Stanley's Adventures In The Wilds Of Africa - free ebook by Joel Tyler Headley

STANLEY'S ADVENTURESIN THEWILDS OF AFRICA by J. T. HeadleyandW. F. Johnson

HENRY M. STANLEY. Entered According to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, By WALTER J. BROOKS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D.C. STANLEY'S Wonderful Adventures IN "THE DARK CONTINENT."...

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PREFACE.

For centuries Africa has been "the dark continent" of our globe. The sea-washed edges of this immense tract have been known time immemorial. Egypt, at its northeastern corner, is the oldest of the governments of the earth; while the nations skirting the Red and the Mediterranean seas were actors in the earliest recorded history. But Africa as a whole has been an unknown land. That it was a fertile land, was demonstrated by the treasures brought from its depths by those mighty rivers, the Nile, t

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CHAPTER I. HENRY M. STANLEY.

Stanley is one of those characters which forcibly illustrate the effect of republican institutