CHAPTER I.

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Transcriber’s Note: The original publication has been replicated

faithfully except as shown in the TRANSCRIBER’S AMENDMENTS near the end

of the text. To preserve the alignment of tables and headers, this etext

presumes a mono-spaced font on the user’s device, such as Courier New.

Words in italics are indicated like _this_.

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[Illustration]

[Illustration: COLUMBIA PRESENTING STANLEY TO EUROPEAN SOVEREIGNS.]

STANLEY

IN AFRICA.

THE

WONDERFUL DISCOVERIES

AND

THRILLING ADVENTURES

OF

THE GREAT AFRICAN EXPLORER

AND OTHER

TRAVELERS, PIONEERS AND MISSIONARIES.

BEAUTIFULLY AND ELABORATELY ILLUSTRATED WITH

ENGRAVINGS, COLORED PLATES AND MAPS

BY

JAMES P. BOYD, A.M.

Author of “Political History of the United States”

and “Life of Gen. U. S. Grant,” etc.

ROSE PUBLISHING CO.,

TORONTO, CANADA.

Copyright, 1889

BY

JAMES P. BOYD.

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.

[Illustration: MARCHING THROUGH EQUATORIAL AFRICA.]

CONTENTS.

HENRY M. STANLEY, 19

Stanley is safe; the world’s rejoicings; a new volume in African

annals; who is “this wizard of travel?” story of Stanley’s life;

a poor Welsh boy; a work-house pupil; teaching school; a sailor

boy; in a New Orleans counting-house; an adopted child; bereft

and penniless; a soldier of the South; captured and a prisoner;

in the Federal Navy; the brilliant correspondent; love of travel

and adventure; dauntless amid danger; in Asia-Minor and Abyssinia;

at the court of Spain; in search of Livingstone; at Ujiji on

Tanganyika; the lost found; across the “dark continent;” down the

dashing Congo; boldest of all marches; acclaim of the world.

THE CONGO FREE STATE, 27

A Congo’s empire; Stanley’s grand conception; European ambitions; the

International Association; Stanley off for Zanzibar; enlists his

carriers; at the mouth of the Congo; preparing to ascend the river;

his force and equipments; the river and river towns; hippopotamus

hunting; the big chiefs of Vivi; the “rock-breaker;” founding

stations; making treaties; tribal characteristics; Congo scenes;

elephants, buffaloes and water-buck; building houses and planting

gardens; making roads; rounding the portages; river crocodiles and

the steamers; foraging in the wilderness; products of the country;

the king and the gong; no more war fetish; above the cataracts;

Stanley Pool and Leopoldville; comparison of Congo with other

rivers; exploration of the Kwa; Stanley sick; his return to Europe;

further plans for his “Free State;” again on the Congo; Bolobo and

its chiefs; medicine for wealth; a free river, but no land; scenery

on the upper Congo; the Watwa dwarfs; the lion and his prey; war

at Bolobo; the Equator station; a long voyage ahead; a modern

Hercules; tropical scenes; a trick with a tiger skin; hostile

natives; a canoe brigade; the Aruwimi; ravages of slave traders;

captive women and children; to Stanley Falls; the cataracts;

appointing a chief; the people and products; wreck of a steamer; a

horrible massacre; down the Congo to Stanley Pool; again at Bolobo;

a burnt station; news from missionaries; at Leopoldville; down to

Vivi; the treaties with chiefs; treaty districts; the Camaroon

country; oil river region; Stanley’s return to London; opinions

of African life; thirst for rum; adventures and accidents; advice

to adventurers; outlines of the Congo Free State; its wealth and

productions; commercial value; the Berlin conference; national

jurisdiction; constitution of the Congo Free States; results.

