Beyond Vinya Njara, the Arabs would not proceed, and I did not need them. We were far enough from Nyangwe. Its seductive life could no longer tempt my people. Accordingly, we prepared to part.

I embarked my followers in the canoes and boat. Tippu-Tib ranged his people along the bank. His Wanyamuezi chanted the mournful farewell. We surrendered ourselves to the strong flood, which bore us along to whatever Fate reserved in store for us.

Dense woods covered both banks and islands. Though populous settlements met our eyes frequently, our intercourse with the aborigines was of a fitfully fierce character. With an audacity sprung from ignorance, and cannibal greed, they attacked us with ever fresh relays. A few weak villages allowed our flotilla to glide by unmolested, but the majority despatched their bravest warriors, who assailed us with blind fury. Important tributaries, such as the Uruidi, the Loweva, the Leopold, and the Lufu, opened wide gaps in the dark banks, and lazy creeks oozed from amid low flats and swamps.

Armies of parrots screamed overhead as they flew across the river; aquatic birds whirred by us to less disturbed districts; legions of monkeys sported in the branchy depths; howling baboons alarmed the solitudes; crocodiles haunted the sandy points and islets; herds of hippopotami grunted thunderously at our approach; elephants bathed their sides by the margin of the river; there was unceasing vibration from millions of insects throughout the livelong day. The sky was an azure dome, out of which the sun shone large and warm; the river was calm, and broad, and brown. While we floated past the wilderness, we were cheered by its calm and restful aspect, but the haunts of the wild men became positively hateful.

Such were my experiences until I arrived at what is now known as the Stanley Falls. The savages gathered about us on the river, and lined the shore to witness the catastrophe, but I faced the left bank, drove the natives away, and landed. For twenty-two days I toiled to get past the seven cataracts—my left flank attacked by the ruthless and untiring natives, my right protected by the boiling and raging flood. On the 28th of January, my boats were safe below the Falls.

I was just twenty miles north of the Equator. Since I first sighted the mysterious Lualaba, I had only made about sixty miles of westing in a journey of nearly four hundred miles. Therefore its course had been mainly northward and Nileward, almost parallel with the trend of the Tanganyika.

I myself was still in doubt as to what river-system it belonged to. But below the Falls, the Lualaba, nearly a mile wide, curved northwest. ‘Ha! it is the Niger, or the Congo,’ I said. I had not much time to speculate, however. Every hour was replete with incidents. The varied animal life on the shores, the effervescing face of the turbid flood, the subtle rising and sinking of the greedy crocodile, the rampant plunge and trumpet snort of the hippos, the unearthly, flesh-curdling cry of the relentless cannibal—had it not been for these, which gave tone to our life, there was every disposition to brood, and dream, and glide on insensibly to eternal forgetfulness. Looked I ahead, I viewed the stern river streaming away—far away into a tremulous, vaporous ocean. If you followed that broad band of living waters, quick and alert as the senses might be at first, you soon became conscious that you were subsiding into drowsiness as the eyes rested on the trembling vapours exhaled by river and forest, which covered the distance as with silver gauze; then the unknown lands loomed up in the imagination, with most fantastic features, the fancy roamed through pleasing medleys,—

But see! we have arrived at the confluence of the Lualaba with a river which rivals it in breadth. Down the latter, a frantic host of feathered warriors urge a fleet of monstrous canoes. They lift their voices in a vengeful chorus, the dense forest repeats it, until it flies pealing from bank to bank. The war-horns are blown with deafening blasts, the great drums boom out a sound which fills our ears and deafens our sense of hearing. For a moment, we are aghast at the terrific view! The instinct of most of our party is to fly. Fly from that infuriate rush! Impossible! The rifles of our boat are directed against the fugitives. They are bidden to return, to form a line, to drop anchor. The shields which have been our booty from many a fight are lifted to bulwark the non-combatants, the women and the children; and every rifleman takes aim, waiting for the word. It is ‘neck or nothing’! I have no time to pray, or take sentimental looks around, or to breathe a savage farewell to the savage world!

There are fifty-four canoes. The foremost is a Leviathan among native craft. It has eighty paddlers, standing in two rows, with spears poised for stabbing, their paddles knobbed with ivory, and the blades carved. There are eight steersmen at the stern, a group of prime young warriors at the bow, capering gleefully, with shield and spear; every arm is ringed with broad ivory bracelets, their heads gay with parrot-feathers.

The Leviathan bears down on us with racing speed, its consorts on either flank spurting up the water into foam, and shooting up jets with their sharp prows; a thrilling chant from two thousand throats rises louder and louder on our hearing.

Presently, the poised spears are launched, and a second later my rifles respond with a ripping, crackling explosion, and the dark bodies of the canoes and paddlers rush past us. For a short time, the savages are paralyzed; but they soon recover. They find there is death in those flaming tubes in the hands of the strangers, and, with possibly greater energy than they advanced, they retreat, the pursued becoming the pursuers in hot chase.

My blood is up. It is a murderous world, and I have begun to hate the filthy, vulturous shoals who inhabit it. I pursue them up-stream, up to their villages; I skirmish in their streets, drive them pell-mell into the woods beyond, and level their ivory temples; with frantic haste I fire the huts, and end the scene by towing the canoes into mid-stream and setting them adrift!

Now, suspecting everything with the semblance of man, like hard-pressed stags, wearied with fighting, our nerves had become unstrung. We were still only in the middle of the continent, and yet we were being weeded out of existence, day by day, by twos and threes. The hour of utter exhaustion was near, when we should lie down like lambs, and offer our throats to the cannibal butchers.

But relief and rest were near. The last great affluent had expanded the breadth of the Lualaba to four miles. A series of islands were formed in mid-river, lengthy and narrow, lapping one another; and between each series there were broad channels. I sheered off the mainland, entered these channels, and was shut out from view.

‘Allah,’ as I cried out to my despairing people, ‘has provided these liquid solitudes for us. Bismillah, men, and forward.’

But, every two or three days, the channels, flowing diagonally, floated us in view of the wild men of the mainland. With drumming and horn-blowing, these ruthless people came on, ignoring the fact that their intended victims might hold their lives dear, might fight strenuously for their existence. The silly charms and absurd fetishes inspired the credulous natives with a belief in their invulnerability. They advanced with a bearing which, by implication, I understood to mean, ‘It is useless to struggle, you know. You cannot evade the fate in store for you! Ha, ha; meat, meat, we shall have meat to-day!’ and they dashed forward with the blind fury of crocodiles in sight of their prey, and the ferocious valour of savages who believe themselves invincible.

What then? Why, I answered them with the energy of despair, and tore through them with blazing rifles, leaving them wondering and lamenting.

I sought the mid-channel again, and wandered on with the current, flanked by untenanted islets, which were buried in tropical shade by clustered palms and the vivid leafage of paradise. Ostracised by savage humanity, the wilds embraced us, and gave us peace and rest. In the voiceless depths of the watery wilderness we encountered neither treachery nor guile. Therefore we clung to them as long as we could, and floated down, down, hundreds of miles.

The river curved westward, then south-westward. Ah, straight for the mouth of the Congo! It widened daily; the channels became numerous. Sometimes in crossing from one to another there was an open view of water from side to side. It might have been a sea for all we knew, excepting that there was a current, and the islands glided by us.

After forty days, I saw hills; the river contracted, gathered its channels one by one, until at last we floated down a united and powerful river, banked by mountains. Four days later we emerged out of this on a circular expanse. The white cliffs of Albion were duplicated by white sand-cliffs on our right, at the entrance, capped by grassy downs. Cheered at the sight, Frank Pocock cried out, ‘Why, here are the cliffs of Dover, and this singular expanse we shall call Stanley Pool!’

The stretch of uninterrupted navigation I had just descended measured one thousand and seventy statute miles. At the lower end of Stanley Pool, the river contracted again, and presently launched itself down a terraced steep, in a series of furious rapids.

Resolved to cling to the river, we dragged our canoes by land past the rapids, lowered them again into the river, paddled down a few miles with great rock-precipices on either hand. We encountered another rapid, and again we drew our canoes overland. It grew to be a protracted and fatal task. At Kalulu Falls six of my men were drowned. Accidents occurred almost every day. Casualties became frequent. Twice myself and crew were precipitated down the rapids. Frank Pocock, unwarned by the almost every-day calamity, insisted that his crew should shoot the Massassa Falls. The whirlpool below sucked all down to the soundless depths, out of which Frank and two young Zanzibaris never emerged alive.

But still resolute to persevere, I continued the desperate task, and toiled on and on, now in danger of cataracts, then besieged by famine, until, on the 31st of July, I arrived at a point on the Lower Congo, last seen by Captain Tuckey, an English Naval officer, in 1816. I knew then, beyond dispute of the most captious critic, that the Lualaba, whose mystery had wooed Livingstone to his death, was no other than the ‘lucid, long-winding Zaire,’ as sung by Camoens, or the mighty Congo.

Now, farewell, brave boat! seven thousand miles, up and down broad Africa, thou hast accompanied me! For over five thousand miles thou hast been my home! Now lift her up tenderly, boys, so tenderly, and let her rest!

Wayworn and feeble, we began our overland march, through a miserable country inhabited by a sordid people. They would not sell me food, unless for gin, they said. Gin! and from me! ‘Why, men, two and a half years ago I left the Indian Sea, and can I have gin? Give us food that we may live, or beware of hungry men!’ They gave us refuse of their huts, some pea-nuts, and stunted bananas. We tottered on our way to the Atlantic, a scattered column of long and lean bodies, dysentery, ulcers, and scurvy, fast absorbing the remnant of life left by famine.

I despatched couriers ahead. Two days from Boma, they returned with abundance. We revived, and, staggering, arrived at Boma on the 9th of August, 1877, and an international gathering of European merchants met me, and, smiling a warm welcome, told me kindly that I ‘had done right well.’

Three days later, I gazed upon the Atlantic Ocean, and I saw the puissant river flowing into the bosom of that boundless, endless sea. But, grateful as I felt to Him who had enabled me to pierce the Dark Continent from east to west, my heart was charged with grief, and my eyes with tears, at the thought of the many comrades and friends I had lost.

The unparalleled fidelity of my people to me demanded that I should return them to their homes. Accordingly, I accompanied them round the Cape of Good Hope to Zanzibar, where, in good time, we arrived, to the great joy of their friends and relatives, when father embraced son, and brother brother, and mothers their daughters, and kinsmen hailed as heroes the men who had crossed the continent.

