STANLEY'S DASH ACROSS UNYORO
STANLEY'S DASH ACROSS UNYORO.
General Lamboozi had no heart in this expedition, and soon showed it. But they moved off gayly over the swelling pasture-lands of Uganda, striking northwest toward the lake, which Stanley hoped to explore, as he had the Victoria Nyanza. The march through Uganda was a pleasant oneand they at length reached the frontier of Unyoro and prepared for war.
On the 5th of January they entered Abba Rega's territory, whom, two years before, Baker had driven from his throne, and who naturally felt peculiarly hostile to all white men. But no resistance was offered—the people, as if remembering the past, fleeing before them, leaving their provisions and everything behind them, of which the army made free use. Three days after they came to the base of a mighty mountain, called Kabrogo, rising five thousand five hundred feet into the air, presenting, in its naked, rugged outline, a sublime appearance. They encamped that night on a low ridge, in sight of the Katonga River, flowing east in its course to the Victoria Nyanza, bringing up many associations to Stanley's mind—while to the west the Ruanga filled the night air with its thunderous sound, as it tumbled over cataracts toward the Albert Nyanza. From an eminence near by could be seen in the distance the colossal form of Gambaragara Mountain looming up from the wilderness—a second Mont Blanc, rising some three miles into the cloudless heavens. Though under the equator, snow is often seen on its summit. But what gives it peculiar interest is, that on its cold and lonely top dwell a people of an entirely distinct race, being white, like Europeans. The king of Uzigo once spoke to Stanley and Livingstone of thissingular people, and now the latter saw half a dozen of them. Their hair, he says, is "kinky," and inclined to brown in color; their features regular; lips thin, and noses well shaped. Altogether, they are a handsome race—the women, many of them possessing great beauty. Some of their descendants are scattered through the tribes living near the base of the mountain, but the main body occupy its lofty summit. The queen of one of the islands in the Victoria Nyanza is a descendent of them. The history of this singular people is wrapped in mystery.
There is a tradition that the first king of Unyoro gave them the land at its base, and the approach of a powerful enemy first drove them to the top for safety. They have become so acclimated that they can stand the cold, while the dwellers of the plain are compelled to flee before it. Mtesa once dispatched his greatest general with an army of a hundred thousand men to capture them. They succeeded in making their way to a great height, but finally had to withdraw—the cold became so intense.
The retreat of this pale-faced tribe is said to be inaccessible. The top is supposed to be the crater of an extinct volcano; for on it there is a lake nearly a third of a mile long, from the centre of which rises a huge rock to a great height. Around the top of this runs a rim of rock, making a natural wall, in which are several villages, where theprincipal "medicine-man" and his mysterious people reside in their peculiar separateness.
This account, if true, does not touch the origin of this peculiar race of people, nor in any way explain the fact of their existence here in tropical Africa. Two men belonging to this tribe joined Stanley's expedition in this march to the Albert Lake, yet he seems to have obtained no information from them of the history of their tribe. Whether they had any traditions or not we are not informed—we only know that Stanley found them extremely uncommunicative. It is possible they had nothing to tell, for a vast majority of the negro tribes of Africa have no past; they care neither for the past or future, so far as external life is concerned, living only in the present. These two men occupied a high position, for some cause, in the army under Lamboozi, and were the only ones who were allowed more than two milch cows on the route. Various stories about these people were told Stanley, and it is difficult to come at the truth. About the only thing that seems established is that this white race exists, of whose origin nothing definite has as yet been obtained. Stanley says that he heard they were of Arab origin, but there are plenty of Arabs in Africa—in fact, all the soldiers attached to the expedition were Arabs, and colonies of them had long existed in Central Africa; but they are not white men.
It seems impossible that Livingstone, yearsbefore, should have heard of this singular people, and Stanley seen specimens of them, if no such tribe really existed. It seems almost equally strange that they should be able for centuries to keep so isolated that their very home is a myth. The truth is, that Africa is a land of fables and traditions, that partake of the wonderful and often of the miraculous. Mr. Stanley was told of other tribes of white people living in a remote unknown region, possessing great ferocious dogs, and also of dwarfs of singular habits and customs. These traditions or reports, that are invariably vague in their character, usually have more or less foundation in truth. Mixed with the wonderful, that always holds an important place in savage literature, there will generally be found at least a grain of truth; and the traditions of white races among a people who had never seen white men, could hardly arise if no such tribes existed.
The diet of this strange race consists of milk and bananas. Stanley says the first specimen he saw of the tribe was a young man, whom he first took for a young Arab from Cairo, who for some reason had wandered off to Uganda, and taken up his residence with King Mtesa. The two attached to his expedition would easily have been mistaken for Greeks in white shirts. Stanley, after seeing these white Africans, the stories concerning whose existence he had regarded as one of the fables of the ignorant, superstitious natives, says that he isready to believe there is a modicum of truth in all the strange stories that he has been accustomed to listen to as he would to a fairy tale. Four years previous, while exploring the Tanganika with Livingstone, they both smiled at the story told them of a white people living north of Uzigo, but now he had seen them, and if it were not that their hair resembles somewhat that of the negro, he should take them for Europeans. He heard afterwards that the first king of Kisbakka, a country to the southwest, was an Arab, whose scimiter is still preserved by the natives, and infers that these people may be his descendants. He also heard of a tribe that wore armor and used a breed of fierce and powerful dogs in battle.
From this point the expedition moved on toward the Albert Nyanza, along the southern bank of the Rusango River, a rapid, turbulent stream, winding in and out among the mountains, and rushing onward in fierce, rapid and headlong cataracts to the peaceful bosom of the lake. For ten hours they marched swiftly through an uninhabited country, and then emerged into a thickly populated district. Their sudden appearance, with drums beating and colors flying, filled the people, who had no intimation of their coming, with such consternation, that they took to the woods, leaving everything behind them, even the porridge on the fire and the great pots of milk standing ready for the evening meal. Fields and houses were alike deserted in atwinkling, and the army marched in and took possession. Thus far they had met with no opposition whatever, and the warlike tribe Stanley had feared so much, and had taken such a large force to overcome, seemed to have no existence. In fact, the days had passed by monotonously; for the most part the scenery was tame, and the march of the troops from day to day was without incident or interest, and now at this village they were within a few miles of the lake, to reach which was the sole object of all this display of force. Instead of fighting their way, they found themselves in undisputed possession of a large and populous district, with not a soul to give them any information.