THE SEARCH FOR EMIN, 139

Stanley’s call; the Belgian king; the Emin Pasha relief committee;

Stanley in charge of the expedition; off for Central Africa;

rounding the cataracts; the rendezvous at Stanley Pool; who

is Emin? his life and character; a favorite of Gordon; fall

of Khartoum; Emin cut off in equatorial Soudan; rising of the

Mahdi; death of Gordon; Emin lost in his equatorial province; his

capitals and country; Stanley pushes to the Aruwimi; Tippoo Tib

and his promises; Barttelot and the camps; trip up the Aruwimi;

wanderings in the forest; battles with the dwarfs; sickness,

starvation and death; lost in the wilds; the plains at last; grass

and banana plantations; arrival at Albert Nyanza; no word of Emin;

back to the Aruwimi for boats; another journey to the lake; Emin

found; tantalizing consultations; Stanley leaves for his forest

stations; treachery of Tippoo Tib; massacre of Barttelot; the

Mahdi influence; again for the Lake to save Emin; willing to leave

Africa; the start for Zanzibar; hardships of the trip; safe arrival

at Zanzibar; accident to Emin; the world’s applause; Stanley a

hero.

EGYPT AND THE NILE, 185

Shaking hands at Ujiji; Africa a wonderland; Mizriam and Ham; Egypt

a gateway; mother of literature, art and religion; the Jews

and Egypt; mouths of the Nile; the Rosetta stone; Suez Canal;

Alexandria; Pharos, a “wonder of the world;” Cleopatra’s needles;

Pompey’s Pillar; the catacombs; up the Nile to Cairo; description

of Cairo; Memphis; the Pyramids and Sphinx; convent of the pulley;

Abydos its magnificent ruins; City of “the Hundred Gates;” temple

of Luxor; statues of Memnon; the palace temple of Thebes; the

old Theban Kings; how they built; ruins of Karnak; most imposing

in the world; temples of Central Thebes; wonderful temple of

Edfou; the Island of Philæ; the elephantine ruins; grand ruins of

Ipsambul; Nubian ruins; rock tomb at Beni-Hassan; the weird “caves

of the crocodiles;” horrid death of a traveler; Colonel and Lady

Baker; from Kartoum to Gondokoro; hardships of a Nile expedition;

the “forty thieves;” Sudd on the White Nile; adventures with

hippopotami; mobbing a crocodile; rescuing slaves; at Gondokoro;

horrors of the situation; battles with the natives; night attack;

hunting elephants; instincts of the animal; natural scenery;

different native tribes; cruelty of slave-hunters; ambuscades;

annexing the country; hunting adventures; the Madhi’s rebellion;

death of Gordon.

SOURCES OF THE NILE, 257

African mysteries; early adventures; the wonderful lake regions;

excitement over discovery; disputed points; the wish of emperors;

journey through the desert; Baker and Mrs. Baker; M’dslle

Tinne; Nile waters and vegetation; dangers of exploration; from

Gondokoro to Albert Nyanza, native chiefs and races; traits and

adventure; discovery of Albert Nyanza; King Kamrasi; his royal

pranks; adventures on the lake; a true Nile source; Murchison

Falls; revelations by Speke and Grant; Victoria Nyanza; another

Nile source; Stanley on the scene; his manner of travel; trip

to Victoria Nyanza; voyage of the “Lady Alice;” adventures on

the lake; King Mtesa and his empire; wonders of the great lake;

surprises for Stanley; in battle for King Mtesa; results of

his discoveries; native traditions; demons and dwarfs; off for

Tanganyika.

THE ZAMBESI, 331

Livingstone on the scene; how he got into Africa; his early adventures

and trials; wounded by a lion; his marriage; off for Lake Ngam;

among the Makololo; down the Chobe to the Zambesi; up the Zambesi;

across the Continent to Loanda; discovery of Lake Dilolo;

importance of the discovery; description of the lake; its wonderful

animals; methods of African travel; rain-makers and witchcraft;

the magic lantern scene; animals of the Zambesi; country, people

and productions; adventures among the rapids; the Gouye Falls; the

burning desert and Cuando river; an elephant hunt; the wonderful

Victoria Falls; sounding smoke; the Charka wars; lower Zambesi

valley; wonderful animal and vegetable growth; mighty affluents;

escape from a buffalo; slave hunters; Shire river and Lake Nyassa;

peculiar native head-dresses; native games, manners and customs;

Pinto at Victoria Falls; central salt pans.