Only the inevitable limitations of space prevent a citation from the fuller account of this expedition in Stanley’s book, ‘Through the Dark Continent,’ of some passages illustrating the loyal and tender relations between him and his black followers. Nothing in the story exceeds in human interest the final scene, his conveying of his surviving force, from the mouth of the Congo, around the Cape, to their homes in Zanzibar, so removing their depression arising from the fear that, having found again his own people, he may leave them; their gladness at the re-assurance he gives; the arrival at

Zanzibar, after three weeks’ voyage; the astonishment and delight of the reunion with relatives and friends; the sorrowful parting with their master. When he went on board the steamer to sail for Europe, a deputation of the best followed him on board, to offer their help in reaching his home, if he needed it, and to declare that they would start for no new adventure on the continent until they heard that he had safely reached his own land.

The second pay-day was devoted to hearing the claims for wages due to the faithful dead. Poor, faithful souls! With an ardour and a fidelity unexpected, and an immeasurable confidence, they had followed me to the very death! True, negro nature had often asserted itself; but it was, after all, but human nature. They had never boasted that they were heroes, but they exhibited truly heroic stuff while coping with the varied terrors of the hitherto untrodden, and apparently endless, wilds of broad Africa.

They were sweet and sad moments, those of parting. What a long, long and true friendship was here sundered! Through what strange vicissitudes of life had they not followed me! What wild and varied scenes had we not seen together! What a noble fidelity these untutored souls had exhibited! The chiefs were those who had followed me to Ujiji in 1871: they had been witnesses of the joy of Livingstone at the sight of me; they were the men to whom I entrusted the safe-guard of Livingstone on his last and fatal journey; who had mourned by his corpse at Muilla, and borne the illustrious dead to the Indian Ocean.

In a flood of sudden recollection, all the stormy period, here ended, rushed in upon my mind; the whole panorama of danger and tempest through which these gallant fellows had so staunchly stood by me—these gallant fellows now parting from me! Rapidly, as in some apocalyptic trance, every vision, every scene of strife with Man and Nature, through which these poor men and women had borne me company, and solaced me by the simple sympathy of common suffering, came hurrying across my memory; for each face before me was associated with some adventure, or some peril; reminded me of some triumph, or of some loss.

What a wild, weird retrospect it was, that mind’s flash over the troubled past! So like a troublous dream!

And for years and years to come, in many homes in Zanzibar, there will be told the great story of our journey, and the actors in it will be heroes among their kith and kin. For me, too, they are heroes, these poor ignorant children of Africa; for, from the first deadly struggle in savage Ituru, to the last struggling rush into Embomma, they had rallied to my voice like veterans; and in the hour of need they had never failed me. And thus, aided by their willing hands and by their loyal hearts, the expedition had been successful, and the three great problems of the Dark Continent’s geography had been fairly solved. Laus Deo.

CHAPTER XVI

FOUNDING THE CONGO STATE

Before he touched English soil, on his return at the end of 1877, his letters in the ‘Telegraph’ had hinted at the vast and inviting political possibilities which the new country offered to England.

With scarcely a breathing-space, he threw himself into the work of persuading, preaching, imploring, the ruling powers in English Commerce and in public affairs to seize this grand opportunity.

He spoke in all the commercial centres, especially in Manchester and Liverpool, setting forth the immense advantages to trade of such an enterprise. He had audience with such public men as would listen, or seem to listen. But the Government and the people of England turned a deaf ear.

Stanley was, by some, called ‘Quixotic’; by others, an ‘adventurer,’ or ‘a buccaneer.’ Others professed to be shocked, and said he put Commerce before Religion!! So he received no help or encouragement from Britain.

But, in Belgium, King Leopold was already keenly interested in African possibilities. In the summer of 1877, he had convened a company of geographers and scientific men, who had organised the ‘International African Association’ for exploration, and, perhaps, something further. Their first essays were mostly on the eastern coast.

On Stanley’s return, at the end of 1877, he was met at Marseilles by messengers of King Leopold, to urge him to come to Brussels for a conference, and for the initiation of further African enterprise.

He excused himself on the plea of physical exhaustion and unfitness for further undertakings. But he had other reasons, in his strong preference for England as his supporting power. After half a year of ill-success in that quarter, in August, he met King Leopold’s Commissioners in Paris. In the discussion there, the vague purpose to do something scientific or commercial in the basin of the Congo crystallised into Stanley’s plan as given above. There was close study, analysis, and detail; the papers were transmitted to the King, and Stanley kept in touch with the project. But again he urged upon England that she should take the lead; and, again, in vain.

Thereupon, he accepted an invitation to the Royal Palace at Brussels in November, and there met ‘various persons of more or less note in the commercial and monetary world, from England, Germany, France, Belgium, and Holland.’ An organisation was made, under the name, ‘Comité d’Étude du Haut Congo’ (which afterward became practically identified with the ‘International’). Plans were adopted on a modest scale; the sum of twenty thousand pounds was subscribed for immediate use; and Stanley was put in charge of the work. Colonel Strauch, of the Belgian Army, was chosen President of the Society; and he, and his associates, selected Stanley’s European assistants, and acted as his base of supplies during the five and a half years—January, 1879, to June, 1884—which he spent in the work.

The story of that work is told at large in Stanley’s book, ‘The Congo, and the Founding of its Free State.’ Less full of adventure and wonder than his preceding and following works, it is rich in material for whoever studies the relations, actual and possible, between civilised and savage men. The merest outline of it is given here, with quotations chosen mainly to illustrate the character of its leader. For the nucleus of his working force, he went back to Zanzibar, and chose seventy men, forty of whom had before gone with him through Africa, and who, as a body, now served him with a like fidelity and devotion. He took them around the continent, by Suez and Gibraltar, and reached the mouth of the Congo in August, 1879.

August 15, 1879. Arrived off the mouth of the Congo. Two years have passed since I was here before, after my descent of the great River, in 1877. Now, having been the first to explore it, I am to be the first who shall prove its utility to the world. I now debark my seventy Zanzibaris and Somalis for the purpose of beginning to civilise the Congo Basin.

With a force recruited up to two hundred and ten negroes, and fourteen Europeans, and with four tiny steamers, he set out for the mastery of the river. A few miles’ steaming away from the trading establishments at the mouth, up to the head of navigation, and the first station, Vivi, is planted; wooden huts brought from England are set up, and wagon-roads are made. Then, a Labour of Hercules, transport must be found for steamers and goods through a long stretch of rugged hills. After exploration, the route must be chosen; then the stubborn, dogged labour of road-building, over mountains and along precipices; the Chief, hammer and drill in hand, showing his men how to use their tools; endless marching and hauling; and, at last, a whole year’s work (1880) is done; forward and backward, they had travelled two thousand five hundred and thirty-two miles, and, as a result, they had won a practicable way of fifty-two miles—‘not a holiday affair,’ this! Strenuous toil, a diet of beans, goat’s meat, and sodden bananas; the muggy atmosphere of the Congo Cañon, with fierce heat from the rocks, and bleak winds through the gorges! Six European and twenty-two native lives, and thirteen whites invalided and retired, were part of the price.

Now, a second station, Isangila, is built; here, as at Vivi, a treaty is made with the natives, and land for the station fairly bought.

Next, we have eighty-eight miles of waterway, and, then, another station at Manyanga. Here came a plague of fever, and the force was further weakened by garrisons left for the three stations. Stanley was desperately ill; after ten days’ fight with the fever, the end seemed at hand; he prescribed for himself sixty grains of quinine, and a few minims of hydrobromic acid, in an ounce of Madeira wine; under this overpowering dose his senses reeled; he summoned his European comrades for a farewell, while Death loomed before him, and a vision of a lonely grave. Grasping the hand of his faithful Albert, he struggled long and vainly to speak the words of a parting charge; and when, at last, he uttered an intelligible sentence,—that success brought a rush of relief, and he cried, ‘I am saved!’ Then came unconsciousness for twenty-four hours; and, afterwards, just life enough to feel hungry; and thus he reached convalescence and recovery.

A push of eight days further, to Stanley Pool, where begins the uninterrupted navigation of the Upper Congo. Here he finds that M. de Brazza, in the pay of France, though aided by funds from the Comité International of Belgium, having heard of Stanley’s doings, has raced across from the sea, and bargained with the natives for a great strip on the north bank of the river. So, for this region, Stanley secured the south bank. At last, greatly to his encouragement and help, came a re-enforcement of the good Zanzibaris.

Early in 1882, he planted a fine station, named Leopoldville, in honour of the monarch whom Stanley heartily admired, and relied on. On this settlement, when he had finished it to his mind, Stanley looked with special pride and complacency: the block-house, impregnable against fire or musketry; the broad-streeted village for his natives; their gardens of young bananas and vegetables; the plentiful water and fuel; the smooth promenade, where he imagined his Europeans strolling on Sundays, to survey the noble prospect of river, cataract, forests, and mountain.

Stanley, however, saw more than met the eye. He dwelt on the possible future of that magnificent country, with its well-watered soil, now neglected, but richer than any in the whole Mississippi Valley. ‘It is like looking at the intelligent face of a promising child: though we find nought in it but innocence, we fondly imagine that we see the germs of a future great genius,—perhaps a legislator, a savant, warrior, or a poet.’

Soon after, a violent fever so disabled him that he was obliged to return to Europe, in 1882. He made his report to the Comité de l’Association Internationale du Congo, which had assumed the authority and duties of the Comité d’Étude. He showed them that he had accomplished all, and more than all, his original commission aimed at, and urged them to complete the work by building a railroad along the lower river, extending the chain of stations, and obtaining concessions of authority from the chiefs along the whole course of the Congo.

To all this the Committee assented, but they were urgent that Stanley should return to take charge. He consented, in spite of impaired health, and started back, after only six weeks in Europe; making condition only, and that with all the persuasiveness at his command, that they should send him able assistants, instead of the irresponsible, flighty-headed youngsters on whom he had been obliged so largely to rely. He dreaded what they might have done, or undone, in his absence. His fears were justified; his journey up the river lay through a mournful succession of neglected and blighted stations; and Leopoldville, of which he had hoped so much, was a grass-grown hungry waste! He did his best to repair the mischief,

and pushed on up the river, the one dominating idea being to establish a succession of stations for a thousand miles along the Upper Congo, as far as Stanley Falls.

Briefly, his route from the ocean covered 110 miles of steaming; then a land march of 235 miles to Stanley Pool, whence the Upper Congo gives clear navigation, for 1070 miles, to Stanley Falls. Numerous tributaries multiply the navigable waterways to about 6000 miles. The district thus watered Stanley estimated as a square of 757 miles either way, a superficies of 57,400 square miles, nearly the dimensions of the future Free State. He found the Lower Congo region unproductive, yielding at first only ground-nuts, palm-oil, and feed-cake for cattle, and, further up-stream, some production of rubber, gum-copal, and ivory. But the Upper Congo was rich in valuable forests and in fertile soil; woods for building, for furniture, and dyes; gums, ivory of elephant and hippopotamus; india-rubber, coffee, gum-copal, and much besides. All this potentiality of ‘wealth, beyond the dreams of avarice,’ could only be actualised through the perfection of communication: already Stanley was eagerly planning for a railway that should link the Upper Congo with the sea.