We confess there is something about this journey from the Victoria Nyanza to the Albert that we do not understand. By the route on the map it must have been nearly two hundred miles, and yet the expedition started on January 5th, and on the evening of the 9th was within three miles of the latter, which would make the marching about fifty miles a day—an impossibility.
Now, fifty miles a day for four days would be terrible marching for veteran troops. Hence, we say, the map or journal is wrong. If he took the route he has marked down and completed it in the time he says he did, one instead of two parallels of longitude should indicate the distance between the two lakes. In fact, this whole expeditionwas such a miserable failure, that anywhere but in Africa it would be looked upon as a farce. It shows how utterly futile it is to rely on the native Africans in any great enterprise. The Arabs are bad enough, but they are fidelity itself compared to these black savages.
Here was an expedition numbering nearly three thousand souls, organized to secure a safe march to a lake not five days distant. It met with no obstacles of any moment, reached the lake, and there, on the mere rumor that hostilities were intended, practically broke up and returned. Stanley had, with about three hundred men, traversed an unknown country for months, fought battles, and at the end of a thousand miles reached the lake he was seeking, pitched his camp, and with a crew of eleven men explored the lake in its entire circuit, and returned in safety. Here, with a small army, after a four days' march, he reaches the Albert Nyanza, yet does nothing but turn round and march back again. It would seem, at first sight, strange that if he could march a thousand miles from the sea to the Victoria Nyanza and then explore it, he could not now with the same men explore this lake without the aid of Lamboozi and his two thousand or more soldiers. Doubtless he could but for this very army. Its disaffection and declaration that they were not strong enough to resist the force about to be brought against them, created a panic among Stanley'smen. If two thousand fled, it would be madness for one hundred and eighty to stay. The simple truth is, the more such men one has with him, unless he is the supreme head and his will is law, even to life and death, the worse he is off. Stanley, planning, controlling and directing every movement, is a power; Stanley under the direction of a swaggering, braggart African negro general, is nobody.
Lamboozi did, next morning after their approach to the lake, send out two hundred scouts to capture some natives, by whom they could get a message to the king of the district, saying that they had no hostile intentions, and if permitted to encamp on the shores of the lake for two months, would pay in beads, cloth and wire for whatever provisions they consumed. Five were captured and sent to the king with this proposition, but he did not deign an answer. On the 11th, they moved the camp to within a mile of the lake, on a plateau that rose a thousand feet above its surface. A place was selected for a camp and men sent out to capture all the canoes they could find. In three hours they returned with only five, and those too small for their purpose. But they brought back word that the whole country was aroused, and that a large body of strange warriors had arrived on the coast to aid the king in making war on the newcomers.
General Lamboozi now became thoroughlyalarmed, and stubbornly refused to grant Stanley's request to move to the edge of the lake and intrench. It seemed probable that the natives meant to give battle, but with what numbers or prospect of success, Lamboozi took no measure to ascertain. Next day he resolved to march back. Entreaties and threats were alike in vain, and there was nothing left for Stanley to do but march back with him. He was greatly disappointed and thoroughly disgusted, but there was no help for it. That Unyoro and Abba Rega would be hostile, Stanley knew before he started, and on that account took so large a force with him. Yet he says, after this miserable failure, that it was a foolhardy attempt at the outset. Looking at it calmly, he pronounces it a great folly, redeemed from absurdity only by "the success of having penetrated through Unyoro and reached the Albert." It is difficult to see wherein lies the greatness of this success; for, according to his own account, it was one of the most peaceful marches he ever performed, with hardly enough incident in it to make it interesting. It matters little, however; all that can be said is, they marched up to the lake and then marched back again.
On the morning of the 13th, they began their return in order of battle—five hundred spearmen in front, five hundred as a rear guard, and the expedition in the centre—but no enemy attacked them or attempted to do anything but pick upsome stragglers. The next day the expedition formed the rear guard, and once some natives rushed out of the woods to attack them, but were quickly dispersed by a few shots.
This is all that happened to this army in terrible Unyoro, and presents a striking contrast to Baker's gallant march through it with his little band, fighting every day for nearly a week. Four days after, without any further molestation, they re-entered Uganda, where Lamboozi turned off to his home. Stanley had heard no news of Gordon or of the steamers he was to place on the lake according to the plan of Baker; and though at first he thought that he would seek some other way to reach it and make his explorations, he finally resolved to start for Tanganika, which he would reach in about four months, and explore it. Hence, while Lamboozi turned eastward toward Lake Victoria, he with his little band, turned southward. He sent a letter, however, to Mtesa, informing him of Lamboozi's cowardice and refusal to build a camp at Lake Albert, and telling him also that this redoubtable general had robbed him. He had intrusted to his care three porter's loads of goods to relieve his own carriers, and these he had appropriated as his own.
When the letter reached the emperor he was thrown into a towering passion, and immediately dispatched a body of troops to seize the general, with orders to strip him of his wives, slaves, cattleand everything he possessed, and bring him bound to his presence. He also sent letter after letter to Stanley, begging him to return, and he would give him ninety thousand men, with brave generals to command them, who would take him to Lake Albert, and protect him there till he had finished his explorations. Stanley was very much moved by this generous offer and the anxiety of the king to make amends for Lamboozi's poltroonery and thieving conduct. The noble savage felt it keenly that he, who valued so highly the esteem of Stanley, should be disgraced in his sight, and it was hard for the latter to refuse his urgent request to be allowed to redeem his character and his pledge. But Stanley had had enough of Waganda troops, and felt that whatever was accomplished hereafter must be by his own well-trained, compact, brave little band. He kept on his way, and never saw Mtesa again.
He had been able to add considerably to the geography of the country bordering on Lake Albert. Usongora, a promontory running thirty miles into the lake southward, he ascertained to be the great salt field, from whence all the surrounding countries obtain their salt. From all he could hear, it was truly a land of wonders, but he says the man who should attempt to explore it would need a thousand muskets, for the natives cannot be enticed into peace by cloth and beads. They care for nothing but milk and goat skins."Among the wonders credited to it," he says, "are a mountain emitting fire and stones, a salt lake of considerable extent, several hills of rock-salt, a large plain encrusted thickly with salt and alkali, a breed of very large dogs of extraordinary ferocity, and a race of such long-legged natives, that ordinary mortals regard them with surprise and awe." They do not allow members of their tribe to intermarry with strangers, and their food, like that of the dwellers in the Himalaya Mountains, consists chiefly of milk. Mtesa once invaded their territory with one hundred thousand men, to capture cows, of which the natives have an immense number, and in watching which consists their sole occupation. The army returned with twenty thousand, but they were obtained at such a fearful sacrifice of life, that the raid will not be repeated.
Stanley rested a few days after Lamboozi left him, before proceeding northward. He then continued his march leisurely through the country, inquiring on the way the character of the tribes westward toward that part of Lake Albert which extended south from where he struck it, but one and all were reported hostile to the passage of any strangers through their territory.
Arriving on the Kagera River, in Karagwe, he found the King Rumanika, a mild, pleasant-spoken man and very friendly, but he told him that none of the neighboring tribes would let him enter their lands. Stanley being a little suspicious of themotives that prompted this bad report of the surrounding tribes, to test him, asked him if he had any objections to his exploring his country. He said no, and cheerfully promised to furnish him guides and an escort, and his party should be supplied with food free of charge. Stanley, surprised at this generosity, at once got ready to start. He first went south to Lake Windermere, a small body of water so named by Captain Speke, because of its fancied resemblance to the lake of that name in England. The Lady Alice was taken there, screwed together, and launched on the peaceful waters. Accompanied by six native canoes, he sailed round it and then entered Kagera River, called by Speke the Kitangule. Suddenly it flashed on Stanley's mind that he had discovered the true parent of the Victoria Nile. It fed and drained this little lake some nine miles long. Moreover, he found that there was a depth of fifty-two feet of water and a breadth of one hundred and fifty feet. He therefore pushed up it some three days, and came to another lake nine miles long and six miles wide. Working up through the papyrus that covered the stream, he came to another lake or pond a mile and a half long. Ascending an eminence, he discovered that this whole portion of the river was a lake, large tracts of which were covered with papyrus, or that vegetation which we have seen Baker had to contend with in ascending the Nile. It seemed solidground, while in fact it was a large body of water covered over, with here and there an opening, making a separate lake, of which Windermere was the largest. This apparently underground lake was some eighty miles in length and fourteen in width.
Following the river as it flowed eastward into the Victoria Nyanza, he found he entered another lake, thirteen miles long and some eight miles broad. This was, of course, the continuation of the lake, covered at intervals with this tropical vegetation, which gave to it the appearance of land. There were in all, seventeen of these lakes. This river now broadening as the formation of the land causes it to expand, now narrowing till its channel is forty feet deep, it at last tumbles over cataracts and rushes through rapids into the Victoria Nyanza. All this seems of little account, except, as Stanley says, he has found in it the true source of the Victoria Nile.
The great and persistent efforts to find out the source of the Nile have led explorers to push their theories to an absurd extent. Because Herodotus made the Nile to rise in some large springs, they seem to think they must find something back and beyond a great lake as its source. Now, when a river flows right on through one lake after another, making lakes as the formation of the ground allows, it of course maintains its integrity and oneness.
In this case there is but one main stream and as long as the lakes are the mere spreading out of that stream on low, flat lands, it must remain the same. But when you come to great reservoirs like the Albert and Victoria Nyanza and the Tanganika—into which a hundred streams, and perhaps twice that number of springs, flow—to go beyond such reservoirs to find the head of the stream is bringing geography down to a fine point. The outlet is plain—you have traced the river up till you see it roaring from its great feeder. This is very satisfactory, and should end all research after the source of the stream. But to insist on taking measurements of a dozen different rivers that flow into a lake a thousand miles in circumference, to find which is a mile longest or ten feet deepest, and thus determine the source of the outlet, is preposterous. A lake covering twenty-two thousand square miles, fed by a hundred rivers, is a reservoir of itself, and not an expansion of any one river. One might as well try to prove which is the greatest source or feeder of the Atlantic Ocean—the Amazon, Mississippi or Congo.
Thus we find Stanley, when he struck the Shimeeyu in Speke Gulf, declaring he had found the extreme southern source of the Nile; and now, when exploring another river of a larger volume on another side of the lake, he changes his mind and thinks he has made a great discovery in ascertaining at last the true source of the river. He found it overfifty feet deep, which showed what a volume of water it poured into the Victoria Nyanza. Descending it again, he entered another lake some thirteen miles long by eight wide. Exploring this, he was driven back by the natives when he attempted to land, who hailed him with shrill shouts and wild war-cries. The Kagera, through its entire length, maintains almost the same depth and volume.
HOT SPRINGS OF MTAGATA
HOT SPRINGS OF MTAGATA.
Returning to his generous host, he asked for guides to take him to the hot springs of Mtagata, the healing properties of which he had heard of far and wide from the natives. These were cheerfully given, and after a march of two days he reached them. Here he was met by an astonishing growth of vegetation. Plants of an almost infinite variety, covered the ground, growing so thick and crowding each other so closely, that they became a matted mass—the smaller ones stifled by the larger—and out of which trees shot up an arrow's-flight into the air, with "globes of radiant green foliage upon their stem-like crowns." He found a crowd of diseased persons here, trying the effect of the water. Naked men and women were lying promiscuously around in the steaming water, half-asleep and half-cooked, for the water showed a temperature of one hundred and twenty-nine degrees. The springs were, however, of different temperature. The hottest one issued from the base of a rocky hill, whilefour others, twenty degrees cooler, came bubbling up out of black mud, and were the favorites of the invalids. Stanley camped here three days, and bathed in the water and drank it, but could perceive no effect whatever on his system. Returning to his friend Rumaniki, he prepared to start on his journey south to Lake Tanganika, and finish its explorations.
Having discovered that the Kagera River formed a lake eighty miles long, and was a powerful stream a long distance from its mouth, he resolved, as it flowed from the south, to follow it up and try to find its source. A broad wilderness lay before him, the extent of which he did not accurately know, and he packed ten days' provisions on the shoulders of each man of the expedition, and bidding the soft-voiced pagan king, by whom he had been treated so kindly, a warm good-bye, he entered the forest and kept along the right bank of the stream. This was the 27th of March, and for six days he marched through an uninhabited wilderness, with nothing to break the monotony of the journey. At the end of that time he came to the borders of Karagwe and to the point where the Akanyaru River entered the Kagera. He dared not explore this river, for the natives that inhabit both banks are wild and fierce, having a deadly hatred of all strangers. They are like the long-legged race of Bumbireh, and he did not care to come in collision with them. Theypossess many cattle, and if one sickens or dies, they do not attribute it to accident, but believe it has been bewitched, and search the country through to find the stranger who has done it, and if he is found,he dies.
All the natives of the region are passionately fond of their cows, and will part with anything sooner than with milk. Stanley says that his friend Rumaniki, with all his generosity, never offered him a teaspoonful of milk, and if he had given him a can of it, he believes his people would have torn him limb from limb. He thinks that half of their hostility arises from the fear of the evil effect that the presence of strangers will have on their cattle. Hence they keep a strict quarantine on their frontiers. It is not strange that they should cherish this stock carefully, for it is their sole means of subsistence.
This long journey through various tribes is singularly barren of incident. On the route he lost his last dog, Bull, who had bravely held out in all their long wanderings, but at last he gave up and laid down and died, with his eyes fixed on the retiring expedition. He also met the redoubtable Mirambo, and found him not the blood-thirsty monster he had been represented to be, but a polite, pleasant-mannered gentleman, and generous to a fault. They made blood brotherhood together, and became fast friends. At length, in the latter part of May, he reached Ujiji, where heformerly found Livingstone. The following extract from a private letter of Stanley's, written to a friend while at Lake Victoria, gives a domestic picture that is quite charming, he says that "Kagehyi is a straggling village of cane huts, twenty or thirty in number, which are built somewhat in the form of a circle, hedged around by a fence of thorns twisted between upright stakes. Sketch such a village in your imagination, and let the centre of it be dotted here and there with the forms of kidlings who prank it with the vivacity of kidlings under a hot, glowing sun. Let a couple of warriors and a few round-bellied children be seen among them and near a tall hut which is a chief's, plant a taller tree, under whose shade sit a few elders in council with their chief; so much for the village.
"Now outside the village, yet, touching the fence, begin to draw the form of a square camp, about fifty yards square, each side flanked with low, square huts, under the eaves of which, plant as many figures of men as you please, for we have many, and you have the camp of the exploring expedition, commanded by your friend and humble servant. From the centre of the camp you may see Lake Victoria, or that portion of it I have called Speke Gulf, and twenty-five miles distant you may see table-topped Magita, the large island of Ukerewe, and toward the northwest a clear horizon, with nothing between water and sky tomar its level. The surface of the lake which approaches to within a few yards of the camp is much ruffled just at present with a northwest breeze, and though the sun is growing hot, under the shade it is agreeable enough, so that nobody perspires or is troubled with the heat. You must understand there is a vast difference between New York and Central African heat. Yours is a sweltering heat, begetting languor and thirst—ours is a dry heat, permitting activity and action without thirst or perspiration. If we exposed ourselves to the sun, we should feel quite as though we were being baked. Come with me to my lodgings, now. I lodge in a hut little inferior in size to the chief's. In it is stored the luggage of the expedition, which fills one-half. It is about six tons in weight, and consists of cloth, beads, wire, shells, ammunition, powder, barrels, portmanteaus, iron trunks, photographic apparatus, scientific instruments, pontoons, sections of boat, etc., etc. The other half of the hut is my sleeping, dining and hall-room. It is dark as pitch within, for light cannot penetrate the mud with which the wood-work is liberally daubed. The floor is of dried mud, thickly covered with dust, which breeds fleas and other vermin to be a plague to me and my poor dogs.
"I have four youthful Mercuries, of ebon color, attending me, who, on the march, carry my personal weapons of defense. I do not need so many persons to wait on me, but such is their pleasure.They find their reward in the liberal leavings of the table. If I have a goat killed for European men, half of it suffices for two days for us. When it becomes slightly tainted, my Mercuries will beg for it, and devour it at a single sitting. Just outside of the door of my hut are about two dozen of my men sitting, squatted in a circle and stringing beads. A necklace of beads is each man's daily sum wherewith to buy food. I have now a little over one hundred and sixty men. Imagine one hundred and sixty necklaces given each day for the last three months—in the aggregate the sum amounts to fourteen thousand necklaces—in a year to fifty-eight thousand four hundred. A necklace of ordinary beads is cheap enough in the States, but the expense of carriage makes a necklace here equal to about twenty-five cents in value. For a necklace I can buy a chicken, or a peck of sweet potatoes, or half a peck of grain.
"I left the coast with about forty thousand yards of cloth, which, in the States, would be worth about twelve and a half cents a yard, or altogether about five thousand dollars—the expense of portage, as far as this lake, makes each yard worth about fifty cents. Two yards of cloth will purchase a goat or sheep; thirty will purchase an ox; fifteen yards are enough to purchase rations for the entire caravan."
Why these naked savages put such a high value on cloth, none of these African explorers informsus. We can understand why they should like beads, brass wire, shells and trinkets of all sorts. They certainly use very little cloth on their persons.
He adds: "These are a few of the particulars of our domestic affairs. The expedition is divided into eight squads of twenty men each, with an experienced man over each squad. They are all armed with Snider's percussion-lock muskets. A dozen or so of the most faithful have a brace of revolvers in addition to other arms."
He then goes on to speak of the battles he has fought, and it is but just to him to give his feelings as he describes them in confidential private correspondence, on being compelled to kill the savages. He says: "As God is my judge, I would prefer paying tribute, and making these savages friends rather than enemies. But some of these people are cursed with such delirious ferocity that we are compelled to defend ourselves. They attack in such numbers and so sudden, that our repeating rifles and Sniders have to be handled with such nervous rapidity as will force them back before we are forced to death; for if we allow them to come within forty yards, their spears are as fatal as bullets; their spears make fearful wounds, while their contemptible-looking arrows are as deadly weapons. * * * Since I left Zanzibar, I have traveled seven hundred and twenty miles by land and a thousand miles by water. This is a good six months' work."
It was with strange feelings that Stanley caught from the last ridge the sparkling waters of Tanganika. Sweet associations were awakened at the sight, as he remembered with what a thrilling heart he first saw it gleam in the landscape. Then it was the end of a long, wasting and perilous journey—the goal of his ambition, the realization of his fondest hopes; for on its shores he believed the object for which he had toiled so long was resting. No more welcome sight ever dawned on mortal eye than its waters as they spread away on the horizon; and though he should see it a hundred times, it will never appear to him like any other sheet of water. He has formed for it an attachment that will last forever; and whenever in imagination it rises before him, it will appear like the face of a friend.
As he now descended to Ujiji, it was with sensations as though he were once more entering civilized life, for there was something almost homelike about this Arab colony. People dressed in civilized garments were moving about the streets, cattle were coming down to the lake to drink, and domestic animals scattered here and there made quite a homelike scene.
