Pressing on three hours longer they encamped in the forest. Two hours before daylight they again set out, the guide promising that by next morning they should be clear of the hostile district. On this Stanley exclaims, "Patience, my soul! A few hours more and then the end of all this will be known. I shall be face to face with that white man with the white beard on his face, whoever he may be." Before daylight they started again, and emerging from the forest on to the high road, the guides, thinking they had passed the last village of the hostile tribe, set up a shout, but soon, to their horror, came plump upon its outskirts. Fate seemed about to desert him at the last moment, for if the village was roused he was a doomed man. Keeping concealed amid the trees, Stanley ordered the goats to be killed lest their bleating should lead to discovery, the chickens to be killed also, and then they plunged into the jungle, Stanley being the last man to follow. It was a narrow escape. After an half-hour's march, finding they were not pursued, they again took to the road. One more night in the encampment and then the end would come. Next morning they pushed on with redoubled speed, and in two hours, from the top of a mountain Stanley, with bounding heart, beheld Lake Tanganika, a vast expanse of burnished silver, with dark mountains around it and the blue sky above it. "Hurrah," shouted Stanley, and the natives took up the shout, till the hills and forest rang with their exultant cries. The long struggle was near over; the goal toward which he had been so long straining was almost won.
CHAPTER VIII. STANLEY MEETS LIVINGSTONE.
Stanley's excitement at this supreme moment of his life can never be described or even imagined. When he started from Zanzibar, he knew he had thrown the dice which were to fix his fate. Successful, and his fame was secure, while failure meant death; and all the chances were against him. How much he had taken upon himself no one but he knew; into what gloomy gulfs he had looked before he started, he alone was conscious. Of the risks he ran, of the narrow escapes he had made, of the toils and sufferings he had endured, he alone could form an estimate. With the accumulation of difficulties and the increasing darkness of his prospects, the one great object of his mission had increased in importance, till great though it was, it became unnaturally magnified so that, at last, it filled all his vision, and became the one, the great, the only object in life worth pursuing. For it he had risked so much, toiled so long and suffered so terribly, that the whole world, with all its interests, was secondary to it. Hope had given way to disappointment and disappointment yielded to despair so often, that his strong nature had got keyed up to a dangerous pitch. But now the reward was near. Balboa, when alone he ascended the summit that was to give him a sight of the great Pacific Ocean, was not more intensely excited than was Stanley when he labored up the steep mountain that should give him a view of the Tanganika.
The joy, the exultation of that moment, outbalanced a life of common happiness. It was a feeling that lifts the soul into a region where our common human nature never goes, and it becomes a memory that influences and shapes the character forever. Such a moment of ecstasy—of perfect satisfaction—of exultant, triumphant feeling that asks nothing better—that brings perfect rest with the highest exaltation, can happen to any man but once in a life-time. To attempt to give any description of this culmination of all his effort, and longing, and ambition, except in his own words, would be not only an act of injustice to him, but to the reader.
The descent to Ujiji and the interview with Livingstone is full of dramatic interest and the description of it should not be made by a third party, for to attempt to improve on it would be presumption and would end only in failure. We, therefore, give it in Mr. Stanley's own words, that glow with vivid life from beginning to end, and this shall be his chapter:
"We are descending the western slope of the mountain, with the valley of the Linche before us. Something like an hour before noon we have gained the thick matite brake, which grows on both banks of the river; we wade through the clear stream, arrive on the other side, emerge out of the brake, and the gardens of the Wajiji are around us—a perfect marvel of vegetable wealth. Details escape my hasty and partial observation. I am almost overpowered with my own emotion. I notice the graceful palms, neat plats, green with vegetable plants, and small villages, surrounded with frail fences of the matite cane.
"We push on rapidly, lest the news of our coming might reach the people of Bunder Ujiji before we come in sight and are ready for them. We halt at a little brook, then ascend the long slope of a naked ridge, the very last of the myriads we have crossed. This alone prevents us from seeing the lake in all its vastness. We arrive at the summit, travel across and arrive at its western rim, and—pause, reader—the port of Ujiji is below us, embowered in the palms, only five hundred yards from us. At this grand moment we do not think of the hundreds of miles we have marched, of the hundreds of hills we have ascended and descended, of the many forests we have traversed, of the jungles and thickets that annoyed us, of the fervid salt plains that blistered our feet, of the hot suns that scorched us, nor the dangers and difficulties now happily surmounted. At last the sublime hour has arrived! our dreams, our hopes, our anticipations are about to be realized. Our hearts and our feelings are with our eyes, as we peer into the palms and try to make out in which hut or house lives the white man, with the gray beard, we heard about on the Malagarazi.
"'Unfurl the flags and load the guns.'