THE CONGO, 367

Discovery of the wonderful Lake Tanganyika; Burton and Speke’s visit;

Livingstone’s trials; his geographical delusions; gorilla and

chimpanzee; Livingstone at Bangweola; on the Lualaba; hunting

the soko; thrilling adventure with a leopard; the Nyangwe

people; struggle back to Ujiji; meeting with Stanley; joy in the

wilderness; exploration of Tanganyika; the parting; Livingstone’s

last journey; amid rain and swamps; close of his career; death of

the explorer; care of his body; faithful natives; Stanley’s second

visit; what he had done; strikes the Lualaba; descends in the

“Lady Alice;” fights with the natives; ambuscades and strategies;

boating amid rapids; thrilling adventures amid falls and cataracts;

wonderful streams; the Lualaba is the Congo; joy over the

discovery; gauntlet of arrows and spears; loss of men and boats:

death of Frank Pocock; the falls become too formidable; overland

to the Atlantic; at the mouth of the mighty Congo; return trip to

Zanzibar; the Congo empire; Stanley’s future plans.

CAPE OF STORMS, 416

Discovery of the Cape; early settlers; table mountain; Hottentot

and Boer; the diamond regions; the Zulu warriors; the Pacific

republics; natal and the transvaal; manners, customs, animals and

sports; climate and resources.

NYASSALAND, 423

A disputed possession; the beautiful Shiré; rapids and cataracts;

mountain fringed valleys; rank tropical vegetation; magnificent

upland scenery; thrifty and ingenious natives; cotton and sorghum;

the Go-Nakeds; beer and smoke; geese, ducks and waterfowls; Lake

Shirwa; the Blantyre mission; the Manganja highlands; a village

scene; native honesty; discovery of Lake Nyassa; description of

the Lake; lofty mountain ranges; Livingstone’s impressions; Mazitu

and Zulu; native arms, dresses and customs; slave-hunting Arabs;

slave caravans; population about Nyassa; storms on the lake; the

first steamer; clouds of “Kungo” flies; elephant herds; charge of

an elephant bull; exciting sport; African and Asiatic elephants;

the Scottish mission stations; great wealth of Nyassaland; value to

commerce; the English and Portuguese claims.

AFRICAN RESOURCES, 441

African coasts and mysteries; Negroland of the school-books; how to

study Africa; a vast peninsula; the coast rind; central plateaus

and mountain ranges; Stanley’s last discoveries; a field for

naturalists; bird and insect life; wild and weird nature; vast

area; incomputable population; types of African races; distribution

of races; African languages; character of the human element;

Africa and revelation; tribes of dwarfs; “Africa in a Nutshell”;

various political divisions; variety of products; steamships and

commerce; as an agricultural field; the lake systems; immense

water-ways; internal improvements; Stanley’s observations; features

of Equatorial Africa; extent of the Congo basin; the Zambesi and

Nile systems; the geographical sections of the Congo system; the

coast section; cataracts, mountains and plains; affluents of the

great Congo; tribes of lower Congo; length of steam navigation;

future pasture grounds of the world; the Niam-Niam and Dinka

countries; empire of Tippoo Tib; richness of vegetable productions;

varieties of animal life; immense forests and gigantic wild

beasts; oils, gums and dyes; hides, furs, wax and ivory; iron,

copper, and other minerals; the cereals, cotton, spices and garden

vegetables; the labor and human resources; humanitarian and

commercial problems; the Lualaba section; size, population and

characteristics; navigable waters; Livingstone’s observations;

tracing his footsteps; animal and vegetable life; stirring scenes

and incidents; the Manyuema country; Lakes Moero and Bangweola;

resources of forest and stream; climate and soil; a remarkable

land; customs of natives; village architecture; river systems and

watersheds; Stanley and Livingstone in the centre of the Continent;

the Chambesi section; head-rivers of the Congo; the Tanganyika

system; owners of the Congo basin; Stanley’s resume of African

resources; a glowing picture.