At first sight, it seems strange that Stanley should have selected this lake as the next scene of his explorations. He had previously, with Livingstone, explored thoroughly the upper half of it, and passed part way down the western side; Livingstone had been at the foot of it, and to crown all, Stanley had heard, before leaving Zanzibar, that Cameron had explored the entire southern portion, so that really there was nothing for him to do but follow a path which had been already trodden. To employ an expedition fitted out at so great a cost, and spend so much valuable time in going over old ground, seems an utter waste of both time and labor, especially when such vast unexplored fields spread all around him. But there was a mystery about Tanganika, which Stanley probably suspected Cameron had not solved, and which he meant to clear up. Here was a lake over three hundred miles long, with perhaps a hundred streams, great and small, running into it, and yet with no outlet, unless Cameron had found it, which he thinks he did. To find this was the chief object of the expedition Stanley and Livingstone made together to the north end of the lake. They had heard that the Rusizi River at that extremity was the outlet, but they found it instead a tributary. In fact, they proved conclusively that there was no outlet at the northern end. It therefore must be at the southern, and if so, it was the commencement of a river that wouldbecome a mighty stream before it reached the ocean. But no such stream was known to exist. The Caspian Sea has large rivers flowing into it, but no outlet, yet it never fills up. Evaporation, it is supposed, accounts for this. But the Caspian is salt, while the Tanganika is fresh water, and such a large body of fresh water as this was never known to exist without an outlet, and if it could be that evaporation was so great as to equal all the water that runs into it, it would not remain so fresh as it is.
We will let Cameron state his own case concerning the solution of this mystery. He started with two canoes and thirty-seven men, and sailed down the eastern shore of the lake, now ravished with the surpassing beauty of the scene composed of water and sky, and smiling shores, and again awed by beetling cliffs; one evening camping on the green banks and watching the sun go down behind the purple peaks, and another drenched with rain, and startled by the vivid lightning and awful thunder crashes of a tropical storm, yet meeting with no incident of any peculiar interest to the reader. The natives were friendly, and he describes the different villages and customs of the people and their superstitions, which do not vary materially from other native tribes. At last, on the 3d of May, he entered the Lukuga Creek, which a chief told him was the outlet of the lake. He says that the entrance was more than a milewide, "but closed up by a grass sand-bank, with the exception of a channel three or four hundred yards wide. Across this there is a rill where the surf breaks heavily, although there was more than a fathom of water at its most shallow part." The next day he went down it four or five miles, until navigation was rendered impossible, owing to the masses of floating vegetation. Here the depth was eighteen feet, and breadth six hundred yards, and the current a knot and a half an hour. The chief who accompanied him said that it emptied into the Lualaba. He tried in vain to hire men to cut a passage through the vegetation that he might explore the river. This was all the knowledge he obtained by actual observation, the rest of his information being obtained from the natives.
Now, we must say, that this is a sorry exhibit for the outlet to a lake almost twice as long as Lake Ontario. That such an immense body of water should trickle away at this rate seems very extraordinary. Stanley at Ujiji started inquiries respecting this stream, and found Cameron's guide, who stoutly denied that the river flowed south from the lake. Another veteran guide corroborated this statement, while many others declared that before Cameron came, they had never heard of an outflowing river.
These contradictory statements, together with the universal testimony that the lake was continually rising (the truth of which he could not doubt,as he saw palm-trees which stood in the market-place when he was there in 1871, now one hundred feet out in the lake), made him resolve to explore this stream himself. He started on the 11th of June, and three days after landed to take a hunt, and soon came upon a herd of zebras, two of which he bagged, and thus secured a supply of meat.
On the 19th, on approaching a large village, they were astonished to see no people on the shore. Landing, they were still more astonished at the death-silence that reigned around, and advancing cautiously came upon corpses of men and women transfixed with spears or with their heads cut off. Entering into the village they found that there had been a wholesale massacre. A descent had been made upon the place, but by whom no one was left to tell. Its entire population had been put to death.
As Stanley proceeded, he found many evidences of the steady rise of the lake. He continued on his course, finding the same varied scenery that Cameron did, with nothing of peculiar interest occurring, except to the travelers themselves, and at length came to the Lukuga Creek. He found various traditions and accounts here—one native said the water flowed both ways. The spot on which Cameron encamped, some two years before, was now covered with water, another evidence that the lake was rising. Stanley very sensibly says, that the "rill," which Cameron states runsdirectly across the channel, is conclusive evidence that the Lukuga runs into the lake, not out of it; for it must be formed by the meeting of the inflowing current and the waves. An outpouring stream driven onward by waves would make a deep channel, not a dam of sand. He tried several experiments, by which he proved, to his entire satisfaction, that the stream flowed into the lake instead of being its outlet. Having settled this question he set about finding the other river, which the natives declared flowed out or westward. After traveling some distance inland he did find a place where the water flowed west; it was, however, a mere trickling stream. His account of his explorations here, and of the traditions of the natives, and his description of the formation of the country and of its probable geological changes, is quite lengthy, and possesses but little interest to the general reader.
The result of it all, however, is that he believes the Lukuga was formerly a tributary of the lake, the bed of which at some former time was lifted up to a higher level; that the whole stretch of land here has been sunk lower by some convulsion of nature, taking the Lukuga with it, and thus making a sort of dam of the land at the foot, which accounts for the steady rise of the river year by year; and that in three years the lake will rise above this dam, and, gathering force, will tear like a resistless torrent through all this mud andvegetation, and roaring on, as the Nile does where it leaves the Victoria Nyanza, will sweep through the country till it pours its accumulated waters into the Lualaba, and thus swell the Congo into a still larger Amazon of Africa. This seems to be the only plausible solution of the mystery attached to Tanganika. The only objection to it is, no such convulsion or change of the bed of the Tanganika seems to have occurred during this generation, and what has become, then, for at least seventy years, of all the waters these hundred rivers have been pouring into the lake? We should like the estimate of some engineer of how many feet that lake would rise in fifty years, with all its tributaries pouring incessantly such a flood into it. We are afraid the figures would hardly harmonize with this slow rise of the lake. It may be that there is a gradual filtering of the water through the ooze at the foot, which will account for the slow filling up of the great basin—a leakage that retards the process of accumulation. But if Stanley's explorations and statements can be relied upon, the mystery will soon solve itself, and men will not have to hunt for an outlet long. He makes the length of Tanganika three hundred and twenty-nine geographical miles, and its average breadth twenty-eight miles.
