and these were the people with whom he was to negotiate for a possession. He had no fears of the result, for it was evident that the Arabs and the half-castes of Nyangwe, beyond, would find advantage in a station at which they could obtain cloth, guns, knives and all articles of European manufacture at a much cheaper rate than from the Eastern coast. A palaver was opened with the assembled chiefs, in which Stanley was formally received and stated his object. Receptions by African chiefs are always very formal. Altogether, they are not uninteresting. Livingstone mentions one with King Chitapangwa, in which he was ushered into an enormous hut where the dignitary sat before three drummers and ten more men with rattles in their hands. The drummers beat fearfully on their drums, and the rattlers kept time, two of them advancing and retreating in a stooping posture, with their rattles near the ground, as if doing the chief obeisance, but still keeping time with the others. After a debate of three days duration the chiefs came to terms and ceded sovereignty over the islands and adjacent shores, with the right to build and trade. The large island of Wané Rusari was selected as the site of the station and a clearing was made for building. The question of a supply of vegetable food was settled by Siwa-Siwa, an inland chief, who promised to make the garrison his children and guaranteed them plenty of garden products. Binnie, engineer of the Royal, a plucky little Scotchman of diminutive stature, was appointed chief of the new Stanley Falls Station, and left in full authority. The boat’s crews cleared four acres of ground for him, and furnished him with axes, hoes, hammers, nails, flour, meats, coffee, tea, sugar, cloths, rods, beads, mugs, pans, and all the etceteras of a mid-African equipment. He was given thirty one armed men and plenty of ammunition. Then with full instructions as to his duty he was left to the care of Providence.

On December 10th the steamers began their return journey, having reached the full geographic limit marked out by the Brussels Committee. The return was to be signalized by obtaining the protectorship of the districts intervening between the stations thus far established on the Congo, so that the authority of the new State should be unbroken from Vivi to Stanley Falls. But this work, on second thought, could well be left to others with more time at their disposal than had Stanley. Therefore the steamers, taking advantage of the current, and bearing ten selected men of the native tribes about Stanley Falls, each in possession of three ivory tusks, made a speedy downward trip.

Tribe after tribe was passed, some of which had not been seen on the ascent, because the steamers were constantly seeking out new channels. Whenever it was deemed politic, stops were made and treaties entered into. All on board suffered much from the river breezes, heightened by the velocity of the steamers. These breezes checked perspiration too suddenly, and some severe prostrations occurred. By Christmas the flotilla was back to Iboko, where thieving was so rampant as to necessitate the seizure of one of the offenders and his imprisonment in a steamer. The chief, Kokoro, came alongside in a canoe to commend Stanley for ridding the tribe of a fellow who could bring such disgrace upon it; and he was really very earnest in his morality till he looked in upon the prisoner and found it was his son. Then there was lamentation and offers to buy the boy back. Stanley’s terms were a restitution of the stolen articles, and these not being met, he sailed away with the offender, promising to return in ten days to insist upon his conditions.

The populous districts of Usimbi and Ubengo were passed. At Ukumiri the whole population came out to greet the steamers, as it did at Bungata and Uranga. As many of these places had not been visited on the upward journey, it was manifest that word of the treaties and the impression made were being gradually and favorably disseminated by the canoe-traders. Equator Station was found in a flourishing condition. It was January 1st, 1884, when the steamers began an upward journey again to Iboko, in order to keep faith with Kokoro by returning his son. The old chief, Mata Bwyki, was indignant at the seizure of one of his subjects, but seeing that Stanley had returned and was acquainted with the tribal custom that a thief could be held till the stolen goods were restored, he fell in with his idea of justice, and went so far as to insist on a return of the stolen articles, or else the imprisonment which Stanley had inflicted. This attitude resulted in a restoration of the property and the temporary shame of the culprits.

Again the steamers arrived at Equator Station, where the commandant had a harrowing tale to tell of how the neighboring Bakuti had lost their chief and had come to the station to buy the soldier laborers to the extent of fifty, thinking they were slaves, in order that they might sacrifice them over the dead chieftain’s grave. It is needless to say that they were driven out of the station and given to understand that rites so horrid were not sanctioned by civilized people. But they succeeded in getting fourteen slaves elsewhere, and had them ready for execution on the day of burial. Some of the garrison went out to witness the cruel rite. They found the doomed men kneeling, with their arms bound behind them. Near by was a tree with a rope dangling from it. One of the captives was selected, and the rope was fastened round his neck. The tree, which had been bent down by the weight of several men, was permitted to assume its natural position, and in doing so it carried the victim off his feet. The executioner approached with a short, sharp falchion, and striking at the neck, severed the head from the body. The remaining captives were dispatched in similar manner. Their heads were boiled and the skin was taken off, in order that the skulls might ornament the poles around the grave. The soil saturated with their blood was buried with the dead chief, and the bodies were thrown into the Congo. Revolting as it all was, there was no preventive except the rifles, and they would have meant war.

On January 13th the steamers left Equator Station and soon arrived at Usindi, where the guide, Yumbila, was paid and dismissed. The next day Lukolela was reached, where some progress at station building had gone on, and a healthy condition prevailed. Bolobo was the next station but arrival there revealed only a wreck. It had been burned a second time, with all the guns, and a terrific explosion of the ammunition. The firing was due to the freak of a man delirious with fever, who imagined that a conflagration would provide him with a burial-scene far more honorable than the butchery of slaves indulged in by native African potentates. Stanley had his suspicions of the story, and could with difficulty believe that the destruction was not due to some sinister influences which pervaded the Bolobo atmosphere.

By January 20th the flotilla was back at Kinshassa, in Stanley Pool, where much progress had been made. In two hours they were at Leopoldville, after an absence of 146 days and a sail of 3,050 miles. Here everything was flourishing. The houses stood in comfortable rows, and the gardens were bringing forth vegetables in abundance. The natives were peaceable and ready to trade, the magazines were full, and as a depot it was adequate for the supply of all the up-river stations. Not so, however, with the down river stations. They were confused and required attention. Stanley therefore prepared a caravan for Vivi. Good-byes were given to the friends at Leopoldville, and the huge caravan started on its long journey over hills and prairie stretches, through dales and across streams, skirting forests here and piercing them there, past happy, peaceful villages, too far from the Congo to be annoyed by its ravines. The promising uplands of Ngombe are passed, ruled by Luteté, he who in 1882 requested the gift of a white man that he might have the pleasure of cutting his throat! But Luteté has been transformed from a ferocious chief into quite a decent citizen. Ngombe Station is a peaceable one, and Luteté furnishes the servants and carriers for it, besides sending his children to the Baptist school. The caravan then passes the Bokongo and Iyenzi people, noted for their good behaviour. All the land is fertile and the valleys exceedingly rich. Manyanga is reached. The station has not advanced, but is confused and ruinous, though probably a cool $100,000 has been expended upon it by the Association of the Congo.

Again the caravan takes up its march through the Ndunga people and thence down into the broad valley of the Lukunga, where Stanley is hospitably received by Mr. and Mrs. Ingham of the Livingstone Mission, at their pretty little cottage and school, surrounded by a spacious and well tended garden. Westward of the Lukunga are plateau lands, like the American prairies, covered with tall grass, and capable of raising the richest crops of wheat and corn. The plateaus passed, a descent is made into the valley of the Kwilu, and then into those of the Luima and Lunionzo, where the Station of Banza Manteka is reached, close by which is a Livingstone Mission house. The prospect from the hilltops here is a grand, embracing sight of nearly a dozen native villages whose dwellers are devoted to the cultivation of ground-nuts.

In six hours the caravan is at Isangila, sight of which station filled Stanley with grief, so backward had improvement been. Hundreds of bales of stock were rotting there through neglect of the commandant to keep the thatched roofs of the houses in repair. The country now becomes broken and rugged, and the way obstructed with large boulders. All nature here is a counterpart of that rough tumultuous channel where thunders the Congo in its last furious charges to the sea. It is now five miles to Vivi. The height is 1700 feet above the sea. The air is cool and delicious. The natives are peaceful and industrious. There is an English mission on those highlands, in the midst of peace and plenty.

Once at Vivi, Stanley is again grieved, for the commandants had done nothing to make it either ornamental or useful. All is barren, like the surrounding hills. Not a road had been cut, not a cottage thatched. The gardens were in waste, the fences broken. The twenty-five whites there were lazily indifferent to their surroundings, and without any energy or vivacity except that inspired by European wine. The native sick list was fearfully large and there was a general demand for medicines, till Stanley made an inspection and found that they were only feigning sickness as an excuse for idleness. Shocked at all this Stanley resolved to move the station up and away to the larger plateau. He did so, and left it with a reorganized staff and force, writing home, meanwhile, an account of his work. The old and new Vivi stations were connected by a railroad, and by June 1884, the new station had five comfortable houses, surrounded by a freshly planted banana orchard.

On June 6th Stanley left Vivi for Boma, and took passage on the British and African steamer Kinsembo, on the 10th, for an inspection of the West African coast. The steamer stopped at Landana, a factory town, with a French mission peeping out of a banana grove on an elevation. It next touched at Black Point to take on produce, and then at Loango and Mayumbo. It then entered the Gaboon country, and stopped off at the town of that name, which is the seat of government of the French colony. At Gaboon are several brick buildings, stores, hotels, a Catholic and American Protestant mission, ten factories and a stone pier. It is a neat place, and almost picturesque with its hill-dotted houses and tropical vegetation.

The steamer then passed the Spanish town of Elobey, on an island of that name, off the mouth of the Muni river. Rounding Cape St. Juan, it next touched at the celebrated island of Fernando-Po, whose centre is a peak 10,000 feet high. The country of the Cammaroons now begins – a people even more degraded than those of the Congo. Skirting this country, Duke Town, or old Calabar, was reached on June 21st. This is the “Oil river” region of Africa and 300 barrels of palm-oil awaited the Kinsembo. Stanley took a trip inland to Creek Town, where is a Scottish mission. He was struck with the similarity of what he saw to scenes on the Congo – the same palms, density of forest, green verdure, reddish loam, hut architecture. Only one thing differed, and that was that the residences of the native chiefs were of European manufacture. Palm-oil has brought them luxurious homes, modernly furnished. The ivory, oil, rubber, gum, camwood powder, orchilla, beeswax, grains and spices would do the same for Congo at no distant day.

The steamer next anchored in Bonny river, off the town of Bonny, where there is a well-to-do white population and an equally well-to-do native population, with many factories and a large traffic. These people seem to have solved the difficult problem of African climate, and to have dissipated much of the fear which clung to a residence on and about the rivers which find their way to the sea in the Bight of Benin. Passing New Calabar, anchor is cast off the Benin river, in a roadstead where clustered ships from all the principal ports of Europe. The Kinsembo is now fully loaded and makes for Quettah and then Sierra Leone. Thence sail was set for London. Stanley got off at Plymouth on July 29th, 1884, and four days later presented a report of his expedition and his mission to the king of Belgium at Ostend.

Some part of the work of founding the Congo Free State had now been done. Stanley and his expedition had been instrumental in clearing ground, leveling sites, reducing approaches, laying foundations and building walls. The Bureau of the Association had contributed means and supplied tools and mortar. But windows were now to be placed and roofs put on. Then the fabric must be furnished and equipped within. The finishing work could only be done through the agency of its royal founder. He took it up where Stanley laid it down, and applied to the Governments of Europe and America for recognition of what had been done, and for a guarantee of such limits as were foreshadowed by the new State. The border lands were those of France and Portugal. Treaties, fixing boundaries, were made with these countries. Precedents were formed in the case of the Puritan Fathers, the New Hampshire Colonists, the British East India Company, the Liberian Republic, the Colonists of Borneo, establishing the right of individuals to build States upon cessions of territory and surrenders of sovereignty by chiefs and rulers who hold as original owners.

Stanley’s present to the Association was a series of treaties duly ratified by 450 independent African chiefs, who held land by undisturbed possession, ancient usage and divine right. They had not been intimidated or coerced, but of their own free will and for valuable considerations had transferred their sovereignty and ownership to the Association. The time had now come for cementing these grants and cohering these sovereignties, so that they should stand forth as a grand entirety and prove worthy of the name of solid empire.

And just here occurs one of the most interesting chapters in the founding of the Congo Free State. As it was to the Welsh-American Stanley, that the initial work of the grand enterprise was due, so it was to his country, the United States of America, that that work was preserved and its results turned to the account of the world. England, with her usual disregard of international sentiment, and in that spirit which implies that her ipse dixit is all there is of importance in diplomacy, had made a treaty with Portugal, signed February 26th, 1884, recognizing the mouth of the Congo as Portuguese territory, and this in the face of the fact that the mouth of that great river had been regarded as neutral territory, and of the further fact that for half a century England herself had peremptorily refused to recognize Portuguese claims to it.

This action on the part of England awakened emphatic protest on the part of France and Germany, and commercial men in England denounced it through fear that Portuguese restrictions on trade would destroy Congo commerce entirely. It remained for the United States to speak. Her Minister to Belgium, General H. S. Sanford, had all along been a faithful coadjutor of the Committee of the International Association, and he began to call attention to the danger of the step just taken by England. He also reminded the American people that to their philanthropy was due the Free States of Liberia, founded at a cost of $2,500,000, and to which 20,00 °Colored Americans had been sent. He also reminded them that one of their citizens had rescued Livingstone and thereby called the attention of the world to the Congo basin and Central African enterprise. By means of these and other arguments he induced on Congress to examine thoroughly the subject of the Congo Free State and Anglo-Portuguese treaty.

The Committee on Foreign relations reported to the Senate as follows: —

“It can scarcely be denied that the native chiefs have the right to make the treaties they have made with Stanley, acting as the representative of the International Association. The able and exhaustive statements of Sir Travis Twiss, the eminent English jurist, and of Prof. Arntz, the no less distinguished Belgian publicist, leave no doubt upon the question of the legal capacity of the African International Association, in view of the law of nations, to accept any powers belonging to these native chiefs and governments, which they may choose to delegate or cede to them.

“The practical question to which they give an affirmative answer, for reasons which appear to be indisputable, is this: Can independent chiefs of several tribes cede to private citizens the whole or part of their State, with the sovereign rights which pertain to them, conformably to the traditional customs of the country?

“The doctrine advanced in this proposition, and so well sustained by these writers, accords with that held by the Government of the United States, that the occupants of a country, at the time of its discovery by other and more powerful nations, have the right to make the treaties for its disposal, and that private persons when associated in such a country for self protection, or self government, may treat with the inhabitants for any purpose that does not violate the laws of nations.”

After a patient investigation of all the facts bearing upon the Congo question, the United States Senate passed a resolution, April 10th, 1884, authorizing the President to recognize the International African Association as a governing power on the Congo River. This recognition by the United States was a new birth for the Association, whose existence had been menaced by England’s treaty with Portugal. The European powers, whose protest had thus far been impotent, now ably seconded the position taken by this country, and the result was a re-action in English sentiment, which bade fair to secure such modification or interpretation of the Portuguese treaty as would secure to the Congo Free State the outlet of the Congo River.

A conference of the nations interested in the new State, and the trade of the Congo, was called at Berlin, November 15, 1884. The German Empire, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and Norway, Turkey and the United States, were represented. Prince Bismarck formally opened the Conference by declaring that it had met to solve three problems.

(1) The free navigation, with freedom of trade on the River Congo.

(2) The free navigation of the River Niger.

(3) The formalities to be observed for valid annexation of territory in future on the African continent.

The above propositions opened up a wide discussion. It was wonderful to see the development of sentiment respecting the power of the International Association and its territorial limits in Africa. England could not stand discussion of her rights on the Niger, and the better to protect them, or rather to withdraw them from the arena of debate, she gave full recognition to the International Association. Germany and Austria both recognized the flag of the Association. France treated with the Association respecting the boundaries of her possessions on the north. Portugal followed with a treaty by which the Association obtained the left, or south bank of the Congo from the sea to the Uango-Ango. All the other powers present recognized the Association and signed the Convention with it.

Now for the first time in history there was a Congo Free State de jure and de facto. It had legal recognition and rights, and took its place among the empires of the world. Geographically it had bounds, and these are they:

A strip of land at the mouth of the Congo, 22 miles long, extending from Banana Point to Cabo Lombo.

All of the north or right bank of the Congo as far as the Cataract of Ntombo Mataka, three miles above Manyanga Station, with back country inland as far as the Chilonga river.

All of the south bank of the Congo to the Uango-Ango rivulet.

From the said rivulet to the latitude of Nokki, thence east along that parallel to the Kwa river, thence up the Kwa to S. Lat. 6°, thence up the affluent of the Kwa, Lubilash, to the water-shed between the Congo and Zambesi, which it follows to Lake Bangweola.

From the eastern side of Bangweola the line runs north to Lake Tanganyika, and follows its western shore to the Rusizi affluent, then up this affluent to E. long. 30°, as far as the water-shed, between the Congo and Nile.

Thence westward to E. long. 17°, and along that meridian to the Likona Basin.

The Berlin conference not only created a mighty State and sanctioned its powers and boundaries, but it confirmed unto France a noble territory on the north of the Congo equal to any in Africa for vegetable production and mineral resources, having an Atlantic coast line of 800 miles, giving access to eight river basins, with 5,200 miles of navigable water, and a total area of 257,000 square miles.

It also settled the boundaries of Portugal on the Atlantic coast, giving to her possessions a frontage of 995 miles, and an area larger than France, Belgium, Holland and Great Britain combined, rich in pastoral lands, oil and rubber forests, minerals and agricultural resources, enough to give each one of her people a farm of 33 acres.

The territory embraced in the Congo Free State, and dedicated to free commerce and enterprise, is equal to 1,600,000 square miles. The same privileges were extended to within one degree of the East Coast of Africa, subject to rights of Portugal and Zanzibar. This would make a privileged commercial zone in Central Africa of 2,400,000 square miles in extent.

While there are at present but few legitimate traders within this vast area to be benefited by these liberal endowments of the Congo Free State, the wisdom of setting the territory apart and dedicating it to international uses is already apparent. The European powers are in hot chase after landed booty in Central Africa. England is flying at the throat of Portugal, is jealous of France and Germany, is snubbing Italy and is ready to rob Turkey. It is surely one of the grandest diplomatic achievements to have rescued so important and imposing a portion of a continent from the turmoil which has ever characterized, and is now manifest in European greed for landed possessions.

If the European powers had been permitted to seize all the coasts of the Continent, and the Continent itself, and to levy contributions on trade according to their respective wills, they would have forever strangled commercial development, except as suited their selfish ends. On the other hand the guarantee of the Association that its large and productive areas should be free from discrimination and oppression, would naturally tempt enterprising spirits to venture inland and win a continent from barbarism. The Courts of Law of the Association would be everywhere and always open, there would be no charges on commerce except those necessary to support the government, the liquor traffic might not be abused, a positive prohibition would rest on the slave trade, the missionary, without respect to denomination, would have special protection, scientific development would be encouraged, to all these, the powers present at the Berlin Conference gave a pledge, with these they endowed the Congo Free State.

Stanley was one of the most conspicuous figures in this memorable Conference. He was not a debater, nor even a participant in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but he was questioned and cross-questioned on every matter relating to African climatology, geography, anthropology, mineralogy, geology, zoology, and resources, and many a point of controversy turned on his information or judgment.

The International Association, which has in its keeping the Free Congo State, ratified, through its President, Col. Strauch, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, and thus made it the Constitution of the new State in Central Africa. To the terms of this constitution the new State as well as the powers represented at the Conference stand bound as against the world.

The Company of the Congo, for laying and operating a railway around the Congo cataracts, was formed under French auspices in February 1887, and by June, the first and second contingent of engineers had left for the Congo. When completed, the staff consisted of one director, twelve engineers and one surgeon. A number of Houssas, from the Gold Coast, were engaged for the mechanical work, and the whole were divided into gangs, each with its special work to do, following each other along the route. The work went on speedily, and the final observation was taken at Stanley Pool, in November, 1888.

The proposed railway is to extend from a little below Vivi (Matadi), up to which large vessels may be taken, past the long series of cataracts to Stanley Pool. The total length of the line is to be 275 miles. On leaving Matadi it bends away from the Congo to the southeast, and keeps at a distance of several miles from the river till it approaches Stanley Pool. The first sixteen miles of the route will be attended with considerable difficulties, while the remainder of the line will be laid under exceptionally easy conditions. It is in the first sixteen miles that there will be any serious rock cutting and embankments, and the expense of the construction in this part is estimated at $11,548 a mile, while those on the remainder of the line will cost much less. In addition to this, there will be the cost of erecting aqueducts, building bridges, etc., all of which, it is stated, will be much greater in the first few miles, than subsequently. On the first few miles, also, there are a few steep inclines, but for the rest of the route the inclines are reported to be insignificant. There are only three bridges of any size – across the Mkesse, the Mpozo and the Kwilu – ranging from 250 feet to 340 feet; half a dozen others from 130 feet to 190 feet; with a number very much smaller. The fact is, the engineering difficulties in the construction of the proposed railway are insignificant. One of the chief considerations will be the climate. The route is situated within the rainiest region of Africa, and unless special precautions are taken the road, especially in the first section, will be liable to be swept away. From this point of view alone it is very doubtful if a railway suitable for the region could be built, so as to last, for less than $5,000,000.

The railway will be built on the narrow gauge system. The locomotives, when loaded, will weigh thirty tons, and drag at the rate of eleven miles per hour, an average of fifty tons. Thus one train per day each way would, if fully loaded, represent a total of 36,000 tons per annum – far in excess of any traffic likely to be available for many years. The railway, if built, would tap about 7,000 miles of navigable rivers.

Evidence of the strides forward made by the Congo Free State is just now furnished by Mr. Taunt, Commercial Agent of the United States at Boma, in his report for 1889 to the Department of State. He says in substance that within the last two years the Congo Free State has made a wonderful advancement. Here is now found, where for ages has been a jungle, inhabited only by wild beasts and wilder men, a well-equipped government. It has its full corps of officials, its courts of law, post offices, custom stations, a standing army of 1,500 men, well officered and drilled, a currency of gold, silver, and copper and all the appliances of a well-ordered government.

Boma, the seat of Government of the Congo Free State, is situated upon the Congo, about ninety miles from its mouth. Here are the residences of the Governor and of the lesser officials, and here are established the Courts and the Governmental departments. The army is well distributed at different stations along the banks of the river, and does excellent service in policing the stream against the incursions of the Arabs.

The port of entry of the Congo Free State, is Banana settlement at the mouth of the Congo. Four lines of steamers, British, German, Portuguese, and French, make frequent connection between the settlements and European ports. A Dutch line also runs a steamer to the Congo in infrequent trips. Cable communication is already established between Europe and two points easily accessible from the mouth of the Congo, and telegraphic connection will doubtless, soon be made with Banana.

All these arrangements are, of course, only auxiliaries to the great trading interests already established in the region of the Congo. In this trade the merchants of Rotterdam lead, having stations established for hundreds of miles both north and south of the river. During the last two years they have penetrated even to the Upper Congo and established trading stations at Stanley Falls, a point 1,500 miles distant from the mouth of the river. This Company employs a large force of white agents, and is largely interested in the raising of coffee, tobacco, cocoa, and other products of the tropics.

Holland alone has not been allowed to occupy this rich field. French, English, Portuguese, and Belgian capitalists have seen the advantages to be derived from this occupation of a new soil, and have not been slow to seize their opportunities. The last named, especially, are making preparations for the investment of a large amount of capital in this new and productive field.

In the Congo Free State, as thus opened to the trade of the world, is supplied a market in which American manufacturers should be able successfully to compete. There is a great demand for cotton goods, canned food, cutlery, lumber, and ready-built frame houses. Manchester has already monopolized the trade in cotton goods, which, in the further extension of trading posts, is capable of almost indefinite expansion. Birmingham and Sheffield supply brass wire, beads and cutlery, and England and France now supply the demand for canned foods. It would seem that the markets of the United States should supply a portion at least of this great demand for manufactured articles. In the items of lumber and canned foods surely we should be able to compete successfully with Europe, although it would seem probable that the establishment of saw mills upon the Congo should soon serve to do away with the demand for the first named of these articles.

The one desideratum, without which our manufacturers cannot hope to open up a prosperous trade with the Congo Free State, is a direct line of steamships from Boma to some American port. Without this, the added freights from this country to Europe for transshipment to the Congo would, it would seem, be an insurmountable bar to a profitable trade, however desirable such trade might be.

As has been already observed, in order to insure from the natives a loyal observance of their promises, Stanley made a treaty with each chief along the course of the Congo, to the general effect that, in consideration of certain quantities of cloth to be paid them monthly, they should abstain from acts of aggression and violence against their neighbors. The design of these treaties was to insure peace among the tribes themselves. Other agreements and treaties were also made, designed to secure such transfers of their sovereignty to the International Commission, as would enable it to organize the Congo Free State.

As these forms are novel, we give such of them as will enable a reader to understand the preliminary steps toward the formation of this new State.

PRELIMINARY DECLARATION

We, the undersigned chiefs of Nzungi, agree to recognize the sovereignty of the African International Association, and in sign thereof, adopt its flag (blue, with a golden star). We declare we shall keep the road open and free of all tax and impost on all strangers arriving with the recommendation of the agents of the above Association.

All troubles between ourselves and neighbors, or with strangers of any nationality, we shall refer to the arbitration of the above Association.

We declare that we have not made any written or oral agreement with any person previous to this that would render this agreement null and void.

We declare that from henceforth we and our successors shall abide by the decision of the representatives of the Association in all matters affecting our welfare or our possessions, and that we shall not enter into any agreement with any person without referring all matters to the chief of Manyanga, or the chief of Léopoldville, or act in any manner contrary to the tenor or spirit of this agreement.

Witnesses:

Dualla (his x mark), of Chami, Pard.

Mwamba (his x mark), of Makitu’s.

Keekuru (his x mark), Chief of Nzungi.

Nseka (his x mark), Chief of Banza Mbuba.

Nzako (his x mark), of Banza Mbuba.

Insila Mpaka, (his x mark), of Banza Mbuba.

Isiaki (his x mark), Chief of Banza Mbuba.

FORMS OF A TREATY

Henry M. Stanley, commanding the Expedition on the Upper Congo, acting in the name and on behalf of the “African International Association,” and the king and chiefs Ngombi and Mafela, having met together in conference at South Manyanga, have, after deliberation, concluded the following treaty, viz: —

Article I. – The chiefs of Ngombi and Mafela recognize that it is highly desirable that the “African International Association” should, for the advancement of civilization and trade, be firmly established in their country. They therefore now, freely of their own accord, for themselves and their heirs and successors forever, do give up to the said Association the sovereignty and all sovereign and governing rights to all their territories. They also promise to assist the said Association in its work of governing and civilizing this country, and to use their influence with all the other inhabitants, with whose unanimous approval they make this treaty, to secure obedience to all laws made by said Association, and assist by labor or otherwise, any works, improvements, or expeditions, which the said Association shall cause at any time to be carried out in any part of the territories.

Art. II. – The chief of Ngombi and Mafela promise at all times to join their forces with those of the said Association, to resist the forcible intrusion or repulse the attacks of foreigners of any nationality or color.

Art. III. – The country thus ceded has about the following boundaries, viz: The whole of the Ngombi and Mafela countries, and any other tributary to them; and the chiefs of Ngombi and Mafela solemnly affirm that all this country belongs absolutely to them; that they can freely dispose of it; and that they neither have already, nor will on any future occasion, make any treaties, grants or sales of any parts of these territories to strangers, without the permission of the said Association. All roads and waterways running through this country, the right of collecting tolls on the same, and all game, fishing, mining, and forest rights, are to be the absolute property of the said Association, together with any unoccupied lands as may at any time hereafter be chosen.

Art. IV. – The “African International Association” agrees to pay to the chiefs of Ngombi and Mafela the following articles of merchandise, viz: One piece of cloth per month, to each of the undersigned chiefs, besides presents of cloth in hand; and the said chiefs hereby acknowledge to accept this bounty and monthly subsidy in full settlement of all their claims on the said Association.

Art. V. – The “African International Association” promises: —

1. To take from the natives of this ceded country no occupied or cultivated lands, except by mutual agreement.

2. To promote to its utmost the prosperity of the said country.

3. To protect its inhabitants from all oppression or foreign intrusion.

4. It authorizes the chiefs to hoist its flag; to settle all local disputes or palavers; and to maintain its authority with the natives.

Agreed to, signed and witnessed, this 1st day of April, 1884.

Henry M. Stanley,

Witnesses to the signatures:

E. Spencer Burns.

D. Lehrman.

Dualla.

Sonki (his x mark), Senior Chief of Ngombi.

Mamynpa (his x mark), Senior Chief of Mafela.

JOINT AGREEMENT AND TREATY

We, the undersigned chiefs of the districts placed opposite our names below, do hereby solemnly bind ourselves, our heirs and successors for the purpose of mutual support and protection, to observe the following articles: —

Article I. – We agree to unite and combine together, under the name and title of the “New Confederacy,” – that is, our respective districts, their homes and villages shall be embraced by one united territory, to be henceforth known as the New Confederacy.

Art. II. – We declare that our objects are to unite our forces and our means for the common defence of all the districts comprised within said territory; to place our forces and our means under such organization as we shall deem to be best for the common good of the people and the welfare of the Confederacy.

Art. III. – The New Confederacy may be extended by the admission of all such districts adjoining those mentioned before, when their chiefs have made application, and expressed their consent to the articles herein mentioned.

Art. IV. – We, the people of the New Confederacy, adopt the blue flag with the golden star in the centre for our banner.

Art. V. – The confederated districts guarantee that the treaties made between them shall be respected.

Art. VI. – The public force of the Confederacy shall be organized at the rate of one man out of every two men able to bear arms; of native or foreign volunteers.

Art. VII – The organization, the armament, equipment, subsistence of this force, shall be confided to the chief agent in Africa of the “Association of the Upper Congo.”

To the above articles, which are the result of various conventions held between district and district, and by which we have been enabled to understand the common wish, we, sovereign chiefs and others of the Congo district hereby append our names, pledging ourselves to adhere to each and every article.

[Names of Signers.]

The Berlin Conference.

The Berlin Conference which settled the contributions of the Congo Free State, and secured for it the recognition of the principal civilized nations of the world, commenced its sitting at half past two o’clock, on the 26th of February, 1885, under the Presidency of His Highness, Prince Bismarck. The Prince opened the closing session Conference by saying: —

“Our Conference, after long and laborious deliberations, has reached the end of its work, and I am glad to say that, thanks to your efforts and to that spirit of conciliation which had presided over our proceedings, a complete accord has been come to on every point of the programme submitted to us.

“The resolutions which we are about to sanction formally, secure to the trade of all nations free access to the interior of the African Continent. The guarantees by which the freedom of trade will be assured in the Congo basin, and the whole of the arrangements embodied in the rules for the navigation of the Congo and the Niger, are of such a nature as to afford the commerce and industry of all nations the most favorable conditions for their development and security.

“In another series of regulations you have shown your solicitude for the moral and material welfare of the native population, and we may hope that those principles, adopted in a spirit of wise moderation, will bear fruit, and help familiarize those populations with the benefit of civilization.

“The particular conditions under which are placed the vast regions you have just opened up to commercial enterprise, have seemed to require special guarantee for the preservation of peace and public order. In fact, the scourge of war would become particularly disastrous if the natives were led to take sides in the disputes between civilized Powers. Justly apprehensive of the dangers that such event might have for the interest of commerce and civilization, you have sought for the means of withdrawing a great part of the African Continent from the vicissitudes of general politics, in confining therein the rivalry of nations to peaceful emulation in trade and industry.

“In the same manner you have endeavored to avoid all misunderstanding and dispute to which fresh annexations on the African coast might give rise. The declaration of the formalities required before such annexation can be considered effective, introduces a new rule, into public law, which in its turn will remove many a cause of dissent and conflict from our international relations.

“The spirit of mutual good understanding which has distinguished your deliberations has also presided over the negotiations that have been carried on outside the Conference, with a view to arrange the difficult question of delimitation between the parties exercising sovereign rights in the Congo basin, and which, by their position, are destined to be the chief guardians of the work we are about to sanction.

“I cannot touch on this subject without bearing testimony to the noble efforts of His Majesty, the King of the Belgians, the founder of a work which now has gained the recognition of almost all the Powers, and which, as it grows, will render valuable service to the cause of humanity.

“Gentlemen, I am requested by His Majesty, the Emperor and King, my august Master, to convey to you his warmest thanks for the part each of you has taken in the felicitous accomplishment of the work of the Conference.

“I fulfil a final duty in gratefully acknowledging what the Conference owes to those of its members who undertook the hard work of the Commission, notably to the Baron de Courcel and to Baron Lambermont. I have also to thank the delegates for the valuable assistance they have rendered us, and I include in this expression of thanks the secretaries of the Conference, who have facilitated our deliberations by the accuracy of their work.

“Like the other labors of man, the work of this Conference may be improved upon and perfected, but it will, I hope, mark an advance in the development of international relations and form a new bond of union between the nations of the civilized world.”

General Act of the Conference Respecting the Congo Free State

CHAPTER I

DECLARATION RELATIVE TO THE FREEDOM OF COMMERCE IN THE BASIN OF THE CONGO, ITS MOUTHS AND CIRCUMJACENT DISTRICTS, WITH CERTAIN ARRANGEMENTS CONNECTED THEREWITH

Article I. – The trade of all nations shall be entirely free:

1. In all territories constituting the basin of the Congo and its affluents. The basin is bounded by the crests of adjoining basins – that is to say, the basins of the Niari, of the Ogowé, of the Shari, and of the Nile towards the north; by the line of the eastern ridge of the affluents of Lake Tanganyika towards the east; by the crests of the basin of the Zambesi and the Logé towards the south. It consequently embraces all the territories drained by the Congo and its affluents, comprising therein Lake Tanganyika and its eastern tributaries.

2. In the maritime zone extending along the Atlantic Ocean from the parallel of 2° 30′ south latitude to the mouth of the Logé. The northern limit will follow the parallel of 2° 30′ from the coast until it reaches the geographical basin of the Congo, avoiding the basin of the Ogowe, to which the stipulations of the present Act do not apply.

The southern limit will follow the course of the Logé up to the source of that river, and thence strike eastwards to its junction with the geographical basin of the Congo.

3. In the zone extending eastwards from the basin of the Congo as limited above herein, to the Indian Ocean, from the fifth degree of north latitude to the mouth of the Zambesi on the south; from this point the line of demarcation will follow the Zambesi up stream to a point five miles beyond its junction with the Shire, and continue by the line of the ridge dividing the waters which flow towards Lake Nyassa from the tributary waters of the Zambesi, until it joins the line of the water-parting between the Zambesi and the Congo. It is expressly understood that in extending to this eastern zone the principle of commercial freedom, the Powers represented at the Conference bind only themselves, and that the principle will apply to territories actually belonging to some independent and sovereign state only so far as that state consents to it. The Powers agree to employ their good officers among the established Governments on the African coast of the Indian Ocean, to obtain such consent, and in any case to ensure the most favorable conditions to all nations.

Article II

All flags, without distinction of nationality, shall have free access to all the coast of the territories above enumerated; to the rivers which therein flow to the sea; to all the waters of the Congo and its affluents, including the lakes; to all the canals that in the future may be cut with the object of uniting the water-courses or the lakes comprised in the whole extent of the territories described in Article I. They can undertake all kinds of transport, and engage in maritime and fluvial coasting, as well as river navigation, on the same footing as the natives.

Article III

Goods from every source imported into these territories, under any flag whatever, either by way of the sea, the rivers, or the land, shall pay no taxes except such as are equitable compensation for the necessary expenses of the trade, and which can meet with equal support from the natives and from foreigners of every nationality.

All differential treatment is forbidden both with regard to ships and goods.

Article IV

Goods imported into these territories will remain free of all charges for entry and transit.

The Powers reserve to themselves, until the end of a period of twenty years, the right of deciding if freedom of entry shall be maintained or not.

Article V

Every Power which exercises, or will exercise, sovereign rights in the territories above mentioned, cannot therein concede any monopoly or privilege of any sort in commercial matters.

Foreigners shall therein indiscriminately enjoy the same treatment and rights as the natives in the protection of their persons and goods, in the acquisition and transmission of their property, movable and immovable, and in the exercise of their professions.

Article VI

PROVISIONS RELATIVE TO THE PROTECTION OF THE NATIVES, TO MISSIONARIES AND TRAVELERS, AND TO RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

All the Powers exercising sovereign rights, or having influence in the said territories, undertake to watch over the preservation of the native races, and the amelioration of the moral and material conditions of their existence, and to co-operate in the suppression of slavery, and, above all, of the slave trade; they will protect and encourage, without distinction of nationality or creed, all institutions and enterprises, religious, scientific, or charitable, established and organized for these objects, or tending to educate the natives and lead them to understand and appreciate the advantages of civilization.

Christian missionaries, men of science, explorers and their escorts and collections, to be equally the object of special protection.

Liberty of conscience and religious tolerations are expressly guaranteed to the natives as well as to the inhabitants and foreigners. The free public exercise of every creed, the right to erect religious buildings and to organize missions belonging to every creed, shall be subjected to no restriction or impediment whatever.

Article VII

POSTAL ARRANGEMENTS

The Convention of the Postal Union, revised at Paris, on June 1, 1878, shall apply to the said basin of the Congo.

The Powers which there exercise, or will exercise, rights of sovereignty or protectorate, undertake, as soon as circumstances permit, to introduce the necessary measures to give effect to the above resolutions.

Article VIII

RIGHT OF SURVEILLANCE CONFERRED ON THE INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION FOR THE NAVIGATION OF THE CONGO

In all parts of the territory embraced in the present Declaration, where no Power shall exercise the rights of sovereignty or protectorate, the International Commission for the navigation of the Congo, constituted in accordance with Article XVII, shall be intrusted with the surveillance of the application of the principles declared and established in this Declaration.

In all cases of difficulties arising, relative to the application of the principles established by the present Declaration, the Governments interested shall agree to appeal to the good offices of the International Commission, leaving to it the examination of the facts which have given rise to the difficulties.

CHAPTER II

DECLARATION CONCERNING THE SLAVE TRADE

Article IX

In conformity with the principles of the right of natives as recognized by the signatory Powers, the slave trade being forbidden, and operations, which on land or sea supply slaves for the trade, being equally held to be forbidden, the Powers, which exercise or will exercise rights of sovereignty or influence in the territories forming the basin of the Congo, declare that these territories shall serve neither for the place of sale, nor the way of transit for traffic in slaves of any race whatsoever. Each of the Powers undertakes to employ every means that it can to put an end to the trade and to punish those who engage in it.

CHAPTER III

DECLARATION RELATING TO THE NEUTRALITY OF THE TERRITORIES COMPRISED IN THE SAID BASIN OF THE CONGO

Article X

In order to give a new guarantee of security for commerce and industry, and to encourage by the maintenance of peace the development of civilization in the countries mentioned in Article I, or placed under the system of free trade, the High Parties signatory to the present Act, and those who will accept the same, hereby undertake to respect the neutrality of the territories or parts of the territories dependent on the said countries, comprising therein the territorial waters, for so long as the Powers, which exercise, or will exercise, the rights of sovereignty or protectorate over the territories, avail themselves of the right to proclaim them neutral, and fulfill the duties that neutrality implies.

Article XI

In cases where a Power exercising the rights of sovereignty or protectorate in the countries as mentioned in Article I, and placed under the system of free trade, shall be involved in war, the High Parties signatory to the present Act, and those who will accept the same, hereby engage to use their good officers so that the territories belonging to that Power, and comprised within the said boundaries where free trade exists, shall, by the mutual consent of that Power and of the other, or others, of the belligerent parties, be held to be neutral, for so long as the war lasts, and considered as belonging to a non-belligerent state, the belligerent parties will then abstain from extending hostilities into such neutralized territories as well as from using them as a base for operations of war.

Article XII

In the event of a serious disagreement originating on the subject, or arising within the limits of the territories mentioned in Article I and placed under the system of freedom of trade, between Powers signatory to the present Act, or Powers accepting the same, these Powers undertake, before appealing to arms, to have recourse to the mediation of one or several of the friendly Powers.

Under the said circumstances the said Powers reserve to themselves the option of proceeding to arbitration.

CHAPTER IV

ACT OF THE NAVIGATION OF THE CONGO

Article XIII

The navigation of the Congo, without any exception of any branches or issues of the river, is to remain entirely free for merchant shipping of all nations in cargo or ballast, for the carriage of cargo or the carriage of passengers. It shall be in accordance with the provisions of the present Act of navigation, or of the regulations established in execution of the said Act.

In the exercise of that navigation, the subjects and flags of all nations, shall, under all circumstances, be treated on a footing of absolute equality, as well as regards the direct navigation from the open sea towards the interior parts of the Congo, and vice versa, as for grand and petty coasting, and boat and river work all along the river.

Consequently, throughout the Congo’s course and mouth, no distinction shall be made between the subjects of the river-side States, and those not bordering on the river, and no exclusive privilege of navigation shall be granted either to societies, corporations or individuals.

These provisions are recognized by the signatory Powers, as henceforth forming part of public international law.

Article XIV

The navigation of the Congo shall not be subjected to any restraints or imposts which are not expressly stipulated for in the present Act. It shall not be burdened with any duties for harborage stoppages, depots, breaking bulk, or putting in through stress of weather.

Throughout the length of the Congo, ships and merchandise passing along the stream shall be subject to no transit dues, no matter what may be their origin or destination.

There shall not be established any tolls, marine or river, based on the fact of navigation alone, nor shall any duty be imposed on the merchandise on board the vessels. Such taxes and duties only shall be levied, as are of the character of remuneration for services rendered, to the said navigation. That is to say: —

(1) Taxes of the port for the actual use of certain local establishments, such as wharves, warehouses etc. The tariff of such taxes to be calculated on the expenses of construction and support of the said local establishments, and in its application to be independent of the origin of the vessels and their cargo.

(2) Pilotage dues on sections of the river, or where it appears necessary to establish stations of certificated pilots.

The tariff of these dues to be fixed and proportionate to the services rendered.

(3) Dues in respect of the technical and administrative expenses, imposed in the general interest of the navigation, and comprising light-houses, beacon, and buoyage dues.

Dues of the last description to be based on the tonnage of the ships, according to the papers on board, and to be conformable to the regulations in force on the Lower Danube.

The tariffs of the taxes and dues mentioned in the three preceding paragraphs are not to admit of any differential treatment, and are to be officially published in each port.

The Powers reserve to themselves the right, at the end of five years, by mutual agreement, to inquire into the above-mentioned tariffs in case they require revision.

Article XV

The affluents of the Congo shall, under all circumstances, be subject to the same regulations as the river of which they are the tributaries.

The same regulations shall apply to the lakes and canals as to the rivers and streams in the territories defined in Article I, paragraphs 2 and 3.

Nevertheless the Powers of the International Commission of the Congo shall not extend over the said rivers, lakes and canals, unless with the assent of the States under whose sovereignty they are placed. It is also understood that for the territories mentioned in Article I, paragraph 3, the consent of the sovereign States on whom these territories are dependent remains reserved.

Article XVI

The roads, railways, or lateral canals, which shall be established for the special object of supplementing the innavigability or imperfections of the water-way in certain sections of the Congo, of its affluents and other water-courses held to be like unto them by Article XV, shall be considered in their capacity as means of communication as dependencies of the river, and shall be likewise open to the traffic of all nations.

And as on the river, there shall be levied on these roads, railways and canals only tolls calculated on the expenses of construction, maintenance and administration, and on the profits due to the promoters.

In the assessment of these tolls, foreigners and the inhabitants of the respective territories shall be treated on a footing of perfect equality.

Article XVII

An International Commission is instituted and appointed to ensure the execution of the provisions of the present Act of Navigation.

The Powers signatory to this Act, as well as those who afterwards accept it, shall at all times be represented on the said Commission, each by a delegate. No delegate shall have more than one vote, even in the event of his representing several governments.

This delegate shall be paid by his own government direct. The salaries and allowances of the agents and servants of the International Commission shall be charged to the proceeds of the dues levied conformably to Article XIV, paragraphs 2 and 3.

The amounts of said salaries and allowances, as well as the number, position and duties of the agents and servants, shall appear in the account rendered each year to the Governments represented on the International Commission.

Article XVIII

The members of the International Commission, as well as the agents nominated by them, are invested with the privilege of inviolability in the exercise of their functions. The same guarantee shall extend to the offices, premises and archives of the Commission.

Article XIX

The International Commission for the navigation of the Congo, shall be constituted as soon as five of the signatory Powers of the present General Act shall have nominated their delegates. Pending the constitution of the Commission, the nomination of the delegates shall be notified to the Government of the German Empire, by whom the necessary steps will be taken to manage the meeting of the Commission.

The Commission will draw up, without delay, the arrangements for the navigation, river police, pilotage and quarantine.

These regulations, as well as the tariffs, instituted by the Commission, before being put in force, shall be submitted to the approbation of the Powers represented on the Commission. The powers interested, shall declare their opinion therein with the least possible delay.

Offences against these regulations shall be dealt with by the agents of the International Commission, where it exercises its authority direct, and in other places by the river-side Powers.

In case of abuse of power or injustice on the part of an agent or servant of the International Commission, the individual considering himself injured in his person or his rights, shall apply to the consular agent of his nation. He will inquire into his complaint, and if prima facié, he finds it reasonable, he shall be entitled to report it to the Commission. On his initiative, the Commission, represented by three or fewer of its members, shall join with him in an inquiry touching the conduct of its agent or servant. If the Consular agent considers the decision of the Commission as objectionable in law, he shall report to the Government, who shall refer to the Powers represented on the Commission, and invite them to agree as to the instructions to be given to the Commission.

Article XX

The International Commission of the Congo, entrusted under the terms of Article XVII, with insuring the execution of the present Act of Navigation, shall specially devote its attention to: —

(1.) The indication of such works as are necessary for insuring the navigability of the Congo, in accordance with the requirements of international trade.

On sections of the river where no Power exercises rights of sovereignty, the international Commission shall itself take the measures necessary for insuring the navigability of the stream.

On sections of the river occupied by a sovereign Power, the International Commission shall arrange with the river-side authority.

(2.) The fixing of the tariff for pilotage, and of the general tariff of navigation dues, provided for in the second and third paragraphs of Article XIV.

The tariffs mentioned in the first paragraph of Article XIV, shall be settled by the territorial authority within the limits provided for in that article.

The collection of these dues shall be under the care of the international or territorial authority, on whose account they have been established.

3. The administration of the revenues accruing from the application of the foregoing paragraph 2.

4. The surveillance of the quarantine establishment instituted in compliance with Article XXIV.

5. The nomination of agents for the general service of the navigation and its own particular servants.

The appointment of sub-inspectors shall belong to the territorial authority over sections occupied by a Power, and to the International Commission over the other sections of the river.

The river-side Power will notify to the International Commission the nomination of its sub-inspectors which it shall have appointed, and this Power shall pay their salaries.

In the exercise of its duties, as defined and limited above, the International Commission shall not be subject to the territorial authority.

Article XXI

In the execution of its task, the International Commission shall have recourse, in case of need, to the vessels of war belonging to the signatory Powers of this Act, and to those which in the future shall accept it, if not in contravention of the instructions which shall have been given to the commanders of those vessels by their respective governments.

Article XXII

The vessels of war of the Powers signatory to the present Act which enter the Congo are exempt from the payment of the navigation dues provided for in paragraph 3 of Article XIV; but they shall pay the contingent pilotage dues as well as the harbor dues, unless their intervention has been demanded by the International Commission or its agents under the terms of the preceding Article.

Article XXIII

With the object of meeting the technical and administrative expenses which it may have to incur, the International Commission, instituted under Article XVII, may in its own name issue loans secured on the revenues assigned to the said Commission.

The resolutions of the Commission regarding the issue of a loan must be carried by a majority of two-thirds of its votes. It is understood that the Governments represented on the Commission shall not, in any case, be considered as assuming any guarantee nor contracting any engagement or joint responsibility with regard to said laws, unless special treaties are concluded amongst them to that effect.

The proceeds of the dues specified in the third paragraph of Article XIV shall be in the first place set aside for the payment of interest and the extinction of said loans, in accordance with the agreements entered into with the lenders.

Article XXIV

At the mouths of the Congo there shall be founded, either at the initiation of the river-side Powers, or by the intervention of the International Commission, a quarantine establishment, which shall exercise control over the vessels entering and departing.

It shall be decided later on by the Powers, if any, and under what conditions, sanitary control shall be exercised over vessels navigating the river.

Article XXV

The provisions of the present Act of Navigation shall remain in force during times of war. Consequently, the navigation of all nations, neutral and belligerent, shall at all times be free for the purposes of trade on the Congo, its branches, its affluents, and its mouths, as well as on the territorial waters fronting the mouths of the river.

The traffic shall likewise remain free, notwithstanding the state of war, on its roads, railways, lakes and canals, as mentioned in Articles XV and XVI.

The only exception to this principle shall be in cases in connection with the transport of articles intended for a belligerent, and held in accordance with the law of nations to be contraband of war.

All the works and establishments instituted in execution of the present Act, particularly the offices of collection and their funds, the same as the staff permanently attached to the service of such establishments, shall be treated as neutral, and shall be respected and protected by the belligerents.

CHAPTER V

THE ACT OF NAVIGATION OF THE NIGER

Article XXVI

The navigation of the Niger, without excepting any of the branches or issues, is, and shall continue free for merchant vessels of all nations, in cargo or ballast, conveying goods or conveying passengers. It shall be conducted in accordance with the provisions of the present Act of Navigation, and with the regulations established in execution of the same Act.

In the exercise of that navigation, the subjects and flags of every nation shall be treated, under all circumstances, on a footing of perfect equality, as well in the direct navigation from the open sea to the interior ports of the Niger, and vice versa, as for grand and petty coasting, and in boat and river work throughout its course.

Consequently throughout the length and mouths of the Niger, there shall be no distinction between the subjects of the riverside States, and those of States not bordering on the river, and there shall be conceded no exclusive privilege of navigation to any society, or corporation or individual.

These provisions are recognised by the signatory Powers as henceforth forming part of public international law,

Article XXVII

The navigation of the Niger shall not be subjected to any obstacle nor duty based only on the fact of the navigation.

It shall not be subject to any duties for harborage, stoppages, depots, breaking bulk, or putting into port through stress of weather.

Throughout the length of the Niger, vessels and goods passing along the stream shall not be subject to any transit dues, whatsoever may be their origin or destination.

There shall be established no sea or river toll, based on the sole fact of navigation, nor any duty on the goods which happen to be on board the ships. Only such taxes and dues shall be levied as are of the nature of a payment for services rendered to the said navigation. The tariff of these taxes or dues shall admit of no differential treatment.

Article XXVIII

The affluents of the Niger shall in every respect be subject to the same regulations as the river of which they are the tributaries.

Article XXIX

Roads, railways or lateral canals, which shall be established with the special object of supplementing the innavigability or other imperfections of the waterway, in certain sections of the course of the Niger, its affluents, its branches, and its issues, shall be considered, in their capacity of means of communication, as dependencies of the river and shall be open similarly to the traffic of all nations,

As on the river, there shall be levied on the roads, railways and canals, only such tolls as are calculated on the expenses of construction, maintenance and administration, and on the profits due to the promoters.

In the assessment of these tolls, foreigners and the inhabitants of the respective territories, shall be treated on a footing of perfect equality.

Article XXX

Great Britain undertakes to apply the principles of freedom of navigation annunciated in Articles XXVI., XXVII., XXVIII., XXIX., to so much of the waters of the Niger and its affluent branches and issues as are or shall be under her sovereignty or protectorate.

The regulations she will draw up for the safety and control of the navigation, shall be designed to facilitate, as much as possible, the passage of merchant shipping.

It is understood that nothing in the engagements thus accepted shall be interpreted as hindering or likely to hinder Great Britain from making any regulations whatever as to the navigation which shall not be contrary to the spirit of such engagements.

Great Britain undertakes to protect foreign traders of every nation engaged in commerce in those parts of the course of the Niger, which are or shall be under her sovereignty or protectorate, as if they were her own subjects, provided that such traders conform to the regulations which are or shall be established in accordance with the foregoing.

Article XXXI

France accepts, under the same reservations and identical terms, the obligations set forth in the preceding articles, so far as they apply to the waters of the Niger, its affluents, its branches and its issues, which are or shall be under her sovereignty or protectorate.

Article XXXII

Each of the other Signatory Powers similarly undertake, that they will similarly act in such cases as they exercise or may hereafter exercise, rights of sovereignty or protectorate, in any part of the Niger, its affluent branches or issues.

Article XXXIII

The provisions of the present Act of Navigation shall remain in force during times of war. Consequently, the navigation of all nations, neutral or belligerant, shall at all times be free for the purpose of trade on the Niger, its branches, affluents, mouths and issues, as well as on the territorial waters fronting the mouths and issues of the river.

The traffic shall likewise remain free, notwithstanding the state of war, on its roads, its railways and canals mentioned in Article XXIX.

The only exception to this principle shall be in cases in connection with the transport of articles intended for a belligerent, and held, in accordance with the laws of nations, to be contraband of war.

CHAPTER VI

DECLARATION RELATIVE TO THE ESSENTIAL CONDITIONS FOR NEW ANNEXATIONS ON THE AFRICAN CONTINENT TO BE CONSIDERED EFFECTIVE

Article XXXIV

The Power, which in future takes possession of a territory on the coast of the African Continent, situated outside of its actual possessions, or which, having none there, has first acquired them, and the power which assumes a protectorate, shall accompany either act by a notification addressed to the other Powers signatory to the present Act, so as to enable them to protest against the same, if there exist any grounds for their doing so.

Article XXXV

The Powers signatory to the present Act, recognize the obligation to insure in the territories occupied by them on the coasts of the African Continent, the existence of an adequate authority to enforce respect for acquired rights, and for freedom of trade and transit wherever stipulated.

CHAPTER VII

GENERAL PROVISIONS

Article XXXVI

The Powers signatory to the present general Act reserve to themselves the right of eventually, by mutual agreement, introducing therein modifications or improvements, the utility of which has been shown by experience.

Article XXXVII

The Powers who may not have signed the present Act shall accept its provisions by a separate Act.

The adhesion of each Power shall be notified in the usual diplomatic manner to the Government of the German Empire, and by it to those of all the signatory and adherent States.

The adhesion shall imply the full right of acceptance of all the obligations, and admission to all the advantages stipulated for in the present general Act.

Article XXXVIII

The present general Act shall be ratified with as short a delay as possible, and in no case shall that delay exceed a year.

It shall come into force for each Power on the date of its ratification by that Power.

Meanwhile the Powers signatory to the present Act bind themselves to adopt no measure that shall be contrary to the provisions of the said Act.

Each Power shall send its ratification to the Government of the German Empire, which undertakes to ratify the same to all the signatory Powers of the present general Act.

The ratifications of all the Powers shall remain deposited in the archives of the Government of the German Empire. When all the ratifications shall have been produced, a deed of deposit shall be drawn up in a protocol, which shall be signed by the Representatives of all the Powers that have taken part in the Berlin Conference, and a certified copy of it shall be sent to each of those Powers.

In consideration of which, the respective Plenipotentiaries have signed the present general Act, and hereto affix their seals.

Done at Berlin, February 26th, 1885.

Inasmuch as the Congo Free State starts with the sanction of all the leading powers of civilization, it assumes a dignity, at its very inception, which attaches to no other African dynasty. It is, or ought to be, beyond those jealousies which have torn, and are tearing, other possessions in Africa to pieces, and retarding their colonization and development. Further, the terms of its creation ought to assure it the united sympathy and combined energy of its patrons and founders, and these ought to be invincible within its magnificent boundaries for overcoming every obstacle to permanent sovereignty and commercial, industrial and moral development.

But the spirit of comity, which has made a Congo Free State possible, might as well have rescued Equatorial Africa, from ocean to ocean, from the rapacious grasp of the jealous and contending powers of Europe. True, something like a free belt has been recognized, extending to within a few miles of the Eastern coast, and intended to secure an outlet for products which can be more advantageously marketed in that direction; yet this is of no avail against projects designed to appropriate and control, politically and commercially, the immense sweep of country between the Congo Free State and Indian Ocean; it is rather an incentive to these powers to make haste in their work of appropriation and reduction, and they are at it with an earnestness which savors of the days when two Americas furnished the flesh for picking, and the bone for angry contention. Great Britain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, are in clash about East African areas, protectorates, sovereignties, commercial interests, with the likelihood of further trouble, and such deep complications as arms only can simplify and relieve.

Looking but a little into the future, one can catch a glimpse of the fate in store for East Africa. It is to be the grand political offset to the Congo Free State. This has been resolved upon by Great Britain, and its outlines are already mapped in her foreign policy. As matters stand, there is nothing to prevent the consummation of her designs. She has virtual possession of the Eastern coast from Cape Colony to the mouth of the Zambezi. She has Egypt in her grasp, which means the Nile valley from Alexandria to the head lakes, Victoria, Albert and Edward Nyanza, with their drainage systems.

On the ocean side the power of the Sultan has been already limited to Zanzibar and adjacent islands, and it is now like the last flicker of a wasted candle. On the Zambezi, and north of it, up the Shire to Lake Nyassa, come the claims of Portugal. Portugal is weak, and a poor colonizer at that. She can be ousted by diplomacy or sat down upon by force. The German and Italian interests will eventually blend with those of Great Britain, or shape themselves into well-defined states, pledged to peace and anxious to be let alone.

England is well equipped for this gigantic undertaking. She has an extensive South African and Egyptian experience. She has her experience in India, which she need but repeat in Africa to realize her dreams, or at least achieve more than would be possible with any other power. And then India is over-populated. It might be that thousands, perhaps millions, of her people would swarm to African shores, where they would find a climate not unlike their own, and resources which they could turn to ready account. At any rate, England could enlist in India an army for the occupation of East Africa. Her Indian contingent in Egypt answered an excellent purpose, and redeemed the otherwise fatal campaign toward Khartoum.

The business of establishing an internal economy in this new empire is easier for Great Britain than any other country. Her prestige means as much with native tribes as with the petty sovereignties of Europe, or the islands of the Pacific. Her shows of force are impressive, her methods of discipline effective. In the midst of opposition her hand is hard and heavy. A string of fortifications from the Zambezi to Cairo, with native garrisons, under control of English army officers, would inspire the natives with fear and assure their allegiance. The tact of her traders and the perseverance of her missionaries would bring about all else that might be necessary to create a thrifty and semi-Christian State.

Our posterity will watch with interest the development of Africa through the agency of its Congo Free State on the west, and its Imperial State on the east; the one contributing to the glory of all civilized nations, the other to that of a single nation; the one an enlargement of sovereignty, the other a concentration of it. One has for its inspiration the genius of freedom, the other the genius of force. One is a dedication to civilizing influences, the other is a seizure and appropriation in the name of civilization. We can conceive of the latter, under the impetus of patronage and of concentrated energy, supplemented by arbitrary power, taking the lead for a time, and maintaining it till its viceroyalties become centers of corruption and its subjects helpless peons. But in the end, the former will bound to the front, lifted by internal forces, which are free and virile, buoyed by a spirit of self-helpfulness and independence, sustained from without by universal sympathy and admiration, and from within by beings who have voluntarily consented and contributed to their progress and enlightenment, and are proud participants in their own institutions.

The historian of a century hence will confirm or deny the above observations. If he confirms them, he will add that long experience proved the inutility of forcing our governments, usages and peoples on those of Africa without modification, and to the utter subordination of those which were native; but that, on the contrary, the best civilizing results were obtained by recognition of native elements, their gradual endowment with sovereignty, their elevation to the trusts which commerce and industry impose. It is time that our boasted civilization should show a conquest which is not based on the inferiority, wreck and extermination of the races it meets with in its course. It has careered around the globe in temperate belts, stopping for nothing that came in its way, justifying everything by its superiority. Nature calls a halt in mid-Africa, and practically says: “The agents of civilization are already here. Use them, but do not abuse. You can substitute no other that will prove either permanent or profitable.”

THE RESCUE OF EMIN

In the fall of 1886, Stanley was summoned from the United States by the King of Belgium to come and pay him a visit. That monarch seems to have remembered what others had forgotten, that a European adventurer and a European project lay buried somewhere beneath the Equator and in the very heart of the “Dark Continent.” Stanley responded to the King’s invitation, and out of the interview which followed sprang a reason for his late and most memorable journey across equatorial Africa. But it was deemed wise to interest other agencies, and so the British Geographical Society was consulted and induced to lend a helping hand. In order to further nationalize the projected journey a commission was formed under whose auspices it was to take place. This enlisted for the moment the sympathies of the German peoples, for the lost one was a German. So grew up what came to be known as the “Emin Bey Relief Committee,” with head-quarters at London, and with Sir William Mackinnon as its secretary.

And now, who is Emin Bey, or as he appears most frequently, Emin Pasha? What is there about his disappearance in the wilds of Africa that makes knowledge of his whereabouts and his rescue so desirable? What, of more than humanitarian moment, can attach to a journey planned as this one was? These questions are momentous, for they involve far more than mere men or mere projects of rescue. They involve the aims and ambitions of empires, the policies of dynasties, the destinies of future African States and peoples. That these things are true will appear from the answers which history makes to the above queries – a history which is aglow with events and attractive in its details, however little it may serve to reveal of the present plans of those who contribute most to its making. Emin Pasha was born in the Austrian province of Silesia, and the town of Opplen, in 1840, the same year as Henry M. Stanley. He studied medicine at Breslau, Königsberg and Berlin, and entered upon the world as a regular M.D. with a diploma from the Berlin University. Sometime before the Russian-Turkish war he went to Constantinople and entered the Turkish army with the title of Bey, or Colonel. A taste for travel took him to the East where he acquired the oriental languages. On his return we find him attached to the Imperial Ministry of Turkey, but only during part of the incumbency of Midhat Pasha, who, finding his ministry opposed to his ultra hatred of Russia, dismissed it.

Up to this time he was known as Dr. Eduard (Edward) Schnitzer, that being the name of his parents, with the prefix of Colonel, or Bey as an affix. This was all as to outside knowledge of him. On his dismissal from the Court at Constantinople he fled to Asia, and after many wanderings turned up at Suakim and finally at Khartoum, in Africa, where he made the acquaintance of that ill-starred and fatalistic English adventurer, General Gordon, then Governor General of the Soudan, under English auspices. The General finding him an adventurer of attainments made him a storekeeper of his army, and upon ascertaining that he was an M.D., promoted him to the position of surgeon. In 1877 he was a practitioner of medicine at Lado, in southern Soudan. He afterwards became Surgeon-General of Gordon’s staff. In this capacity he served for four years. During this time he was engaged in making many valuable scientific researches and collections and in contributing interesting papers to European learned societies. He was also of great use to Gordon, who sent him to Uganda and Unyoro on diplomatic missions.

In 1878, when General Gordon was made Governor-General of the Soudan by the British Government, he raised Col. Schnitzer to the rank of Governor of the province of Hat el Seva in Southern Soudan. By this time the Mahdi had risen in the Soudan, and was confronting Gordon with his Mohammedan followers. To identify himself more fully with the Mohammedan people among which he had to live, Col. Schnitzer abandoned his German name and took the Arabic one of Emin (the faithful one) and the full title of Pasha (General or Governor). The scheme on the part of Gordon was to seize and hold the equatorial provinces of the Soudan, in the rear of the Mahdi’s forces, and thus introduce a military menace as well as make a political and moral diversion in favor of the cause he represented. Gordon gave him part of his own army, augmented by a large native force, and with this Emin Pasha took possession of his provinces far toward the Equator, and abutting on the central lake system of the continent.

For a time all went well with him. He proved a most indefatigable traveler, and showed special fitness to govern. He was familiar with the language of the Turks, Arabs, Germans, French and Italians, and acquired readily the dialects of the heathen tribes. On every side he displayed suavity, tact and genius. In 1879, he made an excursion to the western shore land of the Mwutan, which till then had not been visited by white men. In 1880 he visited Makralla-land, and planted many trading stations, thus enlarging his territory geographically and politically. In this expedition he located many important rivers, chief of which was the Kibali. In 1881 he pushed his explorations westward into the land of the powerful Niam Niams, and southward into the lands of the Monbuttus, which tribes are types of the best physical and political strength in that part of Africa, west of the Nile sources.

Thus Emin kept on increasing the extent and importance of his territory, and it came to be recognized as the best governed of any in the vast undefined domain of the Soudan. He found it infested with Arab slave-dealers, who practiced all the barbarities of their kind, and much of his time was occupied in suppressing the nefarious traffic. He became the recognized foe of those who penetrated his domains to barter in human flesh, or if cupidity dictated, to burn, pillage and kill, in order that they might freight their dhwos with trophies of their cruelty.

Though undefined east and west, his kingdom came to recognize Lado as its northern capital, and Wadelai, on Lake Albert Nyanza, as its southern. The work of organizing his territory extended from 1878 to 1882. He had practically driven out the slave-traders and converted a deficient revenue into a surplus for his government, conducting everything on the basis laid down by his superior, General Gordon, and carrying out with the most marked success the plans of that noble enthusiast. He was fast making his territory semi-civilized when the Mahdi arose, led his hosts northward, massacred the army of Gordon, and finally made himself master of Khartoum and a great part of the Soudan. This was in 1882. The Egyptian garrisons throughout the Southern Soudan were then abandoned to their fate, and the last attempt to save Khartoum ended with the death of General Gordon.

During the years of bloodshed that followed, Emin remained at his post, his provinces entirely cut off from the world, and he himself neglected and left entirely to his own resources. He held at the time about four thousand native and Egyptian troops under his command. He was completely surrounded by hostile tribes, but it is generally admitted that if he had chosen to leave behind him the thousands of helpless women and children and abandon the province to the merciless cruelties of the slave traders, he could easily have effected his escape either to the Congo or to the Zanzibar coast. But he determined to stay and to keep the equatorial provinces for civilization, if possible.

The great work done by this brave and indefatigable German cannot be told here in detail. But he organized auxiliary forces of native soldiers; he was constantly engaged in warfare with surrounding tribes; he garrisoned a dozen river stations lying long distances apart. His ammunition ran low and he lacked the money needed for paying his small army; but in the face of manifold difficulties and dangers he maintained his position, governed the country well, and taught the natives how to raise cotton, rice, indigo and coffee, and also how to weave cloth and to make shoes, candles, soap and many articles of commerce. He vaccinated the natives by the thousand in order to stamp out small-pox; he opened the first hospital known in that quarter; he established a regular post-route, with forty offices; he made important geographical discoveries in the basin of the Albert Nyanza Lake, and in many ways demonstrated his capacity for governing barbarous races by the methods and standards of European civilization.

Murder, war and slavery were made things of the past, so that at last “the whole country became so safe that only for the wild beasts in the thickets, a man could have gone from one end of the province to the other, armed with nothing more than a walking-stick.” A German writer said of him at the time: “In his capital, Lado, where Dr. Schnitzer earlier resided, he arose every day before the sun. His first work was to visit the hospitals and care for the health of the people and the troops. After a day devoted to executive labors, a great part of the night would be spent in writing those essays on anthropology, ethnology, geography, botany, and the languages of the people dwelling in his province which have made his name famous as a scientific explorer.”

Tn 1885 Emin had ten fortified stations along the Upper Nile, the most northern one being Lado, and the most southern one Wadelai. The latter place he made his capital for some time. His command at Wadelai then consisted of 1500 soldiers, ten Egyptians and fifteen negro officers. The rest were at the various stations on the Nile. He had ammunition to hold out until the end of 1886, and longer, he wrote, “if the wild tribes did not make the discovery that he would be then entirely out of it.” In 1887 he wrote: “I am still holding out, and will not forsake my people.” After that, letters were received from him in which he described his position as hopeful. In one of the last of these letters he wrote:

“The work that Gordon paid for with his blood I will strive to carry on according to his intentions and his spirit. For twelve long years I have striven and toiled and sown the seeds for future harvests, laid the foundation stones for future buildings. Shall I now give up the work because a way may soon open to the coast? Never!”

The successes of the Mahdi had isolated him entirely on the north. To the west and south were powerful tribes which, though not unfriendly, could offer him no avenue of escape. To the east were still more powerful peoples, once friendly but now imbued with the Mahdi’s hatred of white men and their commercial and political objects. Chief of these were the Uganda, whose King, Mtesa, had died in 1884, and had been succeeded by his son Mwanga, a thorough Mahdist and bitter against European innovation. Emin was therefore a prisoner. This was known in Europe in 1886, but how critical his situation was, no one could tell. It was natural to regard it as perilous, and it was hoped that the Egyptian Government would take measures for his relief. The Cairo Government did nothing except to give him the title of Pasha and to offer £10,000 to any expedition that might be sent to him. Many relief expeditions were then planned, but nothing came of them till the one at whose head Stanley was placed took shape.

Where should such an expedition go? What should it do? It did not take long for the “wizard of equatorial travel” to decide. Here might be opened a whole volume of controversy as to whether Stanley’s mission in search of Emin was really humanitarian or not. The Germans who had the greatest interest in the safety of their fellow countryman, refused to look on the expedition as other than a scheme to rid the Southern Soudan of a Teutonic ruler in the interest of England. They regarded Emin as abundantly able to take care of himself for an indefinite time, and the event of his withdrawal as amounting to a confession that Germanic sovereignty was at an end in the lake regions of Central Africa. It cannot be ascertained now that Stanley entered upon the expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha in other than a humanitarian spirit, though he was backed by English capital. It is fair to presume that since he was invited to the ordeal by the Belgian King, whose exchequer was responsible for the greater part of the outlay, he went with perfectly disinterested motives. But be that as it may, he felt the delicacy of his task and, after having discovered the lost one, his interviews with him are models of diplomatic modesty and patience.

On being placed in charge of the expedition by its projectors, Stanley naturally chose the Congo route into the heart of Africa, because he was familiar with it by his recent efforts to found the Congo Free State, and because it would give him a chance to review and refresh his labors in that behalf. If all things were as he had left them, he knew that a water-way traversable by steam was open for him to a point on the Congo opposite the habitation of Emin and distant but a few hundred miles. So May 11, 1887, found Stanley on the west coast of Africa ready to start inland. He did not collect his force and equipments at the mouth of the Congo, but made his way around the cataracts to Stanley Pool. There, at the station called Kinchassa everything was gathered for the up-river journey. Thence, the expedition embarked in three steamers, Le Stanley, the large stern-wheeler belonging to the Congo Free State, towing the Florida which had just been put together by sections. Le Stanley and Florida had on board about 300 men, mostly trained and armed natives, among whom were four English officers and several scientific gentlemen, besides a cargo of ammunition, merchandise and pack animals. The next steamer was the Henry Reid, a launch belonging to the American Baptist Missionary Union, and kindly loaned to Stanley for the purpose of transporting part of his force and equipments from Stanley Pool to his proposed camp on the Aruwimi. The other steamer was the Peace, placed at Stanley’s disposal by the Rev. Holman Bentley, of the English Baptist Missionary Society, and of which a young missionary named Whitely had charge.

On their passage up the Congo, and after a sail of ten days a camp was formed at Bolobo, and left in charge of Captain Ward, who was deemed a proper person for the command on account of his previous knowledge of the natives, always inclined to be more or less hostile at that point. Captain Ward had met Stanley below Stanley Pool and while he was performing his tedious journey around the cataracts. He thus describes the expedition on its march at the time of the meeting.

In the front of Stanley’s line was a tall Soudanese warrior bearing the Gordon Bennett yacht flag. Behind the soldier, and astride a magnificent mule, came the great explorer. Following immediately in his rear were his personal servants, Somalis, with their braided waistcoats and white robes. Then came Zanzibaris with their blankets, water-bottles, ammunition-belts and guns; stalwart Soudanese soldiery, with great hooded coats, their rifles on their backs, and innumerable straps and leather belts around their bodies; Wagawali porters, bearing boxes of ammunition, to which were fastened axes, shovels and hose lines, as well as their little bundles of clothing, which were invariably rolled up in old threadbare blankets. At one point the whale-boat was being carried in sections, suspended from poles, which were each borne by four men. Donkeys laden with sacks of rice were next met, and a little further back were the women of Tippoo Tib’s harem, their faces concealed and their bodies draped in gaudily-colored clothes. Here and there was an English officer. A flock of goats next came along, and then the form of Tippoo Tib came into view as he strutted majestically along in his flowing Arab robes and large turban, carrying over his right shoulder a jewel-hilted sword, the emblem of office from the Sultan of Zanzibar. Behind him followed several Arab sheiks, whose bearing was quiet and dignified.

It was not the intention to hurry over the long stretch of water between Stanley Pool and the Aruwimi, but to make the trip by easy stages. Yet it was a trip involving great labor, for there being no coal, and the steamers being small, the work of wood-cutting had to be done every night. The launches required as much wood for twelve hours steaming as thirty or forty men, laboring at night, could cut with their axes and cross-cut saws. In some portions of the upper Congo where the shores are swampy for miles in width, the men were often compelled to wade these long distances before striking the rising forest land, and of course they had to carry the wood back to the steamers over the same tedious and dangerous routes.

As has been stated, Stanley’s objective was the mouth of the large river Aruwimi, which enters the Congo, a short distance below Stanley Falls, in Lat. 1° N., and whose general westward direction led him to think that by following it he would get within easy marches of Lake Albert Nyanza and thus into Emin’s dominions.

On the arrival of the expedition at the mouth of the Aruwimi, an armed camp was formed at Yambungi and left in charge of the unfortunate Major Barttelot, and here a conference was awaited with the dual-hearted Arab, Tippoo Tib, whom Stanley had recognized as ruler at Nyangwe, on the Congo, above Stanley Falls, and who was bound to him by the most solemn treaties. The wily chieftain came up in due time, and the interview was such as to engender serious doubts of his further friendship, notwithstanding his protestations.

The occasion was a palaver, at the request of Major Barttelot, with a view to obtain some definite understanding as to the providing of the Manyema porters whom Tippoo Tib had promised Stanley he would supply in order that the rearguard might follow him up from the Aruwimi River to Wadelai. How the porters did not come up to time; how the commander of the rearguard was hampered with new conditions as to weight when the men did appear; and how the dreadful business ended in the assassination of Major Barttelot and the breaking up of the camp, will appear further on. The death of Mr. Jameson soon afterwards, at Ward’s Camp, on the Congo, a distressing sequel to the former tragedy, was in somber tone with the reports of Stanley’s death which came filtering through the darkness at about the same time. The cloud which fell upon the Aruwimi camp seemed to spread its dark mantle over the entire expedition. Mr. Werner, in his interesting volume “A Visit to Stanley’s Rear Guard,” gives a characteristic sketch of the Arab chief; and Mr. Werner was the engineer in charge of the vessel which took Major Barttelot part of the way on his last journey to the Falls. “After the light complexion of the other Arabs,” he says, “I was somewhat surprised to find Mr. Tippoo Tib as black as any negro I had seen; but he had a fine well-shaped head, bald at the top, and a short, black, thick beard thickly strewn with white hairs. He was dressed in the usual Arab style, but more simply than the rest of the Arab chiefs, and had a broad, well-formed figure. His restless eyes gave him a great resemblance to the negro’s head with blinking eyes in the electric advertisements of somebody’s shoe polish which adorned the walls of railway-stations some years ago – and earned him the nickname of ‘Nubian blacking.’”

In June, 1887, Stanley started on his ascent of the unknown Aruwimi, and through a country filled with natives prejudiced against him by the Arab traders and friends of the Mahdi. His force now comprised 5 white men and 380 armed natives. His journey proved tedious and perilous in the extreme, and though he persevered in the midst of obstacles for two months, he was still 400 miles from Albert Nyanza. It was now found that the river route was impracticable for the heavier boats. At this point their troubles thickened. The natives proved hostile, and ingenious in their means of opposing obstructions to the further progress of the expedition. They refused to contribute provisions, and starvation stared the travelers in the face. For weeks their only food was wild fruit and nuts. To forage was to invite death, and to engage in open war was to court annihilation. Disease broke out, and it must have swept them all away but for the precautions which Stanley took to head off its ravages. As it was, the number was greatly reduced, and the men were weak, emaciated, in a state of panic, amid surrounding dangers and without spirit for further trials. Writing of this critical period, his letters say:

“What can you make of this, for instance? On August 17, 1887, all the officers of the rear column are united at Yambuya. They have my letter of instructions before them, but instead of preparing for the morrow’s march, to follow our track, they decide to wait at Yambuya, which decision initiates the most awful season any community of men ever endured in Africa or elsewhere.