THE WHITE MAN IN AFRICA, 526

Egyptian and Roman Colonists; Moorish invasion; Portugese advent; the

commercial and missionary approach; triumphs of late explorers;

can the white man live in Africa?; colonizing and civilizing;

Stanley’s personal experience; he has opened a momentous problem;

Stanley’s melancholy chapters; effect of wine and beer; the white

man must not drink in Africa; must change and re-adapt his habits;

visions of the colonists; effect of climate; kind of dress to wear;

the best house to build; how to work and eat; when to travel;

absurdities of strangers; following native examples; true rules of

conduct; Stanley’s laws of health; African cold worse than African

heat; guarding against fatigue; Dr. Martins code of health; the

white man can live in Africa; future of the white races in the

tropics; the struggle of foreign powers; missionary struggles;

political and commercial outlook.

MISSIONARY WORK IN AFRICA, 565

Africa for the Christian; Mohammedan influences; Catholic missions;

traveler and missionary; the great revival following Stanley’s

discoveries; Livingstone’s work; perils of missionary life;

history of missionary effort; the Moors of the North; Abyssinian

Christians; west-coast missions; various missionary societies;

character of their work; Bishop Taylor’s wonderful work in Liberia,

on the Congo, in Angola; nature of his plans; self-supporting

churches; outline of his work; mission houses and farms; vivid

descriptions and interesting letters; cheering reports from

pioneers; South African missions; opening Bechuana-land; the

Moffats and Coillards; Livingstone and McKenzie; the Nyassa

missions; on Tanganyika; the Church in Uganda; murder of

Harrington; the gospel on the east coast; Arabs as enemies;

religious ideas of Africans; rites and superstitions; fetish and

devil worship; importance of the mission field; sowing the seed;

gathering the harvest.

AFRICA’S LIGHTS AND SHADOWS, 735

Arnot’s idea of Central Africa; killed by an elephant; the puff adder;

the Kasai region; bulls for horses; a Congo hero; affection for

mothers; caught by a crocodile; decline of the slave trade; the

natives learning; books in native tongues; natives as laborers;

understanding of the climate; Stanley on the Gombe; the leopard and

spring-bock; habits of the antelope; Christian heroes in Africa;

the boiling pot ordeal; adventures of a slave; Arab cruelties; a

lion hunt; Mohammedan influence; a victim of superstition; Hervic

women; Tataka mission in Liberia; a native war dance; African game

laws; Viva on the Congo; rum in Africa; palavering; Emin Pasha at

Zanzibar; the Sas-town tribes; an interrupted journey; in Monrovia;

a sample sermon; the scramble for Africa; lions pulling down a

giraffe; Kilimanjars, highest mountains in Africa; the Kru-coast

Missions; a desperate situation; Henry M. Stanley and Emin Pasha;

comparison of the two pioneers. pp. 800.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE.

