At last, with banners flying and trumpets and horns blowing, and amid volleys of small arms, the caravan entered Unyanyembe.
Of the three routes from the coast to this place, Stanley discarded the two that had before been traveled by Speke and Burton and Grant and chose the third, with the originality of an American, and thus saved nearly two hundred miles' travel.
Mr. Stanley, after reaching this first great objective point, goes back and gives a general description of the regions he has traversed. To the geographer, it may be of interest, but not to the general reader. But the following, taken from his long account, will give the reader a clear idea of the country traversed and of its inhabitants. Beginning with Wiami River, emptying into the Indian Ocean near Zanzibar, he says:
"First it appears to me that the Wiami River is available for commerce and, by a little improvement, could be navigated by light-draft steamers near to the Usagara Mountains, the healthy region of this part of Africa, and which could be reached by steamers in four days from the coast, and then it takes one into a country where ivory, sugar, cotton, indigo and other productions can be obtained."
Besides, he says:
"Four days by steamer bring the missionary to the healthy uplands of Africa, where he can live amongst the gentle Wasagara without fear or alarm; where he can enjoy the luxuries of civilized life without fear of being deprived of them, amid the most beautiful and picturesque scenes a poetic fancy could imagine. Here is the greenest verdure, purest water; here are valleys teeming with grain-stalks, forests of tamarind, mimosa, gum-copal tree; here is the gigantic moule, the stately mparamnsi, the beautiful palm; a scene such as only a tropic sky covers. Health and abundance of food are assured to the missionary; gentle people are at his feet, ready to welcome him. Except civilized society, nothing that the soul of man can desire is lacking here.
"From the village of Kadetamare a score of admirable mission sites are available, with fine health-giving breezes blowing over them, water in abundance at their feet, fertility unsurpassed around them, with docile, good-tempered people dwelling everywhere at peace with each other, and with all travelers and neighbors.
"As the passes of the Olympus unlocked the gates of the Eastern empires to the hordes of Othman; as the passes of Kumaylé and Sura admitted the British into Abyssinia; so the passes of the Mukondokwa may admit the Gospel and its beneficent influences into the heart of savage Africa.
"I can fancy old Kadetamare rubbing his hands with glee at the sight of the white man coming to teach his people the words of the 'Mulungu'—the Sky Spirit; how to sow, and reap, and build houses; how to cure their sick, how to make themselves comfortable—in short, how to be civilized. But the missionary, to be successful, must know his duties as well as a thorough sailor must know how to reef, hand and steer. He must be no kid-glove, effeminate man, no journal writer, no disputatious polemic, no silken stole and chasuble-loving priest, but a thorough, earnest laborer in the garden of the Lord,—a man of the David Livingstone, or of the Robert Moffatt stamp.
"The other river, the Rufiji, or Ruhwha, is a still more important stream than Wiami. It is a much longer river, and discharges twice as much water into the Indian Ocean. It rises near some mountains about one hundred miles southwest of Nbena. Kisigo River, the most northern and most important affluent of the Ruhwha, is supposed to flow into it near east longitude thirty-five degrees; from the confluence to the sea, the Ruhwha has a length of four degrees of direct longitude. This fact, of itself, must prove its importance and rank among the rivers of East Africa.