tinent, 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.

[Illustration: 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 reac