Now, for a year and a half, his principal care was to negotiate treaties with the chiefs, which should give political jurisdiction over the territory. Throughout the enterprise, amiable relations with the natives were most successfully cultivated; friction was overcome by patience and tact; firmness, combined with gentleness, in almost every instance averted actual strife. The chiefs were willing enough to cede their political sovereignty, receiving in each case some substantial recompense; foreign intrusion was barred; and the private rights and property of the natives were respected.

Over four hundred chiefs were thus dealt with, and so the foundations of the Free State were established. On his journey up the river he was constantly meeting tribes who were his old acquaintances of six years before. Old friends they could scarcely be called, but new friends they readily became. A halo of wonder hung round his first advent; the curiosity born of that memory was heightened by the marvel of the steamboats; the offer of barter was always welcome, and the bales of cloth, the brass rods, the trinkets,—first as a present, then in trade,—were the beginnings of familiar intercourse. Stanley’s diplomacies, his peace-makings between hostile tribes, his winning of good-will and enforcement of respect, make a story that should be studied in his full narrative.

The summer of 1884 found the work of founding the State virtually finished, and Stanley nearly finished, too. There had been difficulties of all kinds, in which almost the entire responsibility had rested on his shoulders, and he had reached the limit of his strength; could he but hand over his work to a fit successor! He writes:—

There was a man at that time in retreat, near Mount Carmel. If he but emerged from his seclusion, he had all the elements in him of the man that was needed: indefatigable industry; that magnetism which commands affection, obedience, and perfect trust; that power of reconciling men, no matter of what colour, to their duties; that cheerful promise that in him lay security and peace; that loving solicitude which betokens the kindly chief. That man was General Gordon. For six months I waited his coming; finally, letters came announcing his departure for the Soudan; and, soon after, arrived Lieutenant-colonel Sir Francis de Winton, of the Royal Artillery, in his place.

General Gordon had arranged to take the Governorship of the Lower Congo, under Stanley, who was to govern the Upper Congo; and, together, they were to destroy the slave-trade at its roots. General Gordon wrote a letter to Stanley in which he said that he should be happy to serve under him, and work according to Stanley’s ideas. When Sir Francis de Winton went out, Stanley transferred to him the Government of the Congo, and returned to England.

This same year, 1884, saw the recognition of the new State by the civilised powers. England’s contribution was mainly indirect. She had previously made a treaty with Portugal, allowing her a strip of African coast, as the result of which she could now have excluded everyone else from the Congo. Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow, through their Chambers of Commerce, had remonstrated in vain.

The United States, meanwhile, had been the first to recognise the new State of the Congo. Spurred by General Sandford, formerly Minister to Belgium, who appealed, on the one hand, to American interest in Livingstone and Stanley, and, on the other hand, to commercial possibilities, the American Senate, on April 10, 1884, authorised President Arthur to recognise the International African Association as a governing power on the Congo River. This action, says Stanley, was the birth to new life of the Association.

In view of the menace to the world’s trade by the Anglo-Portuguese treaty, Bismarck’s strong personality now came to the front, somewhat prompted by King Leopold. Stanley admired the straightforward vigor of the German as much as he admired the philanthropy of the Belgian rule. Bismarck summoned a Conference at Berlin, to which the leading European powers sent delegates. There were also delegates from the United States, and with these Stanley was present as their ‘technical adviser,’ and, naturally, had a good hearing.

The Conference was mainly interested to secure the commercial freedom of the Niger and the Congo. It gave definite recognition to the Congo Free State. It did map-making with a free hand, marking out European dominions in Africa, with especial profit to France and Portugal, through the adroitness of the French Ambassador, says Stanley, and with the concurrence of Prince Bismarck. Also, quite incidentally, so to speak, the Conference proceeded to lay down the formalities by which a European power was to establish itself on virgin African soil, which consisted, virtually, in putting up a sign-board ‘to whom it may concern.’ By this simple process, and with no trouble of exploration, purchase, or settlement, Bismarck then calmly proceeded to appropriate a large slice of Eastern Africa, which had been opened up by the British.

The future course of African affairs, including the vesting of the Congo sovereignty in King Leopold, has no place in this story. In this whole chapter of Stanley’s work, perhaps the most significant feature, as to his character, and, also, as a lesson in the art of civilisation, is his manner of dealing with the natives. As a concrete instance may be given the story of Ngalyema and the fetish.

Ngalyema, chief of Stanley Pool district, had demanded and received four thousand five hundred dollars’ worth of cotton, silk, and velvet goods for granting me the privilege of establishing a station in a wilderness of a place at the commencement of up-river navigation. Owing to this, I had advanced with my wagons to within ten miles of the Pool. I had toiled at this work the best part of two years, and whenever I cast a retrospective glance at what the task had cost me, I felt that it was no joke, and such that no money would bribe me to do over again. Such a long time had elapsed since Ngalyema had received his supplies, that he affected to forget that he had received any; and, as I still continued to advance towards him after the warnings of his messengers, he collected a band of doughty warriors, painted their bodies with diagonal stripes of ochre, soot, chalk, and yellow, and issued fiercely to meet me.

Meantime, the true owners of the soil had enlightened me respecting Ngalyema’s antecedents. He was only an enterprising native trader in ivory and slaves, who had fled from the north bank; but, though he had obtained so much money from me by pretences, I was not so indignant at this as at the audacity with which he chose to forget the transaction, and the impudent demand for another supply which underlay this. Ngalyema, having failed to draw any promise by sending messengers, thought he could extort it by appearing with a warlike company. Meantime, duly warned, I had prepared a surprise for him.

