[to be continued.]
[STANLEY'S GREAT JOURNEY.]
BY WILLIAM L. ALDEN.
The great journey of Mr. Henry M. Stanley, in which he crossed the continent of Africa, was both the longest and the most important journey that any African traveller has made. Both Dr. Livingstone and Commander Cameron had already crossed Africa, but they crossed it by a more southerly and much shorter path than that taken by the American traveller. They suffered a great deal from fever and weariness and the terrible heat; but Mr. Stanley, in addition to these miseries, was compelled to fight his way through tribe after tribe of blood-thirsty cannibals, and to follow the course of a dangerous river, full of rapids, in a frail boat. It is almost a miracle that he ever lived to reach the civilized world; and had he not been as prudent and skillful as he was brave and persevering, he never would have finished his journey.
Mr. Stanley started from Zanzibar—a town on the east coast of Africa—in November, 1874, with three young Englishmen and three hundred and fifty-three native Africans. Only a few of these were armed with rifles, for most of them were porters. In Africa, calico and beads are used for money, and as a traveller must have plenty of these with him, he has to employ a great many porters. You will ask why he does not have horses or oxen to carry his goods. The reason is that there is an insect in Africa, called the tsetse, the bite of which kills all animals of burden, so that travellers have to hire natives to carry all their property on their heads.
Stanley marched first to Lake Victoria—a lake discovered by Captain Speke in 1858, and which is one of the sources of the Nile. After sailing all around this lake in a boat which was made for him in England, and was built so that it could be taken apart and carried by the porters, he went to another great lake, discovered by Captain Burton in 1856, and called Lake Tanganyika. This he also circumnavigated in his boat, and discovered that it had no outlet. West of Lake Tanganyika Dr. Livingstone had discovered a great river, which he thought might be the Congo. Commander Cameron had also seen this river, and both of them wanted to descend it to its mouth, but they thought it would be impossible to make their way through the fierce savages who live on its banks.
When Stanley reached this great river, two of the young Englishmen that had started with him, Fred Barton and Edward Pocock, had already died of the deadly African fever, and so many of his other men had died, or deserted, or been killed, that he had only one white man, Frank Pocock, and one hundred and forty-nine natives—some of whom were women—who were willing to join him in a voyage down the river. He bought a number of canoes, and with these and his English boat, the Lady Alice, began his voyage. He had to fight almost constant battles with the natives, and the great river, with its swift current, that swept many of his canoes over the rapids, was almost as dangerous as the savages. In one of these rapids poor Frank Pocock was drowned, and when, after suffering the most terrible hardships, Stanley reached the Portuguese settlement near the mouth of the Congo, he had only one hundred and fifteen followers left, and these, like himself, were nearly dead from starvation, disease, and hardship.
One day Mr. Stanley was sailing on Lake Victoria in the Lady Alice with eleven natives, and being out of provisions, and very hungry, they rowed toward the shore, intending to land and buy food. About two hundred savages, armed with spears and bows and arrows, gathered to meet them. Stanley's men called to them, and told them they were friends, and wanted to buy food. The savages seemed to be peaceful, but as soon as the boat touched the shore, they seized it, and dragged it twenty yards up the beach, with Mr. Stanley sitting in it.
Then they swarmed around him, yelling and flourishing their clubs and spears. Many of them took aim at Stanley with their arrows; but he told his men to speak gently to them, and to convince them that they were friends. They demanded calico and beads, and Stanley gave them all they asked. Then they seized the boat's oars, and carried them off; but still the traveller made no resistance. The crowd constantly increased, until there were at least three hundred of the savages, all armed and painted for battle. They abused Stanley and his men, telling them they were cowards, and that they were going to kill them, and twenty times Mr. Stanley thought his last moment had come. Finally he told one of his men to go a little distance away from the boat, and to engage the attention of the savages, while the rest of them should take hold of the boat on each side, and at the word of command try to launch it. They did so; but the savages saw the boat moving, and rushed to the water's edge just as she glided into the lake. The man who had tried to attract the attention of the wretches while the boat was launched sprang into the water after her, and a savage was just on the point of spearing him, when Stanley fired, and saved his follower's life by shooting the spear-man. The men now climbed into the boat, and tearing up the bottom boards, tried to paddle with them away from the shore, while Stanley threatened the savages with his gun, and for a few moments kept them at a distance. They soon plucked up courage, however, and springing into their canoes, paddled after the Lady Alice. There was no escape except by driving the enemy back, and Mr. Stanley, with four shots from his elephant rifle, loaded with explosive balls, sunk two of the canoes, and killed five men, after which the others retreated, and the Lady Alice, after paddling all night, and driving before a heavy gale all the next day and all the next night, in imminent peril of sinking, brought her exhausted crew to an uninhabited island, seventy-six hours after the fight. Instead of showing a hard-hearted readiness to fire on the poor Africans, in this, as in all his other fights, Stanley showed the most wonderful self-control, and only used his rifle when he had to choose between being killed, together with his men, and firing on his brutal foes.