By earliest daylight of the next morning the older Indian was up, and stirring about very softly so as not to awaken the strangers. He was about to make an effort to earn that twenty-five dollars, and believed that by careful management it might be his before noon. He planned to notify the commander of the cutter that while he could deliver one of the desired lads into his Lands, the other had taken a canoe and gone to Tacoma, where he could no doubt be readily found. If the Tyhee of the piah-ship agreed to pay him the offered reward or even half of it for one lad, he would ask that a boat might be sent to the camp for him. In the mean time he would return first and invite both boys to go out fishing. Bonny in a canoe with him, and the other in a second canoe with Bah-die, who would be instructed to take his passenger out of sight, somewhere up the coast. Then the cutter's boat would be allowed to overtake his canoe, and Bonny could be handed over to those who wanted him without any trouble.
It was an admirably conceived plan, and the old Siwash chuckled over it as he softly launched his lightest canoe, stepped into it, and paddled swiftly away.
[to be continued.]
[EXPLORING NEW-FOUND RIVERS.]
BY C. C. ADAMS
ome of the leading African explorers have never written a book. They have had other work besides exploration, and have been too busy to write long accounts of their discoveries. A single copy of this paper would hold all that Alexander Delcommune, who has travelled further in the Congo basin than any other explorer, has written about his work. Captain Van Gele, who has had remarkable experiences, and who took the last step in the solution of a great geographical conundrum—the destination of Schweinfurth's "Welle" river—has written very little. But we know what all these men have done. Every new map of Africa that is worth anything differs from all its predecessors, because it contains later and better information. These men have done much to change and improve the maps, and their short reports to geographical and other societies have been very interesting and important.
Foremost among these men is George Grenfell, of the Baptist Missionary Society of England, whose travels in 1884-5 gave us our first knowledge of six of the largest Congo tributaries. Many thousands of black people in the middle Congo basin first learned of the white man when they saw Grenfell pushing up their rivers on his little steamboat. He travelled for over three thousand miles on the Congo and its tributaries, and always as a man of peace, winning the confidence of barbarous tribes by patience and kindness. He never shed a drop of blood nor laid violent hands upon a native. How much better was this policy than to respond with violence to the mistrust and opposition of these frightened and savage peoples.