“The results are that three-quarters of their force die of slow poison. Their commander is murdered and the second officer dies soon after of sickness and grief. Another officer is wasted to a skeleton and obliged to return home. A fourth is sent to wander aimlessly up and down the Congo, and the survivor is found in such a fearful pest-hole that we dare not describe its horrors.

“On the same date, 150 miles away, the officer of the day leads 333 men of the advance column into the bush, loses the path and all consciousness of his whereabouts, and every step he takes only leads him further astray. His people become frantic; his white companions, vexed and irritated by the sense of the evil around them, cannot devise any expedient to relieve him. They are surrounded by cannibals and poison tipped arrows thin their numbers.

“Meantime I, in command of the river column, am anxiously searching up and down the river in four different directions; through forests my scouts are seeking for them, but not until the sixth day was I successful in finding them.”

Having now brought his different marching columns closer together, and loaded his sick in light canoes, he started on, intercepted continually by wild native raiders who inflicted considerable loss on his best men, who had to bear the brunt of fighting as well as the fatigue of paddling. Soon progress by the river became too tedious and difficult, and orders were given to cast off the canoes. The land course now lay along the north bank of the Itura, amid dense forests, and through the despoiled lands which had been a stamping ground for Ugarrowa and Kilingalango raiders. No grass land, with visions of beef, mutton and vegetables, were within a hundred miles of the dismal scene.

For two weeks the expedition threaded the unknown tangle, looking out for ambuscades, warding off attacks, and braving dangers of every description. At length the region of the Dwaris was reached and a plantain patch burst into view. The hungry wayfarers plunged into it and regaled themselves with the roasted fruit, while the more thoughtful provided a store of plantain flour for the dreaded wilderness ahead. Another plunge was made into the trackless forest and ten days elapsed before another plantation was reached, during which time the small-pox broke out, with greater loss of life than any other enemy had as yet inflicted. Meanwhile they had passed the mouth of the Ihuru, a large tributary of the Itura, and were on the banks of the Ishuru. As there was no possibility of crossing this turbulent tributary, its right bank was followed for four days till the principal village of the Andikuma tribe was reached. It was surrounded by the finest plantation of bananas and plantains, which all the Manyemas’ habit of spoliation and destruction had been unable to destroy. There the travelers, after severe starvation during fourteen days, gorged themselves to such excess that it contributed greatly to lessen their numbers. Every twentieth individual suffered from some complaint which entirely incapacitated him for duty.

From Andikuma, a six days’ march northerly brought them to a flourishing settlement, called Indeman. Here Stanley was utterly nonplussed by the confusion of river names. The natives were dwarfs. After capturing some of them and forcing answers, he found that they were on the right branch of the Ihuru river and that it could be bridged. Throwing a bridge across, they passed into a region wholly inhabited by dwarfs who proved very hostile. They are the Wambutti people, and such were their number and ferocity that Stanley was forced to change his north-east into a south-east course and to follow the lead of elephant tracks.

They had now to pass through the most terrible of all their African experiences. Writing further of this trying ordeal, Stanley says:

“On the fifth day, having distributed all the stock of flour in camp, and having killed the only goat we possessed, I was compelled to open the officers’ provision boxes and take a pound pot of butter, with two cupfuls of my flour, to make an imitation gruel, there being nothing else save tea, coffee, sugar, and a pot of sage in the boxes. In the afternoon a boy died, and the condition of the majority of the rest was most disheartening. Some could not stand, falling down in the effort to do so. These constant sights acted on my nerves until I began to feel not only moral but physical sympathy, as though the weakness was contagious. Before night a Madi carrier died. The last of our Somalis gave signs of collapse, and the few Soudanese with us were scarcely able to move. When the morning of the sixth day dawned, we made broth with the usual pot of butter, an abundance of water, a pot of condensed milk, and a cupful of flour for 130 people. The chiefs and Bonny were called to a council. At my suggesting a reverse to the foragers of such a nature as to exclude our men from returning with news of the disaster, they were altogether unable to comprehend such a possibility. They believed it possible that these 150 men were searching for food, without which they would not return. They were then asked to consider the supposition that they were five days searching food, and they had lost the road, perhaps, or, having no white leader, had scattered to shoot goats, and had entirely forgotten their starving friends and brothers in the camp. What would be the state of the 130 people five days hence? Bonny offered to stay with ten men in the camp if I provided ten days’ food for each person, while I would set out to search for the missing men. Food to make a light cupful of gruel for ten men for ten days was not difficult to procure, but the sick and feeble remaining must starve unless I met with good fortune; and accordingly a stone of buttermilk, flour, and biscuits were prepared and handed over to the charge of Bonny. In the afternoon of the seventh day we mustered everybody, besides the garrison of the camp, ten men. Sadi, a Manyema chief, surrendered fourteen of his men to their doom. Kibboboras, another chief, abandoned his brother; and Fundi, another Manyema chief, left one of his wives and her little boy. We left twenty-six feeble and sick wretches already past all hope unless food could be brought them within twenty-four hours. In a cheery tone, though my heart was never heavier, I told the forty-three hunger-bitten people that I was going back to hunt for the missing men. We traveled nine miles that afternoon, having passed several dead people on the road, and early on the eighth day of their absence from camp we met them marching in an easy fashion, but when we were met the pace was altered, so that in twenty-six hours from leaving Starvation Camp we were back with a cheery abundance around us of gruel and porridge, boiling bananas, boiling plantains, roasting meat, and simmering soup. This had been my nearest approach to absolute starvation in all my African experience. Altogether twenty-one persons succumbed in this dreadful camp.”

After twelve days journey the party on November 12th, reached Ibwiri. The Arab devastation, which had reached within a few miles of Ibwiri, was so thorough that not a native hut was left standing between Urgarrava and Ibwiri. What the Arabs did not destroy the elephants destroyed, turning the whole region into a horrible wilderness.

Stanley continues: – “Our sufferings terminated at Ibwiri. We were beyond the reach of destroyers. We were on virgin soil, in a populous region, abounding with food. We, ourselves, were mere skeletons – reduced in number from 289 to but little more than half that number. Hitherto our people were skeptical of what we told them. The suffering had been so awful, the calamities so numerous, and the forests so endless, that they refused to believe that by and by we would see plains and cattle, the Nyanza, and Emin Pasha. They had turned a deaf ear to our prayers and entreaties for, driven by hunger and suffering, they sold their rifles and equipments for ears of Indian corn, deserted with their ammunition and became generally demoralized. Perceiving that mild punishment would be of no avail, I resorted to the death penalty, and two of the worst cases were hanged in the presence of all. We halted 13 days at Ibwiri, revelling on fowls, goats, bananas, corn, yams, etc. The supplies were inexhaustible and our people glutted themselves with such effect that our force increased to 173 sleek robust men – one had been killed with an arrow.”

On November 24th the expedition started for Albert Nyanza, 126 miles distant. Given food, the distance seemed nothing. On December 1st an open country was sighted from the top of a ridge which was named Mt. Pisgah. On the 5th the plains were reached and the deadly, gloomy forest left behind. The light of day now beamed all around, after 160 days of travel. They thought they had never seen grass so green or a country so lovely. The men could not contain themselves but leaped and yelled for joy, and even raced over the ground with their heavy burdens.

On Nov. 9, 1887, Stanley says, “We entered the country of the powerful Chief Mazamboni. The villages were scattered so thickly that no road except through them could be found. The natives sighted us, but we were prepared. We seized a hill as soon as we arrived in the center of a mass of villages, and built a zareba as fast as billhooks could cut the brushwood. The war cries were terrible from hill to hill, pealing across the intervening valleys. The people gathered in hundreds at every point, war horns and drums announcing the struggle. After a slight skirmish, ending in our capture of a cow, the first beef we had tasted since we left the ocean, the night passed peacefully, both sides preparing for the morrow.

“Here Mr. Stanley narrates how negotiations with natives failed, Mazamboni declining a peace offering, and how a detachment of 40 persons, led by Lieutenant Stairs, and another of 30, under command of Mr. Jephson, with sharpshooters, left the zareba and assaulted and carried the villages, driving the natives into a general rout. The march was resumed on the 12th and here were constant little fights.

“On the afternoon of the 13th,” says Mr. Stanley, “we sighted the Nyanza, with Kavalli, the objective point of the expedition. Six miles off I had told the men to prepare to see the Nyanza. They murmured and doubted, saying, “Why does the master continually talk this way? Nyanza indeed.” When they saw the Nyanza below them, many came to kiss my hands. We were now at an altitude of 5,200 feet above the sea, with the Albert Nyanza 2,900 feet below, in one degree twenty minutes. The south end of the Nyanza lay largely mapped for about six miles south of this position and right across to the eastern shore. Every dent in its low, flat shore was visible, and traced like a silver snake on the dark ground was the tributary Lanilki, flowing into the Albert Nyanza from the south-west.

“After a short halt to enjoy the prospect, we commenced the rugged and stony descent. Before the rear guard had descended 100 feet the natives from the plateau poured after them, keeping the rear guard busy until within a few hundred feet of the Nyanza plain. We camped at the foot of the plateau wall, the aneroids reading 2,500 feet above the sea level. A night attack was made, but the sentries sufficed to drive our assailants off.

“We afterwards approached the village of Kakongo, situated at the south-west corner of Albert Lake. Three hours were spent by us in attempting to make friends, but we signally failed. They would not allow us to go to the lake, because we might frighten their cattle. They would not exchange the blood of brotherhood, because they never heard of any good people coming from the west side of the lake. They would not accept any present from us, because they did not know who we were; but they would give us water to drink, and would show us the road up to Nyam-Sassi. From these singular people we learned that they had heard that there was a white man at Unyoro, but they had never heard of any white men being on the west side, nor had they ever seen any steamers on the lake. There was no excuse for quarrelling. The people were civil enough, but they did not want us near them. We therefore were shown the path and followed it for miles. We camped about half a mile from the lake, and then began to consider our position with the light thrown upon it by conversation with the Kakongo natives.”

But, now he was in more of a quandary than ever. The lake was before him, but no sign of Emin nor any of his officials. Could he have failed to hear of Stanley’s sacrifices in his behalf? The famished expedition looked in vain on that expanse of water for evidence of friendly flag or welcome steamer. It had left all its own boats behind, a distance of 190 miles, and was therefore helpless for further search. This should not be, and so with his accustomed heroism, Stanley resolved on a return march to Kilinga for boats. It was a hard, quick journey, occupying weeks, for the distance was great.

Writing of his fatigue and disappointment on his arrival at Lake Albert Nyanza, Stanley says:

“My couriers from Zanzibar had evidently not arrived, or Emin Pasha, with his two steamers, would have paid the south-west side of the lake a visit to prepare the natives for our coming. My boat was at Kilingalonga, 190 miles distant, and there was no canoe obtainable. To seize a canoe without the excuse of a quarrel, my conscience would not permit. There was no tree anywhere of a size sufficient to make canoes. Wadelai was a terrible distance off for an expedition so reduced. We had used five cases of cartridges in five days fighting on the plain.

“A month of such fighting must exhaust our stock. There was no plan suggested that was feasible, except to retreat to Ibwiri, build a fort, send the party back to Kalingalonga for a boat, store up every load in the fort not conveyable, leave a garrison in the fort to hold it, march back to Albert Lake, and send a boat in search of Emin Pasha. This was the plan which, after lengthy discussions with the officers, I resolved upon.”

The most pathetic part of this eventful history is the fact that Emin had really received Stanley’s messages, had been surprised at his coming to rescue him, and had made an effort to meet him on some likely point on the lake, but having failed had returned to his southern capital, Wadelai, on the Nile outlet of the lake.

During the time so spent by the expedition the outside world was filled with rumors of the death of Stanley, either by disease or at the hands of the natives. These reports would always be followed by some favorable report from the expedition, not authentic, but enough to give hope that the hardy explorers were safe and continuing their way across the continent. Occasionally, too, during the first part of the trip, couriers would arrive at the coast from Stanley announcing progress, but, as they advanced, no further communications were received, and the expedition was swallowed up in the jungles and vast forests of Central Africa.

Putting his plans for a return into execution, Stanley had to fight his way from the shores of the lake to the top of the plateau, for the Kakongo natives were determined he should not pass back the way he had come. He was victorious with a loss of one man killed and one wounded. The plateau gained, he plunged westward by forced marches, and by January 7, 1888, was back at Ibwiri. After a few days rest there, he dispatched Lieut. Stairs with 100 men to Kilinga to bring up the boats. On his return with the boats, he was sent to Ugarrowas to bring up the convalescents. Stanley now fell sick and only recovered after a month of careful nursing.

It was now April 2d, and he again started for the lake, accompanied by Jephson and Parke, Nelson being left in command at the post, now Fort Bodo, with a garrison of 43 men. On April 26, he was again in Mazamboni’s country, who, after much solicitation was induced to make blood brotherhood with Stanley. Strange to say every other chief as far as the lake followed his example, and every difficulty was removed. Food was supplied in abundance and gratis, and the gracious natives, expert in the art of hut building, prepared in advance the necessary shelter for night.

When within a day’s march of the lake, natives came up from Kavalli saying that a white man had given their chief a note done up in a black packet and that they would lead Stanley to him if he would follow. He replied, “he would not only follow but make them rich,” for he did not doubt that the white man was Emin Pasha. The next day’s march brought them to Chief Kavalli, who handed Stanley a note from Emin Pasha done up in black American oil cloth. It was to the effect that as there had been a native rumor that a white man had been seen at the south end of the lake, he (Emin) had gone thither in a steamer but had been unable to obtain reliable information. The note further begged Stanley to remain where he was till Emin could communicate with him.

The next day, April 23d, Stanley sent Jephson with a strong force to take the boat of the expedition to Lake Nyanza. On the 26th the boat crew sited Mawa Station, the southernmost station in Emin’s boundaries. There Jephson was hospitably received by the Egyptian garrison. On April 29th, Stanley and his party again reached the bivouac ground on the plateau overlooking the lake, where they had encamped before, and at 5 P.M., they sighted the Khedive steamer, seven miles away on the lake, steaming up towards them. By 7 P.M., the steamer arrived opposite the camp, and shortly afterwards, Emin Pasha, Signor Carati and Jephson came to Stanley’s head-quarters where they were heartily welcomed. The next day Stanley moved his camp to a better place, three miles above Nyamsassi, and Emin also moved his camp thither. The two leaders were together, in frequent consultation, till May 25th. The Pasha was surrounded by two battalions of regulars, besides a respectable force of irregulars, sailors, artisans, clerks and servants. How different, in many respects, was the situation from what Stanley expected!

He found Emin Pasha in the midst of plenty and unwilling to be rescued. He found his own forces jaded with travel, on the eve of starvation, and anxious to be rescued. He found, moreover, a prince in his own equatorial empire, who looked with jealous eyes on the relief expedition. In one of his (Emin’s) letters dated April 17, 1888, he declared that he had no intention to give up his work in Africa and had determined to await Stanley’s coming at Wadelai. In another letter he expressed himself very decidedly to the effect that he did not wish his province to come under English suzerainty. He was evidently of the opinion that the British Government in sending out Stanley had its eyes on his province with a view to eventually incorporating it with the Soudan, should the Anglo-Egyptians succeed in re-establishing authority at Khartoum. The same idea gradually forced itself to acceptance in Europe, and, as we know, the German Government later became no less anxious to get into communication with Emin in the hope of preventing him from making any arrangement with England.

It was not therefore such a meeting as took place years before between Stanley and Livingstone, at Ujiji on the banks of Lake Tanganyika.

Long interviews followed which did not impress Stanley with the fact that his expedition was to be a success, so far as getting Emin out of the country was concerned. “Altogether,” said Emin, “if I consent to go away from here we shall have 8000 people with us.” His principal desire seemed to be that Stanley should relieve him of about 100 of his Egyptian soldiers, with their women and children. He said he was extremely doubtful of the loyalty of the first and second battalions. It was this interview which Stanley announced to the world of civilization by way of the Congo route. The situation was most delicate. He could not urge upon the ruler of an empire to flee from his dominions, he could not even ask one who seemed to be in the midst of peace and plenty, to desert them for the hardships of a long journey to the coast. He could only impress on him in a modest way the objects of the expedition and the propriety of his taking advantage of its presence to effect an escape from dangers which were thickening every hour, and which must ere long take shape in a descent upon him by the ever increasing hordes of the Mahdi.

These representations were of no avail and Stanley left him on May 25th, leaving with him Jephson and five of his carriers. In return Emin gave Stanley 105 of his regular Mahdi native porters. In fourteen days Stanley was back at Fort Bodo, where he found Captain Nelson and Lieut. Stairs. The latter had come up from Ugarrowas, twenty-two days after Stanley had set out for the lake, bringing along, alas! only 16 out of 56 men. All the rest had perished on the journey. Stairs brought along the news that Stanley’s 20 couriers, by whom he had sent word to Barttelot at Yambuna, had passed Ugarrowas on their way to their destination, on March 16th. Fort Bodo was in excellent condition on Stanley’s arrival, and enough ground had been placed under cultivation to insure a sufficient amount of corn for food.

On June 16th he left Fort Bodo with 111 Zanzibaris and 101 of Emin’s Soudanese, for Kilonga, where he arrived on June 24th. Pushing on, he arrived at Ugarrowas on July 19th. While this backward journey was performed rapidly and without serious hindrance, it was to end in sorrow. Ugarrowas was found deserted, its occupants having gathered as much ivory as they could, and passed down the river in company with Stanley’s couriers. Stanley made haste to follow, and on August 10th came up with the Ugarrowa people in a flotilla of 57 canoes. His couriers, now reduced to 17 in number, related awful stories of hair-breadth escapes and tragic scenes. Besides the three which had been slain, two were down with wounds, and all bore scars of arrow wounds.

A week later they were all down to Bunalyla, where Stanley met his friend, Dr. Bonney, at the stockade, and inquired for Major Barttelot, who, it will be recollected, was left in charge of Stanley’s rear guard at Yambuna, with orders to secure food and carriers from Tippoo Tib. Stanley asked:

“Well, my dear Bonney where’s the Major?”

“He is dead, sir; shot by a Manyuema, about a month ago,” replied Bonney.

“Good God,” I cried, “and Jamieson!”

“He has gone to Stanley Falls to try to get more men from Tippoo Tib.”

“And Troup?”

“Troup has gone home invalided.”

“Well, were is Ward?”

“Ward is at Bangala.”

“Heaven alive! Then you are the only one here?”

“Yes, sir.”

Without loss of further time, Stanley hastened down to Yambuna, only to find the sad story too, too, true. Barttelot and his entire caravan had been destroyed, and the officers left in charge of the station had fled panic stricken down the river with all the supplies of the station. Stanley complained greatly of this desertion, yet proceeded to do the best he could to re-provision the fort and recuperate his men. He remained long enough to study the situation, and it was sad in the extreme as it gradually unfolded in his mind. His governor of Stanley Falls and the Congo beyond, the Arab Tippoo Tib, was evidently working in the interest of the Mahdi, in violation of his oath and most solemn covenants. Though proof of his open hostility was wanting, Stanley strongly suspected him of conspiring to bring about the massacre of Barttelot’s caravan, in July, 1888, with a view of preventing his (Stanley’s) return to the Albert Nyanza. Evidence of a wide spread conspiracy to rid the entire equatorial section of its European occupants was also found in the fact that the destruction of Barttelot’s caravan ante-dated but a month the uprising in Emin Pasha’s provinces, the desertion of him by his army and his deposition from power and final imprisonment, the details of which are given hereafter.

