On his way westward Stanley passed through the regions of King Rumanika, an eccentric character, at whose court the white man heard many strange stories of unknown regions in the heart of the continent. From this point Stanley went southwardly to explore that part of Lake Tanganyika which lies south, and this he found to be three hundred and twenty miles long, averaging a width of twenty-eight miles. It has no known outlet, and a sounding line of two hundred and eighty feet found no bottom.
His next march from Tanganyika to the River Lualaba was toilsome and perilous and beset with dangers almost incredible. At Nyangwe Stanley touched the most distant point in Central Africa ever reached before by white man. Here he met with Tippoo Tib, the famous Arab trader. This man, who has always seemed to be master of the destinies and fortunes of the wild, roving tribes in the interior, agreed to accompany Stanley on his exploration of the Lualaba or Great River. If it had not been for this agreement with Tippoo Tib, it is most likely that Stanley's expedition would have ended then and there, and we never should have known, as we now know, that the Congo and the Lualaba are one river, the second largest in the world. Its line extends from its month on the west coast of Africa more than half-way across the continent, and it has its rise in the great lakes of the interior. To this vast stream Stanley has given the name of Livingstone.
The object of Stanley's journey now was to throw light on the western half of the continent, which was then represented on the maps by a blank, through which meandered a few vague and uncertain lines representing rivers, guessed at but not known. Stanley got on better with the natives than did any of those who had gone before him, for he was wise, patient, and gentle, and yet so firm and decided that he was held in great awe and respect by the black men wherever he was known. Leaving the river and deflecting to the westward, he struggled on through a forest matted and interlaced with vines, swarming with creeping things, damp and reeking with vapors, and dripping with moisture. It was a most intolerable and horrid stage of the journey. When again he struck the great river he resolved to go by land no further. Here he was abandoned by Tippoo Tib, who refused to go on. Stanley resolutely set himself to work building and buying canoes, and led by his own English-built boat, the Lady Alice, his expedition started finally down the river, which here flows due north. The fleet was twenty-three in number, and was loaded with stores, goods, and supplies.
Stanley shooting the Rapids of the Congo.
It was a wonderful voyage. The explorers were harassed at times by savage tribes, some of them believed to be cannibals, who attacked the strangers from shore, or in pure wantonness, as they drifted down the stream. Sickness and hunger were often their lot, and they were overtaken by tropical storms. In some places, too, they encountered rapids and cataracts, around which their fleet had to be dragged through paths cut in the primeval forest while the savages hovered around them. The forests were populous with wild beasts; chimpanzees and gorillas, monkeys, and all manner of four-footed things infested the clambering vines that festooned the trees. They were once attacked by an hippopotamus, and elephants and rhinoceroses were never far away. At a point below where the great river turns from its great northerly course and flows westward, just above the equator, was discovered a series of cataracts, seven in all, the first of which was named Livingstone Falls and the seventh Stanley Falls. The natives from this point downward to the mouth of the Congo had lost something of their natural ferocity, as they had been tamed by trade from the west coast, and great was the rejoicing of Stanley's Zanzibar men when they encountered native warriors with firearms in their hands, for this showed that they had reached a people supplied by traders from the Congo coast.
The passing of the last group of cataracts was attended by numerous dangers. In spite of all their efforts, canoes were sometimes carried over the falls and wrecked, and on June 3d, Frank Pocock, the last of Stanley's white companions, was drowned in the Congo by the upsetting of a boat. Pocock was a brave, faithful, and devoted follower of Stanley, who has paid a touching tribute to the manliness, affection, and courage of the young Englishman who lies buried in the savage wilderness of the Congo.
Very soon, as they drew nearer to the west coast, in the latter part of the summer of 1877, sickness, distress, and famine pressed hard upon the way-worn travellers. They were destitute of nearly everything that could sustain nature. The natives refused to sell supplies, and starvation stared them in the face. Knowing that a trading-post was established at Embomma, a two days' journey down the river, Stanley wrote on an old piece of cotton cloth a letter asking for help, which was sent to the trading-post by his swiftest runners. This letter was written in Spanish, French, and also in English, Stanley in his anxiety and despair leaving no means untried to reach the unknown traders whom he heard were at Embomma. The men into whose hands this three-fold message fell were English and Portuguese. Their response was prompt and generous. The messengers were sent back, followed by a small caravan laden with ample supplies of food and the necessaries of life, greatly to the relief of the starving people who, on the arrival of this timely aid, had eaten nothing for thirty hours. On August 9, 1877, the nine hundred and ninety-ninth day from the date of their departure from Zanzibar, Stanley's company, now numbering one hundred and fourteen blacks and one white man, met the generous traders and merchants of Embomma, who received the way-worn voyagers that had crossed the Dark Continent. From the mouth of the Congo the expedition was carried by steamer to Kabinda, a seaport a short distance up the coast, whence they were taken to the port of San Paolo de Loanda, where they embarked on board a British man-of-war and were taken to Cape Town; thence, touching at Port Natal, they steamed to Zanzibar, where they arrived on November 20, 1877. Long since given up for dead, the Zanzibar men were greeted by their kindred with signs of thanksgiving, tears and cries of joy. They had crossed the heart of the continent, doubled the great Cape, and were again at home.
Stanley returned to England from Zanzibar, arriving in December, 1877. The King of the Belgians had been planning an expedition to open up the Congo country to trade, and now requested Stanley to take command of his expedition. Stanley undertook the management of the new organization and returned to Africa in 1879, where he remained nearly six years, hard at work on the Congo, making roads, establishing stations, and opening the way for commerce. The Congo Free State, founded by King Leopold, lies chiefly south of the great bend of the river, and contains an area of 1,508,000 square miles, with a population of more than 42,000,000. The articles collected from the African trade at points along the great river, are ivory, palm-oil, gum, copal, rubber, bees-wax, cabinet woods, hippopotamus teeth and hides, monkey skins, and divers other things. Stanley now made brief visits to Europe and the United States. While he was in this country, in the winter of 1886 and 1887, he was summoned back to Europe to take once more command of an African expedition to rescue Emin Pasha, governor of the province of Equatorial Africa. Emin is the Egyptian name of Dr. Schnitzler. He has been generally known throughout Africa as Emin Pasha, and was governor of the province which is one of the outlying posts of the Egyptian government, when the revolt in the Soudan took place. When General Gordon was besieged in Khartoum, the province of Emin Pasha was cut off from the rest of Egypt, and Emin was shut up in the region north of the Albert Nyanza, whose capital is Lado, on one of the minor branches of the White Nile.