He thinks there is but one way of putting a perpetual end to this infernal traffic, and that is by stopping it in the interior. English and American cruisers on the coast can have but partial success. The suggestion of the Khedive of Egypt is the right one. Annex the interior of Africa to some strong power and establish stations on the great highways over which these traders are compelled to transport their human chattels, where they will be pounced upon and made to give up their captives, and the trade will soon cease from its being too hazardous and unprofitable.
Portugal has no right to the west coast, which it claims. Let England, or England and America together, claim and exercise sovereignty over it, and it will need no cruisers on the coast to stop the trade in slaves. At any rate, it is high time the Christian nations of the world put a stop to this disgrace and blot upon humanity.
CHAPTER XX. ORGANIZING A NEW EXPEDITION.
Arriving near Nyangwe, one of the first to meet Stanley was the Arab, Tipo-tipo, or Tipo-tib, or Tippu-tib (which is the proper spelling neither Cameron nor Stanley seems to know), who had once conducted Cameron as far as Utotera or the Kasongo country. He was a splendid specimen of a man physically, and just the one to give Stanley all the information he wanted respecting Cameron's movements. He told him that the latter wanted to follow the river to the sea, but that his men were unwilling to go; besides, no canoes could be obtained for the purpose. He also told him that after staying a long time at Kasongo, he had joined a company of Portuguese traders and proceeded south.
One thing was clear: Cameron had not settled the great problem that Livingstone wished of all things to solve—this great unfinished work had been left for Stanley to complete, or to leave for some future, more daring or more successful explorer. Could he get canoes—could he surmount difficulties that neither Livingstone nor Cameron were able to overcome? were the grave questions he asked himself. He had long dialogues with Tipo-tipo and other Arab chiefs, all of whom dissuaded him from attempting to follow the Lualaba by land, or trying to get canoes. They told him frightful stories of the cannibals below—of dwarfs striped like Zebras and ferocious as demons, with poisoned arrows, living on the backs of elephants, of anacondas, of impenetrable forests—in short, they conjured up a country and a people that no stranger who placed any value on his life would dare to encounter.
The fact that the Lualaba flowed north to a distance beyond the knowledge of the natives was doubtless one, and perhaps the chief, reason why Livingstone suspected it emptied into the Nile. Stanley now knew better. How far north it might flow before it turned he could not say, yet he felt certain that turn west it would, sooner or later, and empty into the Atlantic Ocean, and the possibility of his tracing it had a powerful fascination for him. Its course he knew lay through the largest half of Africa, which was a total blank. Here, by the way, it is rather singular that Stanley, following Livingstone who alone had explored Lake Bembe and made it the source of the Lualaba, adopts his statement, while Cameron, on mere hearsay, should assert that its source was in marshes. The river, after leaving the lake, flows two hundred miles and empties into Lake Mweru, a body of water containing about one thousand eight hundred square miles. Issuing from this, it takes the name of Lualaba, which it holds and loses by turns as it moves on its mighty course for one thousand one hundred miles, till it rolls, ten miles wide at its mouth, into the broad Atlantic as the Congo.
Stanley, from first to last, seemed to have a wonderful power, not only over the Arabs that composed his expedition as we have before mentioned, but over all those with whom he came in contact in his explorations. Notwithstanding all the horrors depicted as awaiting any attempt to advance beyond Nyangwe, this Tipo-tipo agreed, for $5,000, to accompany him with a strong escort a distance of sixty camps, on certain conditions. That he would do it on any conditions was extraordinary, considering the fact, if it was a fact, that the last attempt to penetrate this hostile territory resulted in the loss of five hundred men. The conditions were, that the march should commence from Nyangwe—not occupy more than three months—and that if Stanley should conclude, at the end of the sixty marches, that he could not get through, he would return to Nyangwe; or if he met Portuguese traders and chose to go to the coast in the direction they were moving, he should detail two-thirds of his force to accompany said Tipo back to Nyangwe for his protection.