The native traders, who act as intermediaries between the whites and the people of the interior, were also opposed, as they did not care to have Europeans establish trading stations away from the coast; and the same was the case with the tribes living near the falls of the great river. Stanley managed to avoid trouble with any of these interests, and at once began the work of establishing stations and building roads, to open up the heart of Africa to European traffic.
What he accomplished in three years may be summed up as follows:
He negotiated with the chiefs of the tribes on the river along the whole line of cataracts for the right to establish stations and build roads, paying a rental for the ground he occupied, and dealing liberally with them in every way. He made two hundred miles of road through the wilderness, carrying it sometimes over mountains and through country which presented a great many difficulties. In one place his whole force was occupied twenty-six days in making twelve hundred feet of road around the flank of a mountain of nearly solid quartz. At each end of the road there is a permanent station, consisting of a central house or residence, with numerous huts and storehouses around it, and with fields and gardens for the production of anything that will grow in the country.
CURIOUS HEAD-DRESS.
There are three intermediate stations between the first and the last, built in the manner just described. The road through its whole length is about fifteen feet wide, and suitable for wagons of any kind, and it has been built with a view to permanency. By his exploit in going around the mountain Stanley received the name of "The Breaker of Rocks," by which he is now known in all that region.
In his account of the work the great explorer says:
"The weight and labor of our transport may be imagined when I say that we had no less than two thousand two hundred and twenty-five loads or packages, each weighing from sixty-five to seventy pounds. We had seven large store tents, and besides this we had enormous wagons, built on purpose for us in Belgium, whereon to transport the two steamers and two large steel boats, with boilers and machinery, which we had brought with us to put together on the Upper Congo. We had to go over the ground no less than thirty-three times, and our rate of progress, calculating the number of days we travelled, was only a quarter of a mile a day. After eleven months of unceasing toil the two steamers were put together at the second station above the Isangila cataract, the place where I left the Lady Alice after her seven thousand mile journey with me in the Anglo-American expedition across the Dark Continent."