This prediction that the expedition would reach Mpwapwa by November 20th was more than verified. He got there on November 10th. On November 11th Sir William Mackinnon received a despatch from Stanley announcing his arrival there, and stating that he expected to reach Zanzibar in a few days.
To the British Consul at Zanzibar Mr. Stanley wrote, under the same date:
"We arrived here yesterday on the fifty-fifth day from Victoria Nyanza and the one hundred and eighty-eighth day from the Albert Nyanza. We number altogether about seven hundred and fifty souls. At the last muster, three days ago, Emin Pasha's people numbered two hundred and ninety-four, of whom fifty-nine are children, mostly orphans of Egyptian officers. The whites with me are Lieutenant Stairs, Captain Nelson, Mounteney, Jephson, Surgeon Parke, William Bonny, Mr. Hoffman, Emin Pasha and his daughter, Captain Casati, Signor Marco and a Tunisian, Vitu Hassan, and an apothecary. We have also Pères Girault and Schinze, of the Algerian mission. Among the principal officers of the Pasha are the Vakeers, of the Equatorial province, and Major Awash Effendi, of the Second battalion.
"Since leaving Victoria Nyanza we have lost eighteen of the Pasha's people, and one native of Zanzibar, who was killed while we were parleying with hostile people. Every other expedition I have led has seen the lightening of our labors as we drew near the sea, but I cannot say the same of this one. Our long string of hammock bearers tells a different tale, and until we place these poor things on shipboard there will be no rest for us. The worst of it is we have not the privilege of showing at Zanzibar the full extent of our labors. After carrying some of them one thousand miles, fighting to the right and left of the sick, driving Warasura from their prey, over range and range of mountains, with every energy on the full strain, they slip through our hands and die in their hammocks. One lady, seventy-five years of age, the old mother of the Valkiel, died in this manner in North Msukuma, south of Victoria Nyanza.
"We had as stirring a time for four days as we had anywhere. For those four days we had continuous fighting during the greater part of daylight hours. The foolish natives took an unaccountable prejudice to the Pasha's people. They insisted that they were cannibals and had come to their country for no good. Talking to them was of no use. Any attempt at disproof drove them into white hot rage, and in their mad flinging of themselves on us they suffered."
CHAPTER XXXV. AT THE COAST AT LAST.
A special correspondent of the New York Herald reached Msuwah at 5 P. M., on November 29th, and immediately sent to that paper the following despatch:
"I have just met Henry M. Stanley, Emin Pasha, Casati, Lieutenant Stairs, Mr. Jephson, Dr. Parke, Nelson and Bonny and five hundred and sixty men, women and children.