Yet with these fierce fires of conspiracy crackling about him in the depths of the African forest, Stanley thought more of others than himself. He resolved to hasten back to the lake to rescue Emin from a danger which must by this time have become plain to him, even if it had not already crushed him. He worked his force by relays till the Ituri ferry was reached. Here he expected to hear from Emin. Disappointment increased his fears, and he resolved to rid himself of all incumbrance and resort to forced marches. He therefore established a camp at the Ituri ferry and left Stairs in command with 124 people. With the rest he forced his way across the plains, the natives being the same as those with which he had engaged in desperate conflict on previous journeys. But now they were quite changed in spirit, and instead of offering him opposition they were anxious to make blood brotherhood with him. They even constructed the huts of his camps, and brought food, fuel and water as soon as the sites were pitched upon.

With all this kindness and sociability of the natives, not a word could be gathered from them of the state of affairs on the Albert Nyanza. At length, January 16, 1889, at a station called Gaviras, a message was received from Kavalli, on the south-west side of the lake. It was a letter from Jephson, with two confirmatory notes from Emin, and conveyed the startling intelligence, that a rebellion had broken out, in the previous August, in Emin’s dominions, and that the Pasha had been made a prisoner. The rebellion had been gotten up by some half dozen of the Egyptian officers, and had been augmented by the soldiers at Laboré, though those of other stations had remained faithful. Then the letter goes on to warn Stanley to be careful on his arrival at Kavalli, and continues in the following pitiful strain:

“When the Pasha and I were on our way to Regaf two men – one an officer, Abdul Voal Effendi, and the other a clerk – went about and told the people they had seen you, and that you were only an adventurer, and had not come from Egypt; that the letters you had brought from the Khedive and Nubar were forgeries; that it was untrue Khartoum had fallen; and that the Pasha and you had made a plot to take them, their wives and their children out of the country and hand them over as slaves to the English. Such words in an ignorant, fanatical country like this acted like fire among the people, and the result was a general rebellion and we were made prisoners.

“The rebels then collected the officers from the different stations and held a large meeting here to determine what measures they should take, and all those who did not join the movement were so insulted and abused that they were obliged for their own safety to acquiesce in what was done: The Pasha was deposed and those officers suspected of being friendly to him were removed from their posts, and those friendly to the rebels were put in their places. It was decided to take the Pasha as a prisoner to Regaf, and some of the worst rebels were even in for putting him in irons. But the officers were afraid to put their plans into execution, as the soldiers said they would never permit any one to lay a hand on him. Plans were also made to entrap you when you returned and strip you of all you had.

“Things were in this condition when we were startled by the news that the Mahdi’s people had arrived at Lado with three steamers and nine sandals and nuggers, and had established themselves on the site of the old station. Omar Sali, their general, sent up three peacock dervishes with a letter to the Pasha demanding the instant surrender of the country. The rebel officers seized them and put them into prison, and decided on war. After a few days the Mahdists attacked and captured Regaf, killing five officers and numbers of soldiers and taking many women and children prisoners, and all the stores and ammunition in the station were lost.

“The result of this was a general stampede of the people from the stations of Biddon Kirri and Muggi, who fled with their women and children to Labore, abandoning almost everything. At Kirri the ammunition was abandoned and was seized by natives. The Pasha reckons that the Mahdists number about 1500. The officers and a large number of soldiers have returned to Muggi and intend to make a stand against the Mahdists.

“Our position here is extremely unpleasant, for since the rebellion all is chaos and confusion. There is no head and half-a-dozen conflicting orders are given every day, and no one obeys. The rebel officers are wholly unable to control the soldiers. The Boris have joined the Mahdists. If they come down here with a rush, nothing can save us. The officers are all frightened at what has taken place and are anxiously awaiting your arrival, and desire to leave the country with you, for they are now really persuaded that Khartoum has fallen, and that you have come from the Khedive. We are like rats in a trap. They will neither let us act nor retire, and I fear, unless you come very soon, you will be too late, and our fate will be like that of the rest of the garrisons of the Soudan. Had this rebellion not happened, the Pasha could have kept the Mahdists in check some time, but now he is powerless to act.

“I would suggest, on your arrival at Kavallis, that you write a letter in Arabic to Shukri Aga, chief of the Mswa Station, telling him of your arrival, and telling him that you wished to see the Pasha and myself. Write also to the Pasha or myself, telling us what number of men you have with you. It would, perhaps, be better to write me, as a letter to him might be confiscated. Neither the Pasha nor myself think there is the slightest danger now of any attempt to capture you, for the people are now fully persuaded that you are come from Egypt, and they look to you to get them out of their difficulties. Still it would be well for you to make your camp strong. If we are not able to get out of the country, please remember me to my friends, etc. Yours faithfully, Jephson.”

To this letter were appended two postscripts, the first dated November 24th, 1888. It ran:

“Shortly after I had written you, the soldiers were led by their officers to attempt to retake Regaf, but the Mahdists defended it, and killed six officers and a large number of soldiers. Among the officers killed were some of the Pasha’s worst enemies. The soldiers in all the stations were so panic-stricken and angry at what happened that they declared they would not attempt to fight unless the Pasha was set at liberty. So the rebel officers were obliged to free him and send him to Wadilai, where he is free to do as he pleases; but at present he has not resumed authority in the country. He is, I believe, by no means anxious to do so. We hope in a few days to be at Tunguru Station, on the lake, two days’ steamer from Nsabe, and I trust when we hear of your arrival that the Pasha himself will be able to come down with me to see you. We hear that the Mahdists sent steamers down to Khartoum for reinforcements. If so, they cannot be up here for another six weeks. If they come up here with reinforcements, it will be all up with us, for the soldiers will never stand against them, and it will be a mere walk-over. Every one is anxiously looking for your arrival, for the coming of the Mahdists has completely cowed them. We may just manage to get out if you do not come later than the end of December, but it is entirely impossible to foresee what will happen.”

Jephson in a second postscript, dated December 18th, says:

“Mogo, the messenger, not having started, I send a second postscript. We were not at Tunguru on November 25th. The Mahdists surrounded Duffle Station and besieged it for four days. The soldiers, of whom there were about 500, managed to repulse them, and they retired to Regaf, their headquarters, as they have sent down to Khartoum for reinforcements, and doubtless will attack again when strengthened. In our flight from Wadelai the officers requested me to destroy our boats and the advances. I therefore broke it up. Duffle is being renovated as fast as possible. The Pasha is unable to move hand or foot, as there is still a very strong party against him, and his officers no longer in immediate fear of the Mahdi. Do not on any account come down to us at my former camp on the lake near Kavalli Island, but make your camp at Kavalli, on the plateau above. Send a letter directly you arrive there, and as soon as we hear of your arrival I will come to you. Will not disguise facts from you that you will have a difficult and dangerous work before you in dealing with the Pasha’s people. I trust you will arrive before the Mahdists are reinforced, or our case will be desperate. Yours faithfully, (Signed) Jephson.”

Imagine the effect of such word as this on one who stood almost alone in the midst of a continent, without power to face the disciplined forces of the Mahdi, and with no open line of retreat. The best he could do for the moment was write an assuring letter and dispatch it to the Nyanza as quickly as possible, pushing on after it to Kavalli.

With Stanley, to resolve was to act. He accordingly sent word to Jephson that he need have no anxiety on his (Stanley’s) account for he was in the midst of natives who were not only friendly but ready to fight for him; that on his arrival at Kavalli he would be in a condition to rescue Emin and his attendants; and that every inducement must be brought to bear on him to come southward on the lake with his command, if not still held prisoners.

On Stanley’s arrival at Kavalli, he again wrote, under date of January 18th, 1889. And this letter, together with those which followed, reveals a situation quite as embarrassing as the former one had been, for still Emin seemed to be unaware of his danger. Stanley’s letter read:

“KAVALLI, January 18, 3 o’clock P.M. – My dear Jephson: I now send thirty rifles and three Kavalli men down to the lake with my letters with my urgent instructions that a canoe should be sent off and the bearers be rewarded. I may be able to stay longer than six days here, perhaps ten days. I will do my best to prolong my stay until you arrive without rupturing the peace.

“Our people have a good store of beads and couriers cloth, and I notice that the natives trade very readily, which will assist Kavalli’s resources should he get uneasy under our prolonged visit. Should we get out of this trouble I am his most devoted servant and friend but if he hesitates again I shall be plunged in wonder and perplexity. I could save a dozen Pashas if they were willing to be saved. I would go on my knees and implore the Pasha to be sensible of his own case. He is wise enough in all things else, even for his own interests. Be kind and good to him for his many virtues, but do not you be drawn into the fatal fascination the Soudan territory seems to have for all Europeans in late years. As they touch its ground they seem to be drawn into a whirlpool which sucks them in and covers them with its waves. The only way to avoid it is to blindly, devotedly, and unquestioningly obey all orders from the outside. The Committee said:

“Relieve Emin with this ammunition. If he wishes to come out the ammunition will enable to do so. If he elects to stay it will be of service to him. The Khedive said the same thing and added that if the Pasha and his officers wished to stay, they could do so on their own responsibility. Sir Evelin Baring said the same thing in clear, decided words, and here I am after 4,100 miles travel with the last instalment of relief. Let him who is authorized to take it, take it and come. I am ready to lend him all my strength and will assist him, but this time there must be no hesitation, but positive yea or nay, and home we go. Yours sincerely, Stanley.”

In the course of his correspondence Mr. Stanley says: “On February 6th Jephson arrived in the afternoon at our camp at Kavalli. I was startled to hear Jephson, in plain, undoubting words, say: “Sentiment is the Pasha’s worst enemy. No one keeps Emin back but Emin himself.” This is the summary of what Jephson learned during the nine months from May 25th, 1888, to February 6th, 1889. I gathered sufficient from Jephson’s verbal report to conclude that during nine months neither the Pasha, Casati, nor any man in the province had arrived nearer any other conclusion than what was told us ten months before. However, the diversion in our favor created by the Mahdists’ invasion and the dreadful slaughter they made of all they met inspired us with hope that we could get a definite answer at last. Though Jephson could only reply: ‘I really can’t tell you what the Pasha means to do. He says he wishes to go away, but will not move. It is impossible to say what any man will do. Perhaps another advance by the Mahdists will send them all pell-mell towards you, to be again irresolute and requiring several weeks’ rest.’”

Stanley next describes how he had already sent orders to mass the whole of his forces ready for contingencies. He also speaks of the suggestions he made to Emin as to the best means of joining him, insisting upon something definite, otherwise it would be his (Stanley’s) duty to destroy the ammunition and march homeward.

It seems that Stanley’s letters were beginning to have weight with Emin, and that he was coming to think it cruel to subject his followers to further danger, whatever opinion he entertained of his own safety. So on the morning of February 13th, 1889, Stanley was rejoiced to receive in his camp on the plateau above Kavalli, at the hands of a native courier, a letter from Emin Pasha himself, which announced his arrival at Kavalli. But let the letter speak for itself:

“Sir: In answer to your letter of the 7th inst., I have the honor to inform you that yesterday I arrived here with my two steamers, carrying a first lot of people desirous to leave this country under your escort. As soon as I have arranged for a cover for my people, the steamers have to start for Mswa Station to bring on another lot of people. Awaiting transport with me are some twelve officers, anxious to see you, and only forty soldiers. They have come under my orders to request you to give them some time to bring their brothers from Wadelai, and I promised them to do my best to assist them. Things having to some extent now changed, you will be able to make them undergo whatever conditions you see fit to impose upon them. To arrange these I shall start from here with officers for your camp, after having provided for the camp, and if you send carriers I could avail me of some of them. I hope sincerely that the great difficulties you had to undergo and the great sacrifices made by your expedition on its way to assist us may be rewarded by full success in bringing out my people. The wave of insanity which overran the country has subsided, and of such people as are now coming with me we may be sure. Permit me to express once more my cordial thanks for whatever you have done for us.

“Yours, Emin.”

Thus the two heroes of African adventure came together on the west shore of the lake which marked the southern boundary of Emin Pasha’s influence. It was a trying meeting for both. Stanley was firm in his views and true to the objects of his mission. Emin was still divided between his desire to save all of his followers who were willing to go, and his sense of obligation to those who chose to remain behind. In a modified form his convictions, expressed in April, 1887, still held. He then said:

“The work that Gordon paid for with his blood I will strive to carry on, if not with his energy and genius, still according to his intentions and in his spirit. When my lamented chief placed the government of this country in my hands, he wrote to me: “I appoint you for civilization and progress sake.” I have done my best to justify the trust he had in me, and that I have to some extent been successful and have won the confidence of the natives is proved by the fact that I and my handful of people have held our own up to the present day in the midst of hundreds of thousands of natives. I remain here as the last and only representative of Gordon’s staff. It therefore falls to me, and is my bounden duty, to follow up the road he showed us. Sooner or later a bright future must dawn for these countries; sooner or later these people will be drawn into the circle of the ever advancing civilized world. For twelve long years have I striven and toiled, and sown the seeds for future harvest – laid the foundation stones for future buildings. Shall I now give up the work because a way may soon open to the coast? never!”

As if anticipating the end, Stanley had already begun to call in the detachments of his expedition. On February 18th Lieut. Stairs arrived at Kavalli with his strong column from the remote Ituri. Meanwhile negotiations were going on daily with Emin. The force he had brought up the lake consisted of himself, Selim Bey, seven other officers, and sixty-five people. Selim Bey became the spokesman for both Stanley and Emin. He had just achieved a victory over the Madhi’s forces by recapturing Duffle, killing 250 of the enemy and lifting the restraints from Emin, himself. At length, on February 18th, the date of the arrival of Lieut. Stairs, Selim, at the head of a deputation, announced to Stanley a request on the part of Emin that he (Stanley) allow all the equatorial troops and their families to assemble at Kavalli.

In reply Stanley explained fully the object of his expedition, and offered to remain at Kavalli for a reasonable time in order to give Emin’s forces an opportunity to join him. Selim and his deputation retired satisfied, saying they would proceed at once to Wadelai and begin the work of transportation. They started on February 26th. On the 27th, Emin returned to Kavalli with his little daughter, Ferida, and a caravan of 144 men. He and Stanley agreed that twenty days would be a reasonable time in which to gather all the people and movables at Kavalli. These twenty days were necessary to Stanley’s comfort, too, for much sickness had prevailed among his forces, and now, under the ministrations of Surgeon Parke, his active force had been raised from 200 to 280 men.

The refugees from Wadelai soon began to pour into Kavalli. They were a mixture of soldiers, their wives and children, loaded with promiscuous camp effects, most of which was practically rubbish, entailing great labor in handling, and nearly all of which would have to be abandoned on the subsequent march. Stanley saw the result of all this accumulation and on March 16th issued orders to stop bringing the stuff to his camp. But 1355 loads had already arrived, enough to embarrass the march of ten times such a force as was then in camp. At this time Stanley was gratified by a report from Selim announcing that the rebellious soldiers and officers at Wadelai, and all of the people there, were anxious to depart for Egypt under his escort. But while this was true of Wadelai, it was not true of Kavalli, for Stanley discovered a conspiracy among the promiscuous gathering there, which took the shape of a concerted attempt on the part of Emin’s Egyptian soldiers to steal the arms of Stanley’s Zanzibaris, and stir up general mutiny. Knowing that while Emin had been praised for personal bravery and at the same time condemned for laxity of discipline, and seeing that such a state of affairs would be fatal, both in getting a start and in prosecuting a long march, Stanley decided on immediate and resolute action. Forming his own men, armed with rifles, into a square on the plateau, he ordered all of the Pasha’s people into it. Those who refused to go, he arrested and forced in, or had them placed in irons and flogged. They were then questioned as to their knowledge of the conspiracy, but all denied having had anything to do with it. Then all who desired to accompany Stanley were asked by Emin to stand aside. They were told that the condition upon which they could go was that of perfect obedience to Stanley’s orders as their leader, and that extermination would speedily follow the discovery of any further tricks. They promised a most religious obedience. This muster revealed the fact that Emin’s followers numbered 600 people, necessitating the enlistment of 350 new carriers. The entire number now ready for the march was 1500 persons.

But on May 7th, Stanley received an intercepted letter from Selim Bey which stated that the rebels at Wadelai had changed their mind, risen in mutiny, and robbed the loyal forces of all their ammunition. They also asked with the greatest effrontery that Stanley be called before them and questioned as to his future objects before they consented to go with him. The letter in addition contained hints of a plot to attack and capture his expedition in case he started without giving them satisfaction. Instantly Stanley assembled all the officers in his camp and asked them if they felt he would be justified in remaining there after April 10th. They all replied in the negative. Going to Emin, he said, “There Pasha, you have your answer. We march on the 10th.” Emin asked whether they could acquit him in their consciences for abandoning his people, alluding to those who had not yet arrived from Wadelai. Stanley replied that they could most certainly do so, as to all who had not arrived by the 10th. All of Stanley’s accounts of this part of his expedition bear evidence of trouble with Emin. He still trusted the rebellious soldiers, even those who had agreed to leave for Egypt. He mistrusted Stanley’s ability to reach Zanzibar with so numerous a caravan, on account of a lack of food. He had left many valuable servants behind, whom he desired to take along, but he said, “They are unwilling to accompany me.” This opened Stanley’s eyes. He says, “It now became clear that the Pasha had lost his authority at Wadelai, however obstinately he clung to his belief in his forces there.”

May 10th came and Stanley started with his immense expedition for the sea, his objective being Zanzibar, on the east coast of Africa. He had promised Emin to march slowly for a few days in order to give Selim, with such servants and stragglers as he might bring along, an opportunity to overtake them, but he never saw them more. To pursue a route eastward from Albert Nyanza was impracticable, for the powerful Unyoro and Uganda tribes lay in that direction. These and other tribes had been infected with the Mahdi spirit, and would therefore prove hostile. He therefore chose a route in a southerly direction, till the extreme southern waters of Victoria Nyanza had been rounded, when he would be on the natural lines running from Zanzibar into the interior. Besides, this would bring him through nearly 400 miles of practically undiscovered country.

Zanzibar, the objective point of the journey, is on an island of the same name, twenty miles from the east coast of Africa, and in latitude 6° South. It is a Mohammedan town of 30,000 people, with many good houses and mosques. Though the soil is excellent and prolific of fruits and vegetables, the town depends for its prosperity on trade and commerce. When the slave trade was driven from the Atlantic coast of Africa, it found its way to the eastern, or Pacific coast, and flourished in a manner never before known. Zanzibar, always notorious as a slave depot, became the recognized headquarters of the horrid traffic, and rapidly rose to a position of great wealth and influence. Her slave market attracted the notice and excited the disgust and indignation of strangers of every creed and country. Nothing could be more revolting than sight of the Arabic purchasers of slaves examining the build, the eyes, the teeth, and all the physical qualities of the victims offered for sale in the marts. Tens of thousands of slaves were known to pass through Zanzibar annually on their way to various parts of Egypt and Turkey. On the appearance of British cruisers on the coast, with orders to capture and condemn all slave dhows, the Sultan of Turkey prohibited the traffic at Zanzibar. But this only diverted its course. The next step was to induce the Sultan to issue a general proclamation, prohibiting the trade in all places on the coast, under his authority. This was done in 1876. The result has been a considerable diminution of the infamous traffic, which can now only be carried on by a system of smuggling, which incurs much risk. Zanzibar is the most important starting point for travelers and missionaries destined for Central Africa, and is a depot for such supplies as may be needed from time to time.