I had hung a great Chinese gong conspicuously near the principal tent. Ngalyema’s curiosity would be roused. All my men were hidden, some in the steamboat on top of the wagon, and in its shadow was a cool place where the warriors would gladly rest after a ten-mile march; other of my men lay still as death under tarpaulins, under bundles of grass, and in the bush round about the camp. By the time the drum-taps and horns announced Ngalyema’s arrival, the camp seemed abandoned except by myself and a few small boys. I was indolently seated in a chair, reading a book, and appeared too lazy to notice anyone; but, suddenly looking up, and seeing my ‘brother Ngalyema,’ and his warriors, scowlingly regarding me, I sprang up, and seized his hands, and affectionately bade him welcome, in the name of sacred fraternity, and offered him my own chair.

He was strangely cold, and apparently disgruntled, and said:—

‘Has not my brother forgotten his road? What does he mean by coming to this country?’

‘Nay, it is Ngalyema who has forgotten the blood-bond which exists between us. It is Ngalyema who has forgotten the mountains of goods which I paid him. What words are these of my brother?’

‘Be warned, Rock-Breaker. Go back before it is too late. My elders and people all cry out against allowing the white man to come into our country. Therefore, go back before it be too late. Go back, I say, the way you came.’

Speech and counter-speech followed. Ngalyema had exhausted his arguments; but it was not easy to break faith and be uncivil, without plausible excuse. His eyes were reaching round seeking to discover an excuse to fight, when they rested on the round, burnished face of the Chinese gong.

‘What is that?’ he said.

‘Ah, that—that is a fetish.’

‘A fetish! A fetish for what?’

‘It is a war-fetish, Ngalyema. The slightest sound of that would fill this empty camp with hundreds of angry warriors; they would drop from above, they would spring up from the ground, from the forest about, from everywhere.’

‘Sho! Tell that story to the old women, and not to a chief like Ngalyema. My boy tells me it is a kind of a bell. Strike it and let me hear it.’

‘Oh, Ngalyema, my brother, the consequences would be too dreadful! Do not think of such a thing!’

‘Strike it, I say.’

‘Well, to oblige my dear brother Ngalyema, I will.’

And I struck hard and fast, and the clangorous roll rang out like thunder in the stillness. Only for a few seconds, however, for a tempest of human voices was heard bursting into frightful discords, and from above, right upon the heads of the astonished warriors, leaped yelling men; and from the tents, the huts, the forest round about, they came by sixes, dozens, and scores, yelling like madmen, and seemingly animated with uncontrollable rage. The painted warriors became panic-stricken; they flung their guns and powder-kegs away, forgot their chief, and all thoughts of loyalty, and fled on the instant, fear lifting their heels high in the air; or, tugging at their eyeballs, and kneading the senses confusedly, they saw, heard, and suspected nothing, save that the limbo of fetishes had suddenly broken loose!

But Ngalyema and his son did not fly. They caught the tails of my coat, and we began to dance from side to side, a loving triplet, myself being foremost, to ward off the blow savagely aimed at my ‘brothers,’ and cheerfully crying out, ‘Hold fast to me, my brothers. I will defend you to the last drop of my blood. Come one, come all,’ etc.

Presently the order was given, ‘Fall in!’ and quickly the leaping forms became rigid, and the men stood in two long lines in beautiful order, with eyes front, as though ‘at attention.’ Then Ngalyema relaxed his hold of my coat-tails, and crept from behind, breathing more freely; and, lifting his hand to his mouth, exclaimed, in genuine surprise ‘Eh, Mamma! where did all these people come from?’

‘Ah, Ngalyema, did I not tell you that thing was a powerful fetish? Let me strike it again, and show you what else it can do.’

‘No! no! no!’ he shrieked. ‘I have seen enough!’

The day ended peacefully. I was invited to hasten on to Stanley Pool. The natives engaged themselves by the score to assist me in hauling the wagons. My progress was thenceforward steady and uninterrupted, and in due time the wagons and goods-columns arrived at their destination.

But this was only one incident in what may be called the ‘education of Ngalyema.’ Seldom has teacher had a more unpromising pupil. He was a braggart, a liar, greedy, capricious, abjectly superstitious, mischief-making. Stanley’s diary shows how he handled him during three months of neighbourhood. For instance, Ngalyema begged certain articles as presents; Stanley coupled the gift with the stipulation that his followers were not to bring their arms into the camp. The promise was persistently broken; finally, at the head of his armed warriors, Ngalyema was suddenly confronted by Stanley’s rifle, and fell at his feet, in abject panic, to be soothed, petted, and brought into a healthy state of mind. ‘I am bound to teach this intractable “brother” of mine,’ is the comment in the diary.

Again and again he makes trouble; and, always, he is met by the same firm, gentle hand. Slowly he improves, and at last is allowed once more to make ‘blood-brotherhood,’ with crossing of arms, incisions, and solemn pronouncement by the great fetish-man of the tribe, in token of renewed fraternity and fidelity. Ngalyema might fairly be pronounced a reformed character, and the friendship between him and Stanley became life-long.

