Of the return home, and the final scene which closed this wonderful expedition, we must let Stanley speak: “As I looked on the Wangwana, and saw the pleasure which now filled every soul, I felt myself amply rewarded for sacrificing several months to see them home. The sick had all but one recovered, and they had improved so much in appearance that few, ignorant of what they had been, could have supposed that these were the living skeletons that had reeled from sheer weakness through Boma.
“The only patient who had baffled our endeavors to restore her to health was the woman Muscati, unfortunate Safeni’s wife. Singular to relate, she lived to be embraced by her father, and the next morning died in his arms, surrounded by her relatives and friends. But all the others were blessed with redundant health—robust, bright, and happy.
“And now the well-known bays and inlets and spicy shores and red-tinted bluffs of Mbwenni enraptured them. Again they saw what they had often despaired of seeing: the rising ridge of Wilezu, at the foot of which they knew were their homes and their tiny gardens; the well-known features of Shangani and Melindi; the tall square mass of the Sultan’s palace. Each outline, each house, from the Sandy Point to their own Ngambu, each well-remembered bold swell of land, with its glories of palm and mango-tree, was to them replete with associations of by-gone times.
“The ship was soon emptied of her strange passengers. Captain Sullivan, of the London, came on board and congratulated me on my safe arrival, and then I went on shore to my friend Mr. Augustus Sparhawk’s house.
“Four days of grace I permitted myself to procure the thousands of rupees required to pay the people for their services. Messages had also been sent to the relatives of the dead, requesting them to appear at Mr. Sparhawk’s, prepared to make their claims good by the mouths of three witnesses.
“On the fifth morning the people—men, women, and children—of the Anglo-American Expedition, attended by hundreds of friends, who crowded the street and the capacious rooms of the Bertram Agency, began to receive their well-earned dues. The women, thirteen in number, who had borne the fatigues of the long, long journey, who had transformed the stern camp in the depths of the wilds into something resembling a village in their own island, who had encouraged their husbands to continue in their fidelity despite all adversity, were well rewarded.
“The children of the chiefs who had accompanied us from Zanzibar to the Atlantic, and who, by their childish, careless prattle, had often soothed me in mid-Africa, and had often caused me to forget my responsibilities for the time, were not forgotten. Neither were the tiny infants—ushered into the world amid the dismal and tragic scenes of the cataract lands, and who, with their eyes wide open with wonder, now crowed and crooned at the gathering of happy men and elated women about them—omitted in this final account and reckoning.
TRANSPORTING THE SECTIONS OF THE BOAT.
“The second pay-day was devoted to hearing the claims for wages due the faithful dead. Poor faithful souls! With an ardor and a fidelity unexpected, they had followed me to the very death. True, negro nature had often asserted itself; but it was, after all, but human nature. They had never boasted that they were heroes; but they exhibited truly heroic stuff while coping with the varied terrors of the hitherto untrodden and apparently endless wilds of broad Africa.