The memory of the "Wise Heart" or the "Helper of Men," as they called Livingstone, is still handed down from father to son among the natives of Africa, and they are glad that his heart remains in African soil under the tree in Chitambo's village. His dream of finding the sources of the Nile, and of throwing light on the destination of the Lualaba, was not fulfilled, but he discovered Ngami and Nyassa and other lakes, the Victoria Falls and the upper course of the Zambesi, and mapped an enormous extent of unknown country.
Stanley's Great Journey
In the autumn of 1874 Stanley was back in Zanzibar to try his fortune once more in Darkest Africa. He organised a caravan of three hundred porters, provided himself with cloth, beads, brass-wire, arms, boats which could be taken to pieces, tents, and everything else necessary for a journey of several years.
He made first for the Victoria Nyanza, and circumnavigated the whole lake. He visited Uganda, came again to Ujiji, where Livingstone's hut had long been razed to the ground, and sailed all round Lake Tanganyika.
Two years after he started he was at Nyangwé on the Lualaba. Livingstone and Cameron had been there before, and we can imagine Stanley's feelings when he at last found himself at this, the most westerly point ever reached by a European from the coast of the Indian Ocean. Behind him lay the known country and the great lakes; before him lay a land as large as Europe, completely unknown and appearing as a blank on maps. Travellers had come to its outskirts from all sides, but none knew what the interior was like. It was not even known whither the Lualaba ran. Livingstone had vainly questioned the natives and Arabs about it, and vainly Stanley also tried to obtain information. At Nyangwé the Arab slave-traders held their most western market. Thither corn, fruit, and vegetables were brought for sale; there were sold animals, fish, grass mats, brass-wire, bows, arrows, and spears; and thither were brought ivory and slaves from the interior. But though routes from all directions met at Nyangwé, the Arabs were as ignorant of the country as any one.
The black continent, "Darkest Africa," lay before Stanley. He was a bold man, to whom difficulties were nothing. He had a will of iron. All opposition, all obstacles placed in his way, must go down before him. He had determined not to return eastwards, whence he had come, but to march straight westwards to the Atlantic coast, or die in the attempt. Accordingly, early on the morning of November 5, 1876, Stanley left Nyangwé in company with the rich and powerful Arab chief, Tippu Tib, and directed his way northwards towards the great forest. Tippu Tib's party consisted of 700 men, women, and children, while Stanley had 154 followers armed with rifles, revolvers, and axes. "Bismillah—in the name of God!" cried the Mohammedan leaders of the company, as they took the first step on the dangerous road.
The huge caravan, an interminable file of black men, entered the forest. There majestic trees stood like pillars in a colonnade; there palms struggled for room with wild vines and canes; there flourished ferns, spear-grass, and reeds, and there bushes in tropical profusion formed impenetrable brushwood; while through the whole was entangled a network of climbing plants, which ran up the trunks and hung down from the branches. Everything was damp and wet. Dew dropped from all the branches and leaves in a continuous trickle. The air was close and sultry, and heavy with the odour of plants and mould. It was deadly still, and seldom was the slightest breeze perceptible; storms might rage above the tree-tops, but no wind reached the ground, sheltered in the dimness of the undergrowth.
The men struggle along over the slippery ground. Balancing their loads on their heads with their hands, they stoop under boughs, push saplings aside with their elbows, thrust their feet firmly into the mud in order not to slip. Those who are clothed have their clothes torn, while the naked black men graze their skins. Very slowly the caravan forces its way through the forest, and a passage has frequently to be cut for those who carry the sections of the boats.
All who, after Stanley, have travelled through the great primeval forest in the heart of Africa have likewise described its suffocating hot-house air, the peaceful silence, only broken by the cries of monkeys and parrots, its deep, depressing gloom. If the journey is of long duration men get wearied, experiencing a feeling of confinement, and long for air, freedom, sun, and wind. It is like going through a tunnel, no country being visible on either side. The illumination is uniform, without shadows, without gleams, and the perpetual gloom, only interrupted by pitch-dark night, is exceedingly wearisome. Like polar explorers in the long winter night, the traveller longs for the sun and the return of light.
The party travelled northwards at some distance east of the Lualaba. Stanley climbed up a tree which grew somewhat apart on a hillock. Here he found himself above the tree-tops, and saw the sunlit surface of the primeval forest of closely growing trees below him. A continuous sea of boughs and foliage fell like a swell down to the bank of the Lualaba. Up here there was a breeze and the leaves fluttered in the wind; but down below reigned darkness and silence and the exuberant life of the tropics.