Some of you may, perhaps, wonder at the quiet inoffensiveness of the natives, who, on a former expedition, had worried my soul by their ferocity and wanton attacks, night and day; but a very simple explanation of it may be found in Livingstone’s Last Journals, dated 28th October, 1870. He says: ‘Muini Mukata, who has travelled further than most Arabs, said to me, “If a man goes with a good-natured, civil tongue, he may pass through the worst people in Africa unharmed.” This is true, but time also is required; one must not run through a country, but give the people time to become acquainted with you, and let their worst fears subside.’

Now, on the expedition across Africa I had no time to give, either to myself or to them. The river bore my heavy canoes downward; my goods would never have endured the dawdling required by this system of teaching every tribe I met who I was. To save myself and my men from certain starvation, I had to rush on and on, right through. But on this expedition, the very necessity of making roads to haul my enormous six-ton wagons gave time for my reputation to travel ahead of me. My name, purpose, and liberal rewards for native help, naturally exaggerated, prepared a welcome for me, and transformed my enemies of the old time into workmen, friendly allies, strong porters, and firm friends. I was greatly forbearing also; but, when a fight was inevitable, through open violence, it was sharp and decisive. Consequently, the natives rapidly learned that though everything was to be gained by friendship with me, wars brought nothing but ruin.

So it was that he went among these fierce savages as a messenger of good tidings, and they welcomed him. He put his superiority over them to use in making bridges across the gulf between their minds and his. He studied not only their languages, but their ceremonials, and adapted himself to their forms of justice and ways of settling disputes, as in the rite of blood-brotherhood. He brought them not only personal good-will and kind treatment, but the practical advantages of civilisation.

Everywhere he found eagerness to trade, and the possibility of commercial interchange that should be profitable to both sides. Many of them accepted training in labour, and recruited his road-making force. In his treaties with the chiefs, he did not hesitate to purchase full political sovereignty, usually in exchange for goods; for such sovereignty was worthless or harmful to these tribes, compared with the beneficent rule of a superior intelligence. But neither in the formal treaties, nor in the actual practice, was there the least trace of spoliation of land and goods which was practised later, when Stanley had left the Congo. ‘It is agreed,’ says one of his typical treaties, ‘that the term “cession of territory” does not mean the purchase of the soil by the Association, but the purchase of the suzerainty by the Association.’

Stanley’s whole treatment of the natives was as simple in its principle as the Golden Rule; it was applied with infinite skill and patience; and in a spirit of heartiest human good-will, dashed, often, with boyish humour that went home to the savage heart. He tells with gusto of the welcome given to frolicking races, and the gambols indulged in by his good Danish follower, Albert:—

The dark faces light up with friendly gleams, and a budding of good-will may perhaps date from this trivial scene. To such an impressionable being as an African native, the self-involved European, with his frigid, imperious manner, pallid white face, and dead, lustreless eyes, is a sealed book.

The most tragic pages in the history relate his coming upon a series of villages just ravaged by a ferocious slave-raid of the Arabs, and afterwards finding a herd of the wretched captives chained and guarded. It is a terrible picture. Over a hundred villages had been devastated, and the five thousand carried away as slaves stood for six times as many slain, or dying by the way-side.[26] The hot impulse rose to strike a blow for their liberation; but it would have been hopeless and useless. On his return journey, Stanley borrowed from the slave-traders several of their number as his companions down the river, to give them an object-lesson as to the impending check on their excursions. To extirpate this slave-trade was among the prime objects of his enterprise, and whatever else failed, this succeeded.

The furthest point he then reached was Stanley Falls, where he planted his station in charge of a solitary white man, the plucky little Scotch engineer, Binnie. Stanley, on his return down the river, reflects on the influences he has planted to extend his work.

We had sown seeds of good-will at every place we had touched, and each tribe would spread diffusively the report of the value and beauty of our labours. Pure benevolence contains within itself grateful virtues. Over natural people nothing has greater charm or such expansible power; its influence grows without effort; its subtlety exercises itself on all who come within hearing of it. Coming in such innocent guise, it offends not; there is nought in it to provoke resentment. Provided patience and good temper guides the chief of Stanley Falls station, by the period of the return of the steamers, the influence of the seedling just planted there will have been extended from tribe to tribe far inland, and amid the persecuted fugitives from the slave-traders.

Among the brightest pages of the story are the occasional returns to some station where a faithful and efficient subordinate, left in charge, has made the wilderness to blossom as a rose. Such is the picture of Equatorville, to which he returned, after a hundred days’ absence, to find that the good-will and zeal of two young Army lieutenants had transformed the station from a jungle of waterless scrub; had built and furnished a commodious, tasteful, ‘hotel’; had drawn up a code of laws for the moral government of the station, and the amelioration of the wild Bakuti; and planned sanitary improvements worthy of a competent Board of Public Works.

But too frequent is the opposite story; the subordinates’ indolence, neglect, perhaps desertion; and the decadence of the station. The painful element in the story, and ominous of future consequences, is the failures among the men sent out from Europe as his assistants. There were many and honourable exceptions, and these he praises warmly in the book.[27] Such were the Scotch engineer, Binnie, who so stoutly held his solitary post at Stanley Falls; the efficient and fine-spirited Danish sailor, Albert Christopherson; the Scandinavian seaman, Captain Anderson, with his genius for inspiring everyone near him to work; the Englishman, A. B. Swinburne, with a genius for gardening and home-making, and for winning the affection of both whites and blacks; the Italian mechanician, François Flamini, who charmed the steam-engines into docility. But the book tells often of the failures, and the private note-books detail the story more plainly, and tell, too, something of his difficulties with his native helpers.

