er glided along silently and majestically. Brown
and thick with decaying vegetation, the Lualaba flowed between dense
woods to the unknown region inhabited by negro tribes never heard of by
Europeans, and where no white man had ever set his foot. Here Stanley
decided to leave the terrible forest and to make use of the waterway of
the Lualaba. There were the boats in sections, and a whole fleet of
canoes could soon be made from the splendid trees growing at hand. The
whole caravan was accordingly assembled, and Stanley explained his
purpose. At first the men grumbled loudly, but Stanley declared that he
would make the voyage even if no one went with him but Frank Pocock, the
only survivor of the three white men who had started with him from
Zanzibar. He turned to his boat's crew and called out, "You have
followed me and sailed round the great lakes with me. Shall I and my
white brother go alone? Speak and show me those who dare follow me!" On
this a few stepped forward, and then a few more, and in the end
thirty-eight men declared themselves willing to take part in the voyage.

At this juncture many canoes full of natives were observed at the
opposite side of the river, so Stanley and Tippu Tib and some other
Arabs entered the boat and rowed up to a small island in mid-stream.

Here the black warriors were in swarms, and thirty canoes lay at the
water's edge. At a safe distance, Stanley's interpreter called out that
the white man only wished to see their country, that nothing belonging
to them should be touched, and that they themselves should not be
disturbed. They answered that if the white man would row out to the
island in the morning with ten servants, their own chief would meet him
with ten men, and would enter into blood-brotherhood with him. After
that the strangers might cross the river and visit their villages.

Suspecting treachery, however, Stanley sent twenty armed men by night to
the island to hide themselves in the brushwood. Then in the morning
Pocock and ten men rowed out to the meeting-place, near which Stanley
waited in his boat. A swarm of canoes put out from the western bank, and
when they came to the island the rowers raised their wild war-whoop,
_Ooh-hu! Ooh-hu-hu!_ and rushed ashore with bows bent and raised spears.
Then Stanley's twenty men came out of their hiding-place, the fight was
short, and the savages dashed headlong into their boats and rowed away
for their lives.

The next morning, wi