The wonderful influence of Livingstone over all African explorers is nowhere more visible than at Ujiji, on both Cameron and Stanley. Both of theseset out with one object—to try to complete the work that the great and good man's death had left unfinished. His feet had pressed the shores of almost every lake they had seen, as well as of others which they had not seen. The man had seemed to be drawn on westward until he reached Nyangwe, where dimly arose before him the Atlantic Ocean, into which the waters flowing past his camp might enter, and did enter, if they were not the Nile. Discouraged, deserted and driven back, he could not embark on the Lualaba and float downward with its current till he should unveil the mystery that wrapped it. Cameron became filled with the same desire, but disappointed, though not driven back, he had pressed on to the ocean, into which he had no doubt the river emptied, though by another route. And now, last of three, comes Stanley, and instead of finishing Livingstone's work around the lakes, he, too, is drawn forward to the same point. It seemed to be the stopping-place of explorations in Africa; and although he knew that Cameron had not returned like Livingstone, and hence might have discovered all that was to be discovered, so making further explorations in that direction useless, still he felt that he must go on and find out for himself. True, there was an interesting district between Ujiji and the Lualaba. There was the beautiful Manyema region, about which Livingstone had talked to him enthusiastically, with its new styleof architecture, and beautiful women and simple-minded people. But those did not form the attraction. He must stand on the spot where Livingstone stood, and look off with his yearning desire, and see if he could not do what this good man was willing to risk all to accomplish.
SETTING OUT TO CROSS LAKE TANGANIKA
SETTING OUT TO CROSS LAKE TANGANIKA.
At all events, he must move somewhere at once, and westward seemed the most natural direction to take, for if he stayed in Ujiji much longer the expedition would break up. He found on his return that the small-pox had broken out in camp, filling the Arabs with dismay. He had taken precaution on starting to vaccinate every member of his party, as he supposed, and hence he felt safe from this scourge of Africa. He did not lose a single man with it on his long journey from the sea to the Victoria Nyanza. But it had broken out in Ujiji with such fury that a pall was spread over the place, and it so invaded his camp that in a few days eight of his men died.
This created a panic, and they began to desert in such numbers that he would soon be left alone. Thirty-eight were missing, which made quite a perceptible loss in a force of only one hundred and seventy men. The chiefs of the expedition were thoroughly frightened, but they told him that the desertions would increase if he moved westward, for the men were as much afraid of the cannibals there, as of the small-pox in their midst. They were told horrible stories of these cannibalstill their teeth chattered with fear. Besides there were hobgoblins—monsters of every kind in the land beyond the Tanganika. Stanley saw, therefore, that prompt measures must be taken, and he at once clapped thirty-two of the discontented in irons, drove them into canoes, and sent them off to Ukurenga. He with the rest followed after by land to Msehazy Creek, where the crossing of the lake was to be effected. Reaching the other side he proceeded to Uguha, where, on mustering his force, he found but one hundred and twenty-seven out of one hundred and seventy, showing that one-third had disappeared. Among the last to go, and the last Stanley expected would leave him, was young Kalulu, whom he had taken home to the United States with him on his return from his first expedition. He had him placed in school in England for eighteen months, and he seemed devoted to Stanley. A gloom hung over the camp, and desertion was becoming too contagious. If such men as Kalulu could not be trusted, Stanley knew of no one who could be, and with his usual promptness he determined to stop it. He therefore sent back Pocoke and a faithful chief with a squad of men to capture them.
Paddling back to Ujiji, they one night came upon six, who, after a stout fight, were secured and brought over to camp. Afterward young Kalulu was found on an island and brought in. This desertion is a chronic disease among theArabs. Their superstitious fears are quickly aroused, and they are easily tempted to break their contract and leave in the lurch the man to whom they have hired themselves.
Stanley's march to Manyeme was noticeable only for the curious customs or habits of the people, and on the 5th of October he reached the frontier of this wonderful country. Livingstone had halted here several months, and this was an inducement for Stanley to stop a few days. The weapons of the natives were excellent, and there was one custom that attracted his particular attention—the men wore lumps in various forms of mud and patches of mud on their beard, hair and head, while the women wove their front hair into head-dresses, resembling bonnets, leaving the back hair to wave in ringlets over their shoulders. He, as well as Cameron, was amazed at their villages, which, usually had one or more broad streets running through them, each being from one hundred to one hundred and fifty feet wide, and along which are ranged the square huts, with well-beaten, cleanly-kept clay floors, to which they cheerfully invite strangers.
On the 12th he reached the village on the Luma which he had been following, where both Livingstone and Cameron left it and turned directly west to Nyangwe. He, however, determined to follow it till it reached the Lualaba, and then proceed by this stream to the same place. He foundthe natives kind but timid, with many curious traditions and customs. The expedition at last reached the Lualaba, and moving majestically through the forest and making rapid marches, it arrived on the next day at Tubunda.
Nyangwe is the farthest point west in Africa ever reached by a white man who came in from the east. It is about three hundred and fifty miles from Ujiji, or a little over the distance across New York State, but the journey is not made in one day—Stanley was forty days in accomplishing it. Here he found that Livingstone, the first white man ever seen there, must have remained from six to twelve months. Livingstone had made a profound impression on the natives of this region. "Did you know him?" asked an old chief, eagerly. Stanley replying in the affirmative, he turned to his sons and brothers, and said: "He knew the good white man. Ah, we shall hear all about him." Then turning to Stanley, he said: "Was he not a very good man?" "Yes," replied the latter, "he was good, my friend; far better than any white man or Arab you will ever see again." "Ah," said the old negro, "you speak true; he was so gentle and patient, and told us such pleasant stories of the wonderful land of the white people—the aged white was a good man indeed."
Livingstone made a strong impression onStanley also, who, speaking of him says: "What has struck me while tracing Livingstone to his utmost researches—this Arab depôt of Nyangwe,—revived all my grief and pity for him, even more so than his own relation of sorrowful and heavy things, is, that he does not seem to be aware that he was sacrificing himself unnecessarily, nor to be warned of the havoc of age and that his old power had left him. With the weight of years pressing upon him, the shortest march wearying him, compelling him to halt many days to recover his strength, and frequent attacks of illness prostrating him, with neither men nor means to escort him and enable him to make practical progress, Livingstone was at last like a blind and infirm man moving aimlessly about. He was his own worst taskmaker."
Whether Stanley's views of the mental condition of Livingstone—growing out of his sickness and want of money while in Nyangwe—are correct or not, one thing is true: that after the great explorer had seemingly reached the very point when the problem was to be solved as to where the mysterious Lualaba flowed, he waited there till he found a caravan going east, and then returned to Ujiji "a sorely tried and disappointed man." Standing on the last point which this intrepid explorer reached, Stanley is reminded of his own earnest efforts to induce that worn hero to return home and recruit, to which theinvariable answer was: "No, no, no; to be knighted, as you say, by the Queen, welcomed by thousands of admirers, yes—but impossible, must not, can not, will not be."