From every point of view his route was well chosen. Skirting the Unyoro country, he fell under their displeasure and became the victim of a fierce attack, which he parried successfully. This opened his way for a considerable distance along the ranges of mountains which pass under the general name of the Baleggas These mountains rise to the immense height of 18,000 to 19,000 feet, and their summits are capped with snow. The huts of the natives were visible on their sides at altitudes of 8,000 feet. During their nineteen marches along the base of these ranges, their severest obstacle was the Semliki river, a bold stream, 100 yards wide, whose crossing was rendered doubly difficult by the Warasmas natives. They formed an ambuscade, from which they delivered a single volley at the travelers, but fortunately it proved ineffective. It did not take much of a demonstration to put them to flight.

After a march of 113 days the southern waters of Victoria Nyanza were reached. From this point Stanley sent letters to the coast stating that his objective was now Mpwapwa, 230 miles inland, whither provisions should be sent. This was done, and an armed escort was furnished him by German officials thence to the coast, at Bagamoyo, opposite Zanzibar, where the expedition arrived about December 1, 1889. Thence steamer was taken to Zanzibar, where the hero of the expedition, together with Emin Pasha, and all the officials, were received with open arms, fetes and acclamations. Telegrams of congratulations poured in from crowned heads, and all parts of the world. A sample from Queen Victoria types them all. London, December 12th:

“My thoughts are after you and your brave followers, whose hardships and dangers are at an end. I again congratulate you all, including the Zanzibaris, who displayed such devotion and fortitude during your marvelous expedition. I trust Emin Pasha is making favorable progress.”

One drawback to all these exultations at Zanzibar was the fact that Emin Pasha, after escaping all the tribulations of the wilderness, had fallen from the piazza of his hotel at Bagamoyo, on December 5th, and received injuries of an alarming nature. The sad announcement of this clouded the occasion somewhat, and gave a tone of melancholy to what would have been unmixed gratulation.

In reply to a cablegram from the Emperor of Germany, Stanley said, December 7th:

“Imperator et rex. My expedition has now reached its end. I have had the honor to be hospitably entertained by Major Weismann and other of your Majesty’s officers under him. Since arriving from Mpwapwa our travels have come to a successful conclusion. We have been taken across from Bagamoyo to Zanzibar by your Majesty’s ships Sperber and Schwalbe, and all honors coupled with great affability, have been accorded us. I gratefully remember the hospitality and princely affability extended to me at Potsdam; and profoundly impressed with your Majesty’s condescension, kindness and gracious welcome. With a full and sincere heart I exclaim, long live the noble Emperor William.”

And writing for the general public, he says:

“Over and above the happy ending of our appointed duties, we have not been unfortunate in geographical discoveries. The Aruwimi is now known from its source to its bourne. The great Congo forest, covering as large an area as France and the Iberian Peninsula, we can now certify to be an absolute fact. The Mountains of the Moon this time, beyond the least doubt, have been located, and Ruwenzori, “The Cloud King” robed in eternal snow, has been seen and its flanks explored, and some of its shoulders ascended, Mounts Gordon Bennett and Mackinnon cones being but giant sentries warding off the approach to the inner area of ‘The Cloud King.’

“On the south-east of the range the connection between Albert Edward Nyanza and the Albert Nyanza has been discovered, and the extent of the former lake is now known for the first time. Range after range of mountains has been traversed, separated by such tracts of pasture land as would make your cowboys out West mad with envy.

“And right under the burning Equator we have fed on blackberries and bilberries, and quenched our thirst with crystal water fresh from snow beds. We have also been able to add nearly six thousand square miles of water to Victoria Nyanza.

“This has certainly been the most extraordinary expedition I have ever led into Africa. A veritable divinity seems to have hedged us while we journeyed. I say it with all reverence. It has impelled us whither it would, effected its own will, but nevertheless guided and protected us.

“I gave as much good will to my duties as the strictest honor would compel. My faith that the purity of my motive deserved success was firm, but I have been conscious that the issues of every effort were in other hands.

“Not one officer who was with me will forget the miseries he has endured, yet everyone that started from his home destined to march with the advance column and share its wonderful adventures is here to-day, safe, sound and well.

“This is not due to me. Lieutenant Stairs was pierced with a poisoned arrow like others, but others died and he lives. The poisoned tip came out from under his heart eighteen months after he was pierced. Jephson was four months a prisoner, with guards with loaded rifles around him. That they did not murder him is not due to me.

“These officers have had to wade through as many as seventeen streams and broad expanses of mud and swamp in a day. They have endured a sun that scorched whatever it touched. A multitude of impediments have ruffled their tempers and harassed their hours.

“They have been maddened with the agonies of fierce fevers. They have lived for months in an atmosphere that medical authority declared to be deadly. They have faced dangers every day, and their diet has been all through what legal serfs would have declared to be infamous and abominable, and yet they live.

“This is not due to me any more than the courage with which they have borne all that was imposed upon them by their surroundings or the cheery energy which they bestowed to their work or the hopeful voices which rang in the ears of a deafening multitude of blacks and urged the poor souls on to their goal.

“The vulgar will call it luck. Unbelievers will call it chance, but deep down in each heart remains the feeling, that of verity, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in common philosophy.

“I must be brief. Numbers of scenes crowd the memory.

“Could one but sum them into a picture it would have grand interest. The uncomplaining heroism of our dark followers, the brave manhood latent in such uncouth disguise, the tenderness we have seen issuing from nameless entities, the great love animating the ignoble, the sacrifice made by the unfortunate for one more unfortunate, the reverence we have noted in barbarians, who, even as ourselves, were inspired with nobleness and incentives to duty – of all these we would speak if we could, but I must end with, thanks be to God forever and ever!”

This letter is characteristic of Stanley. The hardships of his journey will fade from memory, but its successes will become historic. He has made the “Dark Continent” dark no longer. To him and his undaunted comrades the world owes a debt of gratitude it will be difficult to repay. The vast tracts of hitherto unknown wilderness through which he traveled will stimulate the enterprise of the pioneer, and the day is not far distant – within the lifetime of our children’s children, perhaps – when the shrill echo of the engine’s whistle will be heard on the rugged sides of snow capped mountains which Stanley has explored; when those illimitable forests will resound with the woodman’s axe, and when the law of commerce will change the tawny native from a savage into a self-respecting citizen. Barbarism will retire from its last stronghold on the planet, as the darkness disappears when the sun rises over the hilltops.

The dire distresses of his long journey, begun two and a-half years ago, are beyond the reach of language. He merely hints at some of them and leaves the rest to the imagination. We ponder his pathetic references to the sturdy loyalty of companions and followers, “maddened with the agonies of fierce fevers,” falling into their graves through the subtle poison with which the natives tipped their arrows and spears, bravely fighting their way through interminable swamps only to succumb at last, and the conviction steals over us that such a story has never been told before and may never be told again. He rescued Emin and his comrades, who were “in daily expectation of their doom,” then turned his face southward, made various and important explorations on his way, and at last came within speaking distance of the millions who followed him from the hour he entered the mouth of the Congo with a solicitude which no other man of our time has commanded.

It would not do to close any account of Stanley’s brilliant career without noting the fact that Emin Pasha, in one of his last published letters, written after he was beyond all danger from Mahdi vengeance and African climate, fully acknowledges the value of the aid sent him, and makes it clear that his hesitation at availing himself of it was due to that high sense of duty which had gained him the name of Emin, or the Faithful One. The last and most trusted of Gordon’s lieutenant’s, he regarded it as his “bounden duty” to follow up the road the General showed him; and it must have been a wrench to tear himself away from the life-work to which he had in a measure consecrated himself – to see the labors of years thrown away, and all his endeavors come to naught. But it could not be helped under the circumstances, and Emin, like many before him, has had to succumb to the force of fate. And so ends for the present the attempt to civilize the equatorial Provinces of Egypt. The ruler of Egypt has formally renounced them, Gordon is dead, and his trusted lieutenant has at last thrown up the sponge. It has been a strange and eventful story, in which the heroes have been of the race which has done so much for the regeneration of the dark places of the world. For a time the dark and turbid waves of ignorance, of slavery, and of cruelty will roll back over this part of the Dark Continent and pessimists will say that nothing more can be done. But it is only for a time. The day will surely come when the dreams of Gordon and of Emin will become actual realities; and when that time comes we may be sure that the name of Henry M. Stanley will be remembered and honored.

EGYPT AND THE NILE

The historic approach to “The Dark Continent” is by way of storied Egypt and its wonderful river, the Nile. In making this approach we must not forget the modern commercial value of the route from Zanzibar, pursued by Stanley (1871-72) while hastening to the rescue of Dr. Livingstone, the great English explorer, nor of that other, by way of the Congo, which bids fair to prove more direct and profitable than any thus far opened.

It was an enterprise as bold as any of those undertaken by hardy mariners to rescue their brother sailors who had met shipwreck while striving to unfold the icy mysteries which surround the North Pole. And, unlike many of these, it was successful. The two great explorers shook hands in October 1871, at Ujiji, on the banks of Lake Tanganyika, in the very heart of the great forest and river system of Africa, and amid dark skinned, but not unkind, strangers, who constitute a native people as peculiar in all respects as their natural surroundings.

We mention this because it was a great achievement in the name of humanity. Livingstone had started on this, his last, exploring tour in 1866, and had been practically lost in African wilds for nearly four years. But it was a greater achievement in the name of science and civilization, for it not only proved that “The Dark Continent” was more easily traversable than had been supposed, but it may be set down as the beginning of a new era in African exploration.

In all ages Africa has been a wonderland to the outside world. As the land of Cush, in Bible story, it was a mystery. It had no bounds, but was the unknown country off to the south of the world where dim legend had fixed the dark races to work out a destiny under the curse laid upon the unfortunate Ham.

Even after Egypt took somewhat definite meaning and shape in Hebrew geography as “The Land of Mizriam,” or the “Land of Ham,” all else in Africa was known vaguely as Ethiopia, marvellous in extent, filled with a people whose color supported the Hamitic tradition, wonderful in animal, vegetable and mineral resources. Thence came Sheba’s queen to see the splendors of Solomon’s court, and thence emanated the long line of Candaces who rivalled Cleopatra in wealth and beauty and far surpassed her in moral and patriotic traits of character.

In olden times the gateway to Africa was Egypt and the Nile. As an empire, history furnishes nothing so curious as Egypt; as a river nothing so interesting as her Nile. We may give to the civilization of China and India whatever date we please, yet that of Egypt will prove as old. And then what a difference in tracing it. That of China and India rests, with a few exceptions, on traditions or on broken crockery tablets and confused shreds of ruins. That of Egypt has a distinct tracery in monuments which have defied the years, each one of which is a book full of grand old stories. We can read to-day, by the light of huge pillar and queer hieroglyphic, back to Menes, the first Egyptian King, and to Abydos, the oldest Egyptian city, and though the period be 4500 years before Christ, scarcely a doubt arises about a leading fact. There was wealth then, art, civilization, empire, and one is ever tempted to ascribe to Egypt the motherhood of that civilization which the Hebrew, Indian, Etruscan, Persian, Roman, Greek and Christian, carved into other shapes.

Says the learned Dr. Henry Brugsch-Bey, who has spent thirty years among Egyptian monuments and who has mastered their inscriptions, “Literature, the arts, and the ideas of morality and religion, so far as we know, had their birth in the Nile valley. The alphabet, if it was constructed in Phœnicia, was conceived in Egypt, or developed from Egyptian characters. Language, doubtless, is as old as man, but the visible symbols of speech were first formulated from the hieroglyphic figures. The early architecture of the Greeks, the Doric, is a development of the Egyptian. Their vases, ewers, jewelry and other ornaments, are copies from the household luxury of the Pharaohs.”

The influence of Egypt on the Hebrew race has a profound interest for the whole Christian world. Let the time of Abraham be fixed at 1900 B.C. The Great Pyramid of Egypt, built by the first Pharaoh of the fourth dynasty, had then been standing for 1500 years. Egypt had a school of architecture and sculpture, a recorded literature, religious ceremonies, mathematics, astronomy, music, agriculture, scientific irrigation, the arts of war, ships, commerce, workers in gold, ivory, gems and glass, the appliances of luxury, the insignia of pride, the forms of government, the indices of law and justice, 2000 years before the “Father of the Faithful” was born, and longer still before the fierce Semitic tribes of the desert gave forth their Hebrew branch, and placed it in the track of authentic history.

In the Bible we read of the “God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob.” In the prayer of King Khunaten, dating long before any biblical writing, we find a clear recognition of one God, and a reaching out of the soul after him, embraced in a language without parallel for beauty of expression and grandeur of thought. Ages before the giving of the law on Sinai and the establishment of the Hebrew ceremonial worship, the “Book of the Dead,” with its high moral precepts, was in the possession of every educated Egyptian.

The Jews went out of Egypt with a pure Semitic blood, but with a modified Semitic language. They carried with them in the person of their great leader, Moses, “all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” This is shown by their architecture, religious customs, vestments, persistent kindred traditions. Both Moses and Jesus were of the race whose early lessons were received with stripes from Egyptian masters. The hieroglyphical writings of Egypt contained the possibilities of Genesis, the Iliad, the Psalms, the Æneid, the Inferno, and Paradise Lost. In the thought that planned the Hall of Columns upon the Nile, or sculptured the rock temple of Ammon, was involved the conception of Solomon’s Temple, the Parthenon, St. Peters, Westminster Abbey and every sacred fane of Europe and America.

Therefore, travel and exploration in this wonderful land, the remote but undoubted source of letters, morals, sciences and arts, are always interesting. Thebes, Memphis, Zoan-Tanis, Pitom, Tini, Philæ, Bubastis, Abydos, are but as fragments of mighty monuments, yet each discloses a story abounding in rich realities and more striking in its historic varieties than ever mortal man composed. But for the powerful people that made the Nile valley glow with empire, but for the tasteful people that made it beautiful with cities and monuments, but for the cultured people that wrote on stone and papyrus, were given to costly ceremonies, and who dreamed of the one God, the Israelites would have recrossed the Isthmus of Suez, or the Red Sea, without those germs of civilization, without those notions of Jehovah, which made them peculiar among their desert brethren, and saved them from absorption by the hardy tribes of Arabia and Syria.

In going from Europe across the Mediterranean to Egypt, you may think you can sail directly into one of the mouths of the Nile, and ascend that stream till the first cataract calls a halt. But neither of the great mouths of the Nile give good harbors. Like those of our own Mississippi, they are narrow and exposed by reason of the deposits they continually carry to the sea. The two main mouths of the Nile – it has had several outlets in the course of time – are over a hundred miles apart. The Western, or Rosetta, mouth was once the seat of a famed city from whose ruins were exhumed (1799) the historic “Rosetta Stone,” now in the British Museum. It was found on the site of a temple dedicated by Necho II. to Tum, “The Setting Sun;” and the inscription itself, written in three kinds of writing, Greek, hieroglyphic, and enchorial, or running hand, was a decree of the Egyptian Priests assembled in synod at Memphis in favor of Ptolomy Epiphanes, who had granted them some special favor. Its great value consisted in the fact that it afforded a safe key to the reading of the hieroglyphical writings found on all Egyptian monuments.

The Eastern, or Damietta, mouth of the Nile gives a better harbor, but the boats are slow. Beyond this is Port Said, where you can enter the ship canal across the Isthmus of Suez and pass to the Red Sea. But you are not now in the Egypt you seek. There are no verdant meadows and forests of date palms and mulberry, which give to the interior of Lower Egypt – covered with numerous villages and intersected by thousands of canals – the picturesque character of a real garden of God. You only see a vast sandy plain, stretching on either side of the canal. It is a sea of sand with here and there little islands of reeds or thorny plants, white with salty deposits. In spite of the blue sky, the angel of death has spread his wings over this vast solitude where the least sign of life is an event.

Speaking of canals, reminds one that this Suez Canal, 100 miles long, and built by M. de Lesseps, 1858-1869, was not the first to connect the waters of the Red Sea with the Mediterranean. One was projected B.C. 610 by Pharaoh Necho, but not finished till the time of Ptolemy Philadelphus, which ran from the Red Sea to one of the arms of the Nile. It was practically out of use in the time of Cleopatra.

The best Mediterranean port of Egypt is Alexandria, the glory of which has sadly departed. It is far to the west of the Rosetta mouth of the Nile, but is connected by rail with Cairo. Though founded 330 B.C., by Alexander the Great, conqueror of Egypt, as a commercial outlet, and raised to a population, splendor and wealth unexcelled by any ancient city, it is now a modern place in the midst of impressive ruins. Its mixed and unthrifty population is about 165,000.

As you approach it you are guided by the modern light house, 180 feet high, which stands on the site of the Great Light of Pharos, built by Ptolemy II., 280 B.C., and which weathered the storms of sixteen centuries, lighting the sea for forty miles around. It was of white marble and reckoned as one of the “Seven Wonders of the World.”

Standing in the streets of Alexandria, what a crowd of historic memories rush upon you. You are in Lower Egypt, the Delta of the Nile, the country of the old Pharaohs whose power was felt from the Mediterranean to the Mountains of the Moon, whose land was the “black land,” symbol of plenty among the tribes of Arabia and throughout all Syria, land where the Hebrews wrought and whence they fled back to their home on the Jordan, land of the Grecian Alexander, the Roman Cæsar, the Mohammedan Califf.

No earthly dynasty ever lasted longer than that of the Pharaohs. We hardly know when time began it, but Brugsch dates it from Menes, B.C. 4400. It fell permanently with Alexander’s Conquest, 330 B.C., and was held by his successors, the Greek Ptolemeys, for three hundred years, or until the Romans took it from Cleopatra, whose name is perpetuated in the famous Cleopatra’s Needles, which for nearly 2000 years stood as companion pieces to Pompey’s Pillar.

The Pillar of Pompey, 195 feet high, still stands on high ground southeast of the city, near the Moslem burial place. But the Needles of Cleopatra are gone. Late investigations have thrown new light on these wonders. They were not made nor erected in honor of Cleopatra at all, but were historic monuments erected by the Pharaoh, Thutmes III., 1600 B.C., at Heliopolis, “City of the Sun.” The two largest pair were, centuries ago, transported, one to Constantinople, the other to Rome. The two smaller pair were taken to Alexandria by Tiberius and set up in front of Cæsar’s Temple, where they obtained the well known name of “Cleopatra’s Needles.” One fell down and, after lying prostrate in the sand for centuries, was taken to London in 1878 and set up on the banks of the Thames. It is 68 feet high, and was cut out of a single stone from the quarries of Syene. The other was taken down and transported to New York, where it is a conspicuous object in Central Park. They bear nearly similar inscriptions, of the time of Thutmes III. and Rameses II.

