AFRICA

IN

the Moon

Up the Mountains of the

By HENRY M. STANLEY

N his lecture, "Through the Great Forest," Mr. Stanley said, I propose to take you through the great forest up to the Mountains of the Moon, around the great lakes and across Africa. We traveled over six thousand miles. The time occupied was nine hundred and eighty-seven days. The first section, of about one thousand miles, was along an unknown country by steamer up the Aruwimi River, to a place called Yambuya. The navigation was interrupted by rapids. On foot next for one hundred and sixty days we went through one unbroken forest. That journey was not through poetic glades, with here and there thrown in a bit of mossy dell, with little or no undergrowth, and free access and an open view into sylvan wilds. You may remember your experiences of last summer when you took an excursion into the woods. There you found a poetic seclusion, a graceful disorder, mossy grounds, trees of familiar kinds, springy turf, bits of picturesque skies, and the sun shedding softened streams of light upon tree and turf. Ah! the African forest furnishes no such picturesque sights or pleasant glades.

Language is too poor to describe it. First, think of the tropics and a climate of humidity and the heat of perpetual You feel, as you enter into this unknown region, the robustness of vegetation. There is a still, warm vapor in suffocating volumes. First, you dispense with your upper

gotten-forgotten because that Greece drew forth Cytherea from the flashing foam of the Ægean, and in her image created new forms of beauty, and made it a law among men that the short and proudly wreathed lip should stand for the sign and the main condition of loveliness through all generations to come. Yet still there lives on the race of those who were beautiful in the fashion of the elder world; and Christian girls of Coptic blood will look on you with the sad, serious gaze, and kiss your charitable hand with the big pouting lips of the very Sphinx.

Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of stone idols; but mark ye this, ye breakers of images, that in one regard the stone idol bears awful semblance of Deity-unchangefulness in the midst of change-the same seeming will and intent for ever and ever inexorable! Upon ancient dynasties of Ethiopian and Egyptian kings-upon Greek and Roman, upon Arab and Ottoman conquerors-upon Napoleon dreaming of an Eastern empire-upon battle and pestilence-upon the ceaseless misery of the Egyptian raceupon keen-eyed travelers-Herodotus yesterday, and Warburton to-day—upon all and more this unworldly Sphinx has watched, and watched like a Providence with the same earnest eyes, and the same sad, tranquil mien. And we, we shall die, and Islam will wither away; and the Englishman, straining far over to hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks of the Nile and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and still that sleepless rock will lie watching and watching the works of the new busy race, with those same sad, earnest eyes, and the same tranquil mien everlasting. You dare not mock the Sphinx.

AFRICA

WE

Finding Livingstone

By HENRY M. STANLEY

E push on rapidly, lest the news of our coming might reach the people of Bunder Ujiji before we come in sight, and are ready for them. We halt at a little brook, then ascend the long slope of a naked ridge, the very last of the myriads we have crossed. This alone prevents us from seeing the lake (Tanganyika) in all its vastness. We arrive at the summit, travel across and arrive at its western rim, and-pause, reader-the port of Ujiji is below us, embowered in the palms-only five hundred yards from us. At this grand moment we do not think of the hundreds of miles we have marched, of the hundreds of hills that we have ascended and descended, of the many forests we have traversed, of the jungles and thickets that annoyed us, of the fervid salt plains that blistered our feet, of the hot suns that scorched us, nor of the dangers and difficulties now happily surmounted.

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Ay wallah, "One, two,

"Unfurl the flags and load your guns! ay wallah bana!" respond the men eagerly. three-fire!" A volley from nearly fifty guns roars like a salute from a battery of artillery. "Now, Kirangozi (guide), hold the white man's flag up high, and let the Zanzibar flag bring up the rear. And you must keep close together, and keep firing until we halt in the market-place, or before the white man's house. You have said to me often that you could smell the fish of the Tanganyika -I

garments, and then you want to get rid of the rest. The gloom is so great that you can compare it only to the twilight of evening. You see the leafage rising up black and green; impenetrable clumps of trees, some of them reaching a height of two hundred and fifty feet. There is no symmetry, grace or softness, but all is wild, uncouth, and awful. At every step you see masses of bewildering undergrowths, a wonderful variety of plants. There is an absence of any sense of decay; rather the sense of the general healthfulness of the plants, an enduring youth, exhaustless wonders.

There is no longer any energy among us. We behold everlasting greenness, eternal vitality and fertility. Above all is a protecting, impenetrable canopy. Sacred trees, with leafy crowns, tower above us. African mahogany, the unyielding iron-wood, the butternut-tree, and other varieties too numerous to mention, all united in closest embrace, darken the life below till it is suggestive of mystery and awe. As we march silently, slowly, and painfully on, the forest changes its aspect, and we note the labors of forgotten tribes and come to swampy grounds. One day our march is very slow through masses of forest wilderness. On the next day we go through a more open section; on the following day through frowning depths and over ground strewn with dead leaves, worm-eaten trunks or dried branches. But always and above all tower the primeval woods, the deep shadows unbroken save by the flashes of lightning.

On some days the march has to be prolonged beyond the usual hour for halting that has been fixed upon, because of the difficulty of choosing a ground fit for a camp. For we bear with us tons of perishable goods that have to be protected from the floods of rain. But at last a suitable spot is found. The whistle is sounded and the loaded files come up, and one by one they deposit their burdens in due order. Then, when the tents are erected, the camp resounds with the sound of voices. Some men with axes trim the poles of the tents or cut fuel. Some with knives peel the saplings to utilize the bark for bedding. Some dig holes in the ground for the tent-poles.