COLUMBIA PRESENTING STANLEY TO EUROPEAN SOVEREIGNS,

COLORED PLATE FRONTISPIECE

MARCHING THROUGH EQUATORIAL AFRICA 4

MAP OF CENTRAL AFRICA 16 and 17

HENRY M. STANLEY 18

THE BELLOWING HIPPOPOTAMI 23

SCENE ON LAKE TANGANYIKA 29

GATHERING TO MARKET AT NYANGWE 31

A SLAVE-STEALER’S REVENGE 34

BUFFALO AT BAY 38

FIGHT WITH AN ENRAGED HIPPOPOTAMUS 40

ROUNDING A PORTAGE 44

A NARROW ESCAPE 45

WHITE-COLLARED FISH-EAGLES 48

A TEMPORARY CROSSING 49

WEAVER-BIRDS’ NESTS 51

NATIVES’ CURIOSITY AT SIGHT OF A WHITE MAN 56

CAPTURING A CROCODILE 58

LIONS DRAGGING DOWN A BUFFALO 62

A FUNERAL DANCE 66

STANLEY’S FIGHT WITH BENGALA IN 1877 67

AFRICAN BLACK-SMITHS 71

AFRICAN HEADDRESSES 72

ORNAMENTED SMOKING PIPE 75

NIAM-NIAM HAMLET ON THE DIAMOONOO 76

NIAM-NIAM MINSTREL 79

NIAM-NIAM WARRIORS 79

RECEIVING THE BRIDE 81

A BONGO CONCERT 82

THE MASSACRE AT NYANGWE 90

KNIFE-SHEATH, BASKET, WOODEN-BOLSTER AND BEE-HIVE 96

RECEPTION BY AN AFRICAN KING 99

SACRIFICE OF SLAVES, COLORED PLATE 100

TIPPOO TIB’S GRAND CANOES GOING DOWN THE CONGO, FRONT 136

TIPPOO TIB’S GRAND CANOES GOING DOWN THE CONGO, REAR 137

HENRY M. STANLEY. From a Late Portrait 138

EMIN PASHA IN HIS TENT 142

NIAM-NIAM VILLAGE 146

CUTTING WOOD AT NIGHT FOR THE STEAMERS 149

INTERVIEW OF MAJOR BARTTELOT AND MR. JAMESON WITH TIPPOO TIB 149

AN AMBUSCADE 151

ELEPHANTS DESTROYING VEGETATION 157

THE CAPTURED BUFFALO 159

AFRICAN WARRIORS 159

ATTACK ON THE ENCAMPMENT 161

BEGINNING A HUT 164

STANLEY’S FIRST SIGHT OF EMIN’S STEAMER 165

THE SECOND STAGE 165

HUT COMPLETED IN AN HOUR 166

CAMP AT KINSHASSA, ON THE CONGO, WITH TIPPOO TIB’S HEADQUARTERS 170

SLAVE MARKET 180

LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY 185

THE ROSETTA STONE 188

DE LESSEPS 190

CLEOPATRA 191

PHAROS LIGHT 192

ALEXANDER, THE GREAT 193

CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE 193

THE SERAPEION 195

EGYPTIAN GOD 196

ROMAN CATACOMBS 196

MASSACRE OF MAMELUKES 199

VEILED BEAUTY 200

PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT 203

INTERIOR OF GREAT PYRAMID 204

THE SPHINX 206

STATUES OF MEMNON 210

RUINS IN THEBES 211

OBELISK OF KARNAK 213

SPHINX OF KARNAK 214

GATEWAY AT KARNAK 215

A MUMMY 216

TEMPLE AT EDFOU 217

ISIS ON PHILÆ 218

TEMPLE COURT, PHILÆ 220

TEMPLE AT IPSAMBUL 221

TEMPLE OF OSIRIS 222

TEMPLE OF ATHOR 224

ROCK TOMB OF BENI-HASSAN 226

EGYPTIAN BRICK FIELD 227

GROTTOES OF SAMOUN 228

A CHIEF’S WIFE 231

THE “FORTY THIEVES” 232

MOBBING A CROCODILE 234

RELEASING SLAVES 236

ATTACKED BY A HIPPOPOTAMUS 237

A SOUDAN WARRIOR 239

A NIGHT ATTACK 241

ELEPHANTS IN TROUBLE 242

SHAKING FRUIT 244

TABLE ROCK 245

NATIVE DANCE 246

ATTACK BY AMBUSCADE 248

HUNTING WITH FIRE 251

RESULTS OF FREEDOM 251

GORDON AS MANDARIN 253

PORTRAIT OF GORDON 256

PORTRAIT OF COLONEL BAKER 266

MAD’MLLE TINNE 268

LADY BAKER 270

SLAVE HUNTER’S VICTIM’S 271

WHITE NILE SWAMPS 274

CROSSING A SPONGE 276

PREPARING TO START 279

A ROYAL JOURNEY 291

MURCHISON FALLS 298

HENRY M. STANLEY 303

STANLEY ON THE MARCH 304

RUBAGA 314