All the officers, before I sent them to their posts, were instructed by me, orally and in writing, in the very minutiæ of their duties, especially in the mode of conduct to be adopted towards the natives.

The ridiculous inadequacy of our force as opposed to the native population required that each officer should be more prudent than brave, more tactful than zealous. Such conduct invariably made the native pleasantly disposed to us. If some characters among them presumed to think that forbearance sprang from cowardice, and were inclined to be aggressive, the same prudence which they had practised previously would teach them how to deal with such.

It was mainly impressed on the officers that they were to hold their posts more by wit than by force, for the latter was out of the question, except after forethought, and in combination with headquarters. This was due to the fact that the young officers were as ignorant of diplomacy as children. Their instincts were to be disciplinary and dictatorial. The cutting tone of command is offensive to savages, and terrifying to them as individuals.

Captain D. exceeded his instructions in assuming the responsibility of provoking the Arabs at Stanley Falls. He studied only his own fighting instincts, and British resentment against the slaver. At an early period he was too brusque; this repelled confidence and roused resentment. While he was expected to represent civil law of the most paternal character, he regarded the thirty Houssas soldiers under his command as qualifying him for the rôle of a military dictator; and as soon as he appeared in that character, the Arabs became unanimous in asserting their independence. Before a man with thirty soldiers can adopt such a tone, he surely ought to have been prepared for the consequences. But he seems to have done nothing except challenge the Arabs. He knew he had so many rounds of ammunition, but his ammunition was damp, and he was not aware of it.[28]

I know that many of my Officers were inclined to regard me as ‘hard.’ I may now and then have deserved that character, but then it was only when nought but hardness availed. When I meet chronic stupidity, laziness, and utter indifference to duty, expostulation ceases, and coercion or hardness begins.

His associates had been the principal cause of the exhibition of this quality, and with some of them he had been very unfortunate.

To describe Bracconier’s case, for example, would fill a good-sized book. Others were equally impenetrable to reason and persuasion.

Intuitively, I felt that Braconnier, though polite and agreeable, was not to be entrusted with any practical work. His education and character had utterly unfitted him for work of any kind. He was asked to superintend a little road-making. He sought a nice, shady place, and fell asleep; and his men, of course, while they admired him for his easy disposition, did what was most agreeable to them, and dawdled over their work, by which we lost two days. When myself incapacitated by a sudden stroke of fever, I requested him to supervise the descent of the boiler-wagon down a hill; not ten minutes later the boiler and wagon were smashed, and he was brought to me, half-dead from his injuries! He was appointed chief of Leopoldville, but, in four months, the place resembled a ruin. Grass encroached everywhere, the houses were falling to pieces, the gardens choked with weeds, the steamers were lying corroding in the port, the natives were estranged, and he and his men were reduced to a state of siege.

He allowed a young Austrian lieutenant and six Zanzibaris to enter a small unsuitable canoe and attempt to ascend the Congo. Within fifteen minutes of their departure, they were all drowned!

There is always another side to these accusations, and those inclined to believe Bracconier’s ridiculous charge of my ‘hardness’ should try, first, how they would like to endure three years of indolence and incapacity, before they finally dismissed the fellow; let those who criticised me ascertain whether this man distinguished himself in other fields and other missions; though I have no doubt that in a Brussels drawing-room he would be found to be an agreeable companion; but not in Africa, where work has to be done, and progress made.

Then, as regards the coloured people, good as the majority of Zanzibaris were, some of them were indescribably, and for me most unfortunately, dense. One man, who from his personal appearance might have been judged to be among the most intelligent, was, after thirty months’ experience with his musket, unable to understand how it was to be loaded! He never could remember whether he ought to drop the powder, or the bullet, into the musket first! Another time he was sent with a man to transport a company of men over a river to camp. After waiting an hour, I strode to the bank of the river and found them paddling in opposite directions, each blaming the other for his stupidity, and, being in a passion of excitement, unable to hear the advice of the men across the river, who were bawling out to them how to manage their canoe.

Another man was so ludicrously stupid that he generally was saved from punishment because his mistakes were so absurd. We were one day floating down the Congo, and, it being near camping time, I bade him, as he happened to be bowman on the occasion, to stand by and seize the grass on the bank to arrest the boat, when I should call out. In a little while we came to a fit place, and I cried, ‘Hold hard, Kirango!’—‘Please God, Master,’ he replied, and forthwith sprang on shore and seized the grass with both hands, while we, of course, were rapidly swept down-river, leaving him alone and solitary on the bank! The boat’s crew roared at the ridiculous sight; but, nevertheless, his stupidity cost the tired men a hard pull to ascend again, for not every place was available for a camp. He it was, also, who, on an occasion when we required the branch of a species of arbutus which overhung the river to be cut away, to allow the canoes to be brought nearer to the bank for safety, actually went astride of the branch, and chopped away until he fell into the water with the branch, and lost our axe. He had seated himself on the outer end of the branch!

The coloured men accepted the reproaches they deserved with such good-nature that, however stupid they were, I could not help forgiving and forgetting. But it was not so with the officers. Their amour-propre was so much offended that, if I ventured on a rebuke, it was remembered with so much bitterness, that an officer who was continually erring was also constantly in a resentful mood. I could not discharge a man for a blunder, or even a few blunders; but, if disobeying and making unfortunate mistakes was his chronic state, and he always resented instruction, it can easily be imagined that life with such a one was not pleasant. There were periods when careless acts resulted fatally to others; or when great vexation, or pecuniary loss, went on for months consecutively; until I really became afraid to ask any officer to undertake any duty.