Egypt fell into the hands of the Saracen invaders in A.D. 625, and has ever since been under Mohammedan or Turkish rule. The Alexandria of the Ptolemeys with its half million people, its magnificent temples, its libraries and museums, its learning and art, its commerce for all the world, has lost all its former importance, and is to-day a dirty trading town filled with a mixed and indolent people.

There is no chapter in history so sweeping and interesting as that which closed the career of Alexandria to the Christian world. It was the real centre of Christian light and influence. Its bishops were the most learned and potential, its schools of Christian thought the most renowned. It was in commerce with all the world and could scatter influences wider than any other city. It had given the Septuagint version of the Bible to the nations. All around, it had made converts of the Coptic elements, which were native, and Egypt’s natural defenders in case of war. But these it had estranged. Therefore the Saracen conquest was easy. Pelusium and Memphis fell. Alexandria was surrounded, and fell A.D. 640. “I have taken,” says Amrou, “the great city of the west with its 4000 palaces, 4000 baths, 400 theatres, 12,000 shops, and 40,000 Jews.” Amrou would have spared the great library of 700,000 volumes. But the Califf’s (Omar’s) answer came, “These books are useless if they contain only the word of God; they are pernicious if they contain anything else. Therefore destroy them.”

Aside from the monuments above mentioned, there is little else to connect it with a glorious past except the catacombs on the outskirts, which are of the same general character as those at Rome. These catacombs possess a weird interest wherever they exist. They abound in one form or another in Egypt, and are found in many other countries where, for their extent and curious architecture, they rank as wonders.

Those lately unearthed in the vast Necropolis of Memphis, and called the Serapeion, were the burial place of the Egyptian God Apis, or Serapis, the supreme deity represented by the bull Apis. This sacred bull was not allowed to live longer than twenty-five years. If he died before that age, and of natural causes, he was embalmed as a mummy and interred in the Serapeion with great pomp. Otherwise, he was secretly put to death and buried by the priests in a well. In the Serapeion are some magnificent sarcophagi in granite, and inscriptions which preserve the Egyptian chronology from 1400 B.C. to 177 B.C.

The great catacombs at Rome were the burial places of the early Christians. It was supposed they were originally the quarries from which the building stone of the city had been taken. But while this is true of the catacombs of Paris, it is now conceded that those of Rome were cut out for burial purposes only, less perhaps to escape from the watchfulness of despotic power, than in obedience to a wish to remain faithful to the traditions of the early church which preserved the Jewish custom of rock or cave sepulture. These catacombs are of immense and bewildering proportions. Their leading feature is long galleries, the sides of which are filled with niches to receive the remains. At first these galleries were on a certain level, twenty to thirty feet below the surface. But as space was required, they were cut out on other levels, till some of the galleries got to be as much as three hundred feet below the surface. There are some attempts at carving and statue work about the remains of illustrious persons, and many inscriptions of great historic value, but in general they have been much abused and desecrated, and we are sorry to say chiefly by Christian peoples, mostly of the time of the Crusades, who found, or supposed they would find, rich booty, in the shape of finger rings and other precious things laid away with the dead. MacFarlane, in his book upon the catacombs, tells of a company of gay young officers of the French army who entered them on a tour of inspection. They had plenty of lights, provisions, wine and brandy, and their exploration became a revel. They finally began to banter one another about venturing furthest into the dark labyrinthine recesses. One, as impious as he was daring, refused to leave the crypts till he had visited all. Darting away, torch in hand, he plunged into gallery after gallery, until his torch began to burn low and the excitement of intoxication left him. With great difficulty he found his way back to the chapel where he had left his companions. They were gone. With still greater difficulty he reached the entrance to the catacomb. It was closed. He shouted frantically, and madly beat upon the railings with a piece of tombstone. But it was night and no one could hear. In desperation he started back for the chapel. He fell through a chasm upon crackling, crumbling bones. The shock to his nerves was terrible. Crawling out, he reached the chapel, amid intolerable fear. He who had many a time marched undauntedly on gleaming lines of bayonets and had schooled himself to look upon death without fear, was not equal to the trials of a night in a charnel house. His thirst became intolerable. He stumbled upon a bottle left by his companions and, supposing it contained water, drank eagerly of its contents. In a few moments the drink acted with violence and, in his delirium, he became the victim of wild visions. Spectres gathered around him. The bones of the dead rose and clattered before him. Fire gleamed in eyeless skulls. Fleshless lips chattered and shrieked till the caves echoed. Death must soon have been the result of this fearful experience had not morning come and brought fresh visitors to the catacombs, who discovered the young officer in a state of stupor and took him to the hospital. For months he lay prostrate with brain fever. He had been taught the weakness of man in that valley of the shadow of death, and ever after gave over his atheistic notions, and lived and died a christian.

You may leave Alexandria by canal for the Nile, and then sail to Cairo. You will thus see the smaller canals, the villages, the peasantry, the dykes of the Nile, the mounds denoting ruins of ancient cities. You will see the wheels for raising water from the Nile by foot power, and will learn that the lands which are not subject to annual overflow must be irrigated by canals or by these wheels. You will see at the point where the Nile separates into its Damietta and Rosetta branches, the wonderful Barrage, or double bridge, intended to hold back the Nile waters for the supply of Lower Egypt without the need of water wheels. It is a mighty but faulty piece of engineering and does not answer its purpose. From this to Cairo the country gets more bluffy and, ere you enter the city, you may catch glimpses of the Pyramids off to the right.

But the speediest route from Alexandria is by rail. You are soon whirled into the Moslem city. Cairo is not an ancient city, though founded almost on the site of old Egyptian Memphis. It is Saracen, and was then Kahira (Cairo) “City of Victory,” for it was their first conquest under Omar, after they landed and took Pelusium. It was greatly enlarged and beautified by Saladin after the overthrow of the Califfs of Bagdad. It dates from about A.D. 640.

It is a thickly built, populous (population 327,000) dirty, noisy, narrow streeted, city on the east bank of the Nile. Its mosques, houses, gardens, business, people, burial places, manners and customs, tell at a glance of its Mohammedan origin. Its mosques are its chief attraction. They are everywhere, and some of them are of vast proportions and great architectural beauty. The transfer of the Mameluke power in Egypt to the present Khedives was brought about by Mohammed Ali, an Albanian. The Mamelukes were decoyed into the citadel at Cairo and nearly all murdered. One named Emim Bey escaped by leaping on horseback from the citadel. He spurred his charger over a pile of his dead and dying comrades; sprang upon the battlements; the next moment he was in the air; another, and he released himself from his crushed and bleeding horse amid a shower of bullets. He fled; took refuge in the sanctuary of a mosque; and finally escaped into the deserts of the Thebaid. The scene of this event is always pointed out to travelers.

It is a city divided into quarters – the European quarter, Coptic quarter, Jewish quarter, water carriers’ quarters, and so on. The narrow streets are lined with bazaars – little stores or markets, and thronged by a mixed populace – veiled ladies, priests in robes, citizens with turbaned heads, peddlers with trays on their heads, beggars without number, desert Bedouins, dervishes, soldiers, boatmen and laborers.

Abraham sent Eliezer to find a wife for Isaac. Matrimonial agents still exist in Cairo in the shape of Khatibehs, or betrothers. They are women, and generally sellers of cosmetics, which business gives them opportunity to get acquainted with both marriageable sons and daughters. They get to be rare matchmakers, and profit by their business in a country where a man may have as many wives as he can support.

Your sleep will be disturbed by the Mesahhar who goes about the city every morning to announce the sunrise, in order that every good Moslem may say his prayers before the luminary passes the horizon.

There is no end to the drinking troughs and fountains. Joseph’s well, discovered and cleaned out by Saladin, is one of the leading curiosities. It is 300 feet deep, cut out of the solid rock, with a winding staircase to the bottom.

West of the Nile and nearly opposite Cairo, is the village of Ghiseh, on the direct road to the pyramids, mention of which introduces us to ancient Egypt and the most wonderful monuments in the world.

Menes, “the constant,” reigned at Tini. He built Memphis, on part of whose site Cairo now stands, but whose centre was further up the Nile. The Egyptian name was Mennofer, “the good place.” The ruins of Memphis were well preserved down to the thirteenth century, and were then glowingly described by an Arab physician, Latif. But the stones were gradually transported to Cairo, and its ruins reappeared in the mosques and palaces of that place.

Westward of the Nile, and some distance from it, was the Necropolis of Memphis – its common and royal burying ground, with its wealth of tombs, overlooked by the stupendous buildings of the pyramids which rose high above the monuments of the noblest among the noble families who, even after life was done, reposed in deep pits at the feet of their lords and masters. The contemporaries of the third (3966 B.C. to 3766 B.C.), fourth (3733 B.C. to 3600 B.C.) and fifth (3566 B.C. to 3333 B.C.) dynasties are here buried and their memories preserved by pictures and writings on the walls of their chambers above their tombs. This is the fountain of that stream of traditions which carries us back to the oldest dynasty of that oldest country. If those countless tombs had been preserved entire to us, we could, in the light of modern interpretation, read with accuracy the genealogies of the kings and the noble lines that erected them. A few remaining heaps enable us to know what they mean and to appreciate the loss to history occasioned by their destruction.

They have served to rescue from oblivion the fact that the Pharaohs of Memphis had a title which was “King of Upper and Lower Egypt.” At the same time he was “Peras,” “of the great house” – written Pharaoh in the Bible. He was a god for his subjects, a lord par excellence, in whose sight there should be prostration and a rubbing of the ground with noses. They saluted him with the words “his holiness.” The royal court was composed of the nobility of the country and servants of inferior rank. The former added to dignity of origin the graces of wisdom, good manners, and virtue. Chiefs, or scribes carried on the affairs of the court.

The monuments clearly speak of Senoferu, of the third dynasty, B.C. 3766. A ravine in the Memphian Necropolis, where are many ancient caverns, contains a stone picture of Senoferu, who appears as a warrior striking an enemy to the ground with a mighty club. The rock inscriptions mention his name, with the title of “vanquisher of foreign peoples” who in his time inhabited the cavernous valleys in the mountains round Sinai.

The Pharaohs of the fourth dynasty were the builders of the hugest of the pyramids. The tables discovered at Abydos make Khufu the successor of Senoferu. Khufu is the Cheops of the historian Herodotus. His date was 3733 B.C.

No spirited traveler ever sets foot on the black soil of Egypt, without gazing on that wonder of antiquity, the threefold mass of the pyramids on the steep edge of the desert, an hour’s ride over the long causeway extending out from Ghiseh. The desert’s boundless sea of yellow sand, whose billows are piled up around the gigantic pyramids, deeply entombing the tomb, surges hot and dry far up the green meadows and mingles with the growing grass and corn. From the far distance you see the giant forms of the pyramids, as if they were regularly crystalized mountains, which the ever-creating nature has called forth from the mother soil of rock, to lift themselves up towards the blue vault of heaven. And yet they are but tombs, built by the hands of men, raised by King Khufu (Cheops) and two other Pharaohs of the same family and dynasty, to be the admiration and astonishment of the ancient and modern world.

We speak now of the three largest – there are six others in this group, and twenty-seven more throughout the Nile valley. They are perfectly adjusted to points of the compass – north, south, east and west. Modern investigators have found in the construction, proportions and position of the “Great Pyramid” especially, many things which point to a marvellous knowledge of science on the part of their builders. If the half they say is true of them, there are a vast number of lost arts to discredit modern genius. Some go so far as to trace in their measurements and construction, not only prophecy of the coming of Christ, but chart of the events which have signalized the world’s history and are yet to make it memorable. They base their reasoning on the fact that there was no architectural model for them and no books extant to teach the science requisite for their construction, that their height and bases bear certain proportions to each other, and to the diameter of a great circle, that they are on the line of a true meridian, that certain openings point to certain stars, and so on till ingenuity is exhausted.

The three large pyramids measure thus

As soon as a Pharaoh mounted the throne he gave orders to a nobleman, master of all the buildings, to plan the work and cut the stone. The kernel of the future edifice was raised on the limestone rock of the desert in the form of a small pyramid built in steps. Its well constructed and finished interior formed the king’s eternal dwelling, with his stone sarcophagus lying on the stone floor. Let us suppose this first building finished while the king still lived. A second covering was added on the outside of the first; then a third; then a fourth; and so the mass of the giant building grew greater the longer the king lived. Then at last, when it became almost impossible to extend the area of the pyramid further, a casing of hard stone, polished like glass, and fitted accurately into the angles of the steps, covered the vast mass of the king’s sepulchre, presenting a gigantic triangle on each of its four faces. More than seventy of such pyramids once rose on the margin of the desert, each telling of a king, of whom it was at once the tomb and the monument.

At present the Great Pyramid is, externally, a rough, huge mass of limestone blocks, regularly worked and cemented. The top is flattened. The outside polished casing, as well as the top, has been removed by the builders of Cairo, for mosques and palaces, as have many of the finest ruins on the Nile.

The Sphinx was sculptured at some time not far removed from the building of the three great pyramids. Recent discoveries have increased the astonishment of mankind at the bulk of this monstrous figure and at the vast and unknown buildings that stood around it and, as it were, lay between its paws. It is within a few years that the sand has been blown away and revealed these incomprehensible structures. In a well near by was found a finely executed statue of Khafra, builder of the second pyramid.

There are other sphinxes, but this at the base of the Great Pyramid is the largest. It has a man’s head and a lion’s body, and is supposed to represent the kingly power of the sun god. Its length is 140 feet, and height 30 feet. Between its paws is an altar, to which you ascend by a long flight of steps. The Arabs call it “the fatherly terror.”

In the middle “chamber of the dead” of Menkara’s pyramid was found his stone sarcophagus and its wooden cover, both beautifully adorned in the style of a temple. They were taken out and shipped for England, but the vessel was wrecked, and the sarcophagus now lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The lid was saved and is now in the British Museum. On it is carved a text or prayer to Osiris, king of the gods: “O Osiris, who hast become king of Egypt, Menkara living eternally, child of heaven, son of the divine mother, heir of time, over thee may she stretch herself and cover thee, thy divine mother, in her name as mystery of heaven. May she grant that thou shouldst be like god, free from all evils, king Menkara, living eternally.”

The prayer is not uncommon, for parts of it have been found on other monuments. Its sense is, “Delivered from mortal matter, the soul of the dead king passes through the immense spaces of heaven to unite itself with god, after having overcome the evil which opposed it on its journey through earth.”

The entrance to the great pyramid was formerly quite concealed, only the priests knowing where to find the movable stone that would admit them. But now the opening is plain, and is about forty-five feet from the ground on the north side. Thence there is a descent through a narrow passage for 320 feet into the sepulchral chamber. The passage is much blocked and difficult. The great red granite sarcophagus is there, empty and broken, mute receptacle of departed greatness, for which the relic hunter has had quite too little respect.

With the end of the fifth dynasty pyramid building ceased. The glory of Memphis departed and went to Thebes, where kingly vanity seems to have sought outlet in the temple architecture whose ruins are the wonder of the world.

Above the old site of Memphis, is Toora, and out on its desert side are the pyramids of Sakkarah, eleven in number. The most remarkable is the Step Pyramid, believed to be more ancient than those of Ghiseh. But there is something even more wonderful here – the Temple of Serapis, which it took four years to disengage from the sands of the desert after its site was discovered. It seems to have been dedicated to Serapis, the sacred bull of Egypt. Beneath it is a great catacomb where once laid the remains of thousands of sacred bulls. Their stone coffins are still there, cut out of solid blocks of granite, and measuring fourteen feet long by eleven feet high.

Further up the Nile are the high limestone cliffs of Gebel-et-Teyr, on which perches the Coptic “Convent of the Pulley.” The monks who live here are great beggars. They let themselves down from the cliff and swim off to a passing boat to ask alms in the name of their Christianity.

The next town of moment is Siout, capital of Upper Egypt. It stands on the site of ancient Lycopolis, “wolf city,” and is backed in by lofty cliffs, from which the views are very fine. Further up is Girgeh, whence you must take journey on the back of donkeys to Abydos, off eastward on the edge of the desert. Here was the most ancient city of This, or Tini, where Mena reigned, on whose ruins Abydos was built, itself an antiquity and wonder. Here is the great temple begun by Seti I. and completed by his son Rameses II., 1333 B.C. Rameses II., was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Its roof, pillars and walls are all preserved and the chiselling on the latter is something marvellous. What renders it doubly interesting is, the name of the sculptor is preserved. His name was Hi, and he must have been a man of decided genius, for his picture of the king and son taming the bull is quite spirited. In this temple is also the celebrated sculpture called the “Table of Abydos,” which gives a list of sixty-five kings, from Menes down to the last king of the twelfth dynasty, a period of 2166 years. It is a most invaluable record and has done much to throw light on Egyptian history. It was discovered in 1865. Abydos then, or Tini, was the starting point of Egyptian power and civilization, as we now know it. Here was the first dynasty of the Pharaohs, transferred afterwards to Memphis where the pyramids became their monuments, re-transferred to Thebes where the temples chronicled their greatness and grandeur. Old as Thebes is, Abydos is older, and Tini older still. Most carefully has the temple at Abydos been exhumed from the sand which has preserved it for three thousand years, most of the time against the hands of those who, knowing better, would have spoiled its fair proportions and its great historic value. Abydos seems to have been a city of tombs, and it is possible that the greatness of all Egypt sought it as a burial place.

The most powerful of these Theban Kings, were those of the twelfth dynasty and on, beginning 2466 B.C., though Thebes can be traced back to the sixth dynasty as a city. It was a period in which strong monarchs ruled, and the arts were cultivated with magnificent results. Thebes was the capital, and on its temples and palaces the most enormous labor and expense were lavishly bestowed. And this not in Thebes alone, but in all the cities of Egypt; and they all make history too, impressive, invaluable history.

Siout owes its present importance to the caravan trade with Darfur and Nubia. Passing on toward Thebes, the river banks get more and more bluffy. You soon come to Dendera on the west bank. Its ruins are magnificent, and by many regarded as the finest in Egypt. The portico of its ancient temple is inconceivably grand. Its length is 265 feet and height 60 feet. It is entirely covered with mystic, varied and fantastic sculptures, hieroglyphics, groups, figures of deities, sacred animals, processions of soldiers – in short the manners and mythology of all Egypt. The workmanship is elaborate and finished. The interior is no less beautiful. The roof contained a sculptured representation of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. It has been taken down and is now in the museum at Paris.

A few miles further on in this bewildering region of solid rock bluffs, immense quarries, deep sculptured caverns, you come to Thebes itself, “City of the hundred gates,” lying on both sides of the Nile, the reports of whose power and splendor we would regard as fabulous, were its majestic ruins not there still to corroborate every glowing account. Whatever of Egyptian art is older than that of the Theban era lacked the beauty which moves to admiration. Beginning with the Theban kings of the twelfth dynasty, the harmonious form of beauty united with truth and nobleness meets the eye of the beholder as well in buildings as in statues. The great labyrinth and the excavation for the artificial lake Mœris, at Alexandria, were made during this period. In Tanis, at the mouth of the Nile, was erected a temple whose inscriptions show not only the manners of the country with great historic accuracy, but tell the tale of frequent trade with the people from Arabia and Canaan.

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