SHOOTING A RHINOCEROS 328

LIVINGSTONE 330

LION ATTACKS LIVINGSTONE 333

CUTTING A ROAD 334

A BANYAN TREE 338

ANIMALS ON THE ZAMBESI 343

THE GONYE FALLS 344

HUNTING THE ELEPHANT 345

IN THE RAPIDS 348

VICTORIA FALLS 351

CHARGE OF A BUFFALO 355

NATIVE SLAVE HUNTERS 356

HUAMBO MAN AND WOMAN 359

SAMBO WOMAN 359

GANGUELA WOMEN 359

BIHE HEAD DRESS 361

QUIMBANDE GIRLS 361

CUBANGO HEAD-DRESS 361

LUCHAZE WOMAN 362

AMBUELLA WOMAN 362

SOVA DANCE 363

FORDING THE CUCHIBI 363

VICTORIA FALLS (BELOW) 365

ON TANGANYIKA 368

ANT HILL 371

GORILLAS 371

A SOKO HUNT 374

A DANGEROUS PRIZE 375

NYANGWE MARKET 378

STANLEY AT TANGANYIKA 380

STANLEY MEETS LIVINGSTONE 381

AFLOAT ON TANGANYIKA 382

DEEP-WATER FORDING 386

LAST DAY’S MARCH 388

DEATH OF LIVINGSTONE 389

THE KING’S MAGICIANS 390

A WEIR BRIDGE 395

FIGHTING HIS WAY 398

RESCUE OF ZAIDI 403

ATTACK BY THE BANGALA 405

IN THE CONGO RAPIDS 408

DEATH OF FRANK POCOCK 411

ZULUS 418

MY CATTLE WERE SAVED 420

BUFFALO HUNTERS 421

VILLAGE SCENE ON LAKE NYASSA 426

STORM ON LAKE NYASSA 434

AN ELEPHANT CHARGE 436

NATIVE HUNTERS KILLING SOKOS 446

AFRICAN ANT-EATER 446

TERRIBLE FIGHT OF AFRICAN MONARCHS, COLORED PLATE 446

QUICHOBO 446

THE “DEVIL OF THE ROAD,” ETC. 450

BUSH-BUCKS 450

NATIVE TYPES OF SOUTHERN SOUDAN 451

BARI OF GONDOKORO 453

CHASING GIRAFFES 457

NATIVE RAT-TRAP 463

AFRICAN HATCHET 464

NATIVES RUNNING TO WAR 466

UMBANGI BLACKSMITHS 469

NATIVES KILLING AN ELEPHANT 472

ON A JOURNEY IN THE KALAHARI DESERT 480

WOMEN CARRIERS 481

DRIVING GAME INTO THE HOPO 483

PIT AT END OF HOPO 483

CAPSIZED BY A HIPPOPOTAMUS 487

HUNTER’S PARADISE 488

BATLAPIN BOYS THROWING THE KIRI 492

PURSUIT OF THE WILD BOAR 492

RAIDING THE CATTLE SUPPLY 494

HUNTING ZEBRAS 497

DANGEROUS FORDING 503

A YOUNG SOKO 506

MANYUEMA WOMEN 510

TYPES OF AFRICAN ANTELOPES 515

BINKA CATTLE HERD 518

AFRICAN RHINOCEROS 534

ELEPHANT UPROOTING A TREE 540

COL. BAKER’S WAY OF REACHING BERBER 553

AFRICA METHODIST CONFERENCE 564

CHUMA AND SUSI 568

KING LOBOSSI 568

WEST AFRICAN MUSSULMAN 579

AN AFRICAN CHIEF 587

PORT AND TOWN OF ELMINA 592

COOMASSIE, THE CAPITAL OF ASHANTI 594

CANOE TRAVEL ON THE NIGER 598

MAP OF LIBERIA 604

METHODIST PARSONAGE OF AFRICA 606

AFRICAN VILLAGE AND PALAVER TREE 611

ST. PAUL DE LOANDA 618

FOREST SCENE IN ANGOLA 621

MUNDOMBES AND HUTS 626

NATIVE GRASS-HOUSE ON THE CONGO 629

SOME OF BISHOP TAYLOR’S MISSIONARIES 635

GARAWAY MISSION HOUSE 643

MAP OF ANGOLA 647

STEAM WAGONS FOR HAULING AT VIVI 659

REED DANCE BY MOONLIGHT 676

MISSION HOUSE AT VIVI 692

HUNTING THE GEMBOCK 696

BISHOP TAYLOR’S MISSIONS 699

A NATIVE WARRIOR 706

THE COILLARD CAMP 709

AT HOME AFTER THE HUNT 711

MOFFAT INSTITUTION——KURUMAN 713

MOFFAT’S COURAGE 715

NATIVES OF LARI AND MADI IN CAMP AT SHOO 719

TINDER-BOX, FLINT AND STEEL 726

A CARAVAN BOUND FOR THE INTERIOR 728

TRAVEL ON BULL-BACK AND NATIVE ESCORT 739

LEOPARD ATTACKING A SPRINGBOCK 747

A LION HUNT 757

NATIVE WAR DANCE 764

BUFFALO DEFENDING HER YOUNG 770

SEKHOMS AND HIS COUNSEL 774

AN INTERRUPTED JOURNEY 779