Stanley, on this outmost verge of exploration, remembered the words of Livingstone when speaking of the beauties of the region lying west of the Goma Mountains, and says, "It is a most remarkable region; more remarkable than anything I have seen in Africa. Its woods, or forest, or jungles, or brush—I do not know by what particular term to designate the crowded, tall, straight trees, rising from an impenetrable mass of brush, creepers, thorns, gums, palm, ferns of all sorts, canes and grass—are sublime, even terrible. Indeed, nature here is remarkably or savagely beautiful. From every point the view is enchanting—the outlines eternally varying, yet always beautiful, till the whole panorama seems like a changing vision. Over all, nature has flung a robe of varying green, the hills and ridges are blooming, the valleys and basins exhale perfume, the rocks wear garlands of creepers, the stems of the trees are clothed with moss, a thousand streamlets of cold, pure water stray, now languid, now quick, toward the north and south and west. The whole makes a pleasing, charming illustration of the bounteousness and wild beauty of tropical nature. But, alas! all this is seen at a distance; when you come to travel through this world of beauty, theillusion vanishes—the green grass becomes as difficult to penetrate as an undergrowth, and that lovely sweep of shrubbery a mass of thorns, the gently rolling ridge an inaccessible crag, and the green mosses and vegetation in the low grounds that look so enchanting, impenetrable forest belts."
Stanley once penetrated into one of these great forests and was so overwhelmed by the majesty and solemn stillness of the scene, that he forgot where he was, and his imagination went back to the primeval days when that great, still forest was sown, till the silent trees seemed monuments of past history. But still, this district of Manyema (pronounced in various ways), he does not think so interesting as that of Uregga. In speaking of the Lualaba, after describing the various ways in which it is spelled and pronounced, he says if he could have it his own way he would call it "Livingstone River, or Livingstone's Lualaba," to commemorate his discovery of it and his heroic struggles against adversity to explore it. The letter in which he thus speaks of this region is dated November 1st, 1876. In three days he says he is going to explore this mysterious river to the utmost of his power. Two days previous to this letter, he wrote a long one on the horrors of the slave-trade that casts a pall as black as midnight over all this tropical beauty. He says that from Unyanyembe to Ujiji one sees horrorsenough, but in this region they are multiplied tenfold. The traffic in slaves is so profitable and keeps up such a brisk trade with Zanzibar and the interior of Africa, that the native chiefs enter into it on the grandest scale, or rather it is more accurate to say, banditti under the leadership of so-called chiefs enter into it thus, and carry it on with remorseless zeal.
Raids are made on small independent villages, the aged are slain and hung up to terrify other villages into a meek acquiescence in their demands, and young men, young women, and children are marched off to Ujiji, from whence they are taken to Zanzibar, becoming, by their cruel treatment on the route, living skeletons before they reach their destination. Gangs, from one hundred to eight hundred, of naked, half-starved creatures Stanley met in his travels, and he wonders that the civilized world will let insignificant Zanzibar become the mart of such an accursed, cruel traffic.
There are regular hunting-grounds for slaves. When the business is dull, the inhabitants are left to grow and thrive, just like game out of season in a gentleman's park; but when the business begins to look up, the hunt begins, and the smiling villages become arid wastes. The country, long before he reached Nyangwe, was a wilderness, where a few years before dwelt a happy population. Stanley gives extracts from his diary, showing up the horrors of this system, which make theheart sicken as it thinks of what is daily transpiring in this unknown land.
Livingstone saw enough when he was at this place to awaken his deepest indignation, but since that time the Arabs have pushed further inland, and swept, with the besom of destruction, districts that in his time had been but slightly touched.
The trade in ivory is but another name for trade in human beings, and the only real commerce this vast, fruitful region has with Zanzibar is through its captured inhabitants, while the slain equal the number sent into captivity. But, while Mr. Stanley feels keenly the disgrace to humanity of this accursed traffic, he evidently does not see so clearly the way to put a stop to it. He is opposed to filibustering of all kinds, and to the interference of strong powers to coerce weak ones on the ground of humanity or Christianity, because it opens the door too wide to every kind of aggression. In fact, this makes it only necessary to use some philanthropic catch-word, in order to justify the annexation of any feeble territory.
Stanley evidently thinks there is some limit to the Monroe doctrine of non-interference in the affairs of other nations, as the following extract from one of his letters shows, in which, after discussing the whole matter carefully, he says he writes, "hoping he may cause many to reflect upon the fact that there exists one little State on this globe, which is about equal in extent to one Englishcounty, with the sole privilege of enriching itself by wholesale murder, and piracy and commerce in human beings, and that a traffic forbidden in all other nations should be permitted, furtively monopolized by the little island of Zanzibar, and by such insignificant people as the subjects of Prince Burghosh." Mr. Stanley is entirely opposed to filibustering and encroachments of strong powers on feeble ones, under the thousand and one false pretences advanced in support of unrighteous conquests, yet he evidently thinks little Zanzibar should be wiped out, or cease to be the source and centre of this cruel traffic in human beings. One has to travel, he says, in the heart of Africa to see all the horrors of this traffic.
The buying and selling of a few slaves on the coast gives no idea of its horrors. At Unyambembe, sometimes a sad sight is seen. At Uganda the trade begins to assume a wholesale character, yet it wears here a rather business aspect; the slaves by this time become hardened to suffering, "they have no more tears to shed," the chords of sympathy have been severed and they seem stolid and indifferent. At Ujiji, one sees a regular slave-market established. There are "slave-folds and pens," like the stock-yards of railroads for cattle into which the naked wretches are driven by hundreds, to wallow on the ground and be half-starved on food not fit for hogs. By the time they reach here they are mere "ebony skeletons," attenuated,haggard, gaunt human frames. Their very voices have sunk to a mere hoarse whisper, which comes with an unearthly sound from out their parched, withered lips. Low moans, like those that escape from the dying, fill the air, and they reel and stagger when they attempt to stand upright, so wasted are they by the havoc of hunger. They look like a vast herd of black skeletons, and as one looks at them in their horrible sufferings he cannot but exclaim, "how can an all-merciful Father permit such things?" No matter whether on the slow and famishing march or crowded like strayed pigs in the overloaded canoes, it is the same unvarying scene of hunger and horror, on which the cruel slave-trader looks without remorse or pity.
It may be asked how are these slaves obtained. The answer is, by a systematic war waged in the populous country of Marungu by banditti, supported by Arabs. These exchange guns and powder for the slaves the former capture, which enables them to keep up the war. These Arabs, who sell the slaves on the coast, furnish the only market for the native banditti of the interior. These latter are mostly natives of Unyamwege who band together to capture all the inhabitants of villages too weak to resist them. Marungu is the great productive field of their Satanic labors. Here almost every small village is independent, recognizing no ruler but its own petty chief. These are often at variance with each other, andinstead of banding together to resist a common foe, they look on quietly while one after another is swept by the raiders. In crossing a river, Stanley met two hundred of these wretches chained together, and, on inquiry, found they belonged to the governor of Unyambembe, a former patron of Speke and Burton, and had been captured by an officer of the prince of Zanzibar. This prince had made a treaty with England to put a stop to this horrible traffic, and yet here was one of his officers engaged in it, taking his captives to Zanzibar, and this was his third batch during the year.
There are two or three entries in Stanley's journal which throw much light on the way this hunt for slaves is carried on.
"October 17th. Arabs organized to-day from three districts, to avenge the murder and eating of one man and ten women by a tribe half-way between Kassessa and Nyangwe. After six days' slaughter, the Arabs returned with three hundred slaves, fifteen hundred goats, besides spears, etc."
"October 24th. The natives of Kabonga, near Nyangwe, were sorely troubled two or three days ago by a visit paid them by Uanaamwee in the employ of Mohommed el Said. Their insolence was so intolerable that the natives at last said, 'we will stand this no longer. They will force our wives and daughters before our eyes if we hesitate any longer to kill them, and before the Arabs come we will be off.' Unfortunately, onlyone was killed, the others took fright and disappeared to arouse the Arabs with a new grievance. To-day, an Arab chief set out for the scene of action with murderous celerity, and besides capturing ten slaves, killed thirty natives and set fire to eight villages—'a small prize,' the Arabs said."
"October 17th. The same man made an attack on some fishermen on the left bank of the Lualaba. He left at night and returned at noon with fifty or sixty captives, besides some children."
"Are raids of this kind frequent?" asked Stanley.
"Frequent!" was the reply, "sometimes six or ten times a month."
One of these captives said to Stanley, on the march from Mana to Manibo, "Master, all the plain lying between Mana, Manibo and Nyangwe, when I first came here eight years ago, was populated so thickly that we traveled through gardens, villages and fields every quarter of an hour. There were flocks of goats and black pigs around every village. You can see what it now is." He saw that it was an uninhabited wilderness. At that time, Livingstone saw how the country was becoming depopulated before the slave-traders, but says Stanley, "Were it possible for him to rise from the dead and take a glance at the districts now depopulated, it is probable that he would be more than ever filled with sorrow at the misdoings of these traders."
He thinks there is but one way of putting a perpetual end to this infernal traffic, and that is by stopping it in the interior. English and American cruisers on the coast can have but partial success. The suggestion of the Khedive of Egypt is the right one. Annex the interior of Africa to some strong power and establish stations on the great highways over which these traders are compelled to transport their human chattels, where they will be pounced upon and made to give up their captives, and the trade will soon cease from its being too hazardous and unprofitable.
Portugal has no right to the west coast, which it claims. Let England, or England and America together, claim and exercise sovereignty over it, and it will need no cruisers on the coast to stop the trade in slaves. At any rate, it is high time the Christian nations of the world put a stop to this disgrace and blot upon humanity.
Arriving near Nyangwe, one of the first to meet Stanley was the Arab, Tipo-tipo, or Tipo-tib, or Tippu-tib (which is the proper spelling neither Cameron nor Stanley seems to know), who had once conducted Cameron as far as Utotera or the Kasongo country. He was a splendid specimen of a man physically, and just the one to give Stanley all the information he wanted respecting Cameron's movements. He told him that the latter wanted to follow the river to the sea, but that his men were unwilling to go; besides, no canoes could be obtained for the purpose. He also told him that after staying a long time at Kasongo, he had joined a company of Portuguese traders and proceeded south.
One thing was clear: Cameron had not settled the great problem that Livingstone wished of all things to solve—this great unfinished work had been left for Stanley to complete, or to leave for some future, more daring or more successful explorer. Could he get canoes—could he surmount difficulties that neither Livingstone nor Cameron were able to overcome? were the grave questions he asked himself. He had long dialogues withTipo-tipo and other Arab chiefs, all of whom dissuaded him from attempting to follow the Lualaba by land, or trying to get canoes. They told him frightful stories of the cannibals below—of dwarfs striped like Zebras and ferocious as demons, with poisoned arrows, living on the backs of elephants, of anacondas, of impenetrable forests—in short, they conjured up a country and a people that no stranger who placed any value on his life would dare to encounter.
The fact that the Lualaba flowed north to a distance beyond the knowledge of the natives was doubtless one, and perhaps the chief, reason why Livingstone suspected it emptied into the Nile. Stanley now knew better. How far north it might flow before it turned he could not say, yet he felt certain that turn west it would, sooner or later, and empty into the Atlantic Ocean, and the possibility of his tracing it had a powerful fascination for him. Its course he knew lay through the largest half of Africa, which was a total blank. Here, by the way, it is rather singular that Stanley, following Livingstone who alone had explored Lake Bembe and made it the source of the Lualaba, adopts his statement, while Cameron, on mere hearsay, should assert that its source was in marshes. The river, after leaving the lake, flows two hundred miles and empties into Lake Mweru, a body of water containing about one thousand eight hundred square miles. Issuing from this, ittakes the name of Lualaba, which it holds and loses by turns as it moves on its mighty course for one thousand one hundred miles, till it rolls, ten miles wide at its mouth, into the broad Atlantic as the Congo.
Stanley, from first to last, seemed to have a wonderful power, not only over the Arabs that composed his expedition as we have before mentioned, but over all those with whom he came in contact in his explorations. Notwithstanding all the horrors depicted as awaiting any attempt to advance beyond Nyangwe, this Tipo-tipo agreed, for $5,000, to accompany him with a strong escort a distance of sixty camps, on certain conditions. That he would do it on any conditions was extraordinary, considering the fact, if it was a fact, that the last attempt to penetrate this hostile territory resulted in the loss of five hundred men. The conditions were, that the march should commence from Nyangwe—not occupy more than three months—and that if Stanley should conclude, at the end of the sixty marches, that he could not get through, he would return to Nyangwe; or if he met Portuguese traders and chose to go to the coast in the direction they were moving, he should detail two-thirds of his force to accompany said Tipo back to Nyangwe for his protection.