LIONS PULLIN DOWN A GIRAFFE 786

HUNTING LIONS 794

A DESPERATE SITUATION 797

DINING ON THE BANKS OF THE SHIRE 800

[Illustration: CENTRAL AFRICA AND THE CONGO BASIN.]

[Illustration: HENRY M. STANLEY.]

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.”

[Illustration: THE BELLOWING HIPPOPOTAMI.]

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.

[Illustration: SCENE ON LAKE TANGANYIKA.]

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.

[Illustration: GATHERING TO MARKET AT NYANGWE.]

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.

[Illustration: A SLAVE-STEALER’S REVENGE.]

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.

[Illustration: BUFFALO AT BAY.]

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.

[Illustration: FIGHT WITH AN ENRAGED HIPPOPOTAMUS.]

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.

[Illustration: ROUNDING A PORTAGE.]

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.

[Illustration: A NARROW ESCAPE. ]

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.”

[Illustration: WHITE-COLLARED FISH EAGLES.]

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.

[Illustration: A TEMPORARY CROSSING.]

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.

[Illustration: WEAVER-BIRD’S NEST.]

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.

[Illustration: NATIVES’ CURIOSITY AT SIGHT OF A WHITE MAN.]

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.

[Illustration: CAPTURING A CROCODILE.]

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.

[Illustration: LIONS DRAGGING DOWN A BUFFALO.]

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.

[Illustration: A FUNERAL DANCE.]

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.

[Illustration: STANLEY’S FIGHT WITH THE BENGALA IN 1877.]

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.

[Illustration: AFRICAN BLACKSMITHS.]

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.

[Illustration: AFRICAN HEADDRESSES.]

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.

[Illustration: ORNAMENTED SMOKING-PIPE.]

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.

[Illustration: NIAM-NIAM HAMLET ON THE DIAMOONOO.]

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.

[Illustration: NIAM-NIAM MINSTREL.]

[Illustration: NIAM-NIAM WARRIORS.]

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.”

[Illustration: RECEIVING THE BRIDE.]

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.

[Illustration: A BONGO CONCERT.]

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.

[Illustration: THE MASSACRE AT NYANGWE.]

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.

[Illustration: 1: KNIFE-SHEATH. 2: BASKET. 3: WOODEN BOLSTER. 4:

BEE-HIVE.]

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.

[Illustration: RECEPTION BY AN AFRICAN KING.]

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.

[Illustration: SACRIFICE OF SLAVES.]

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 20,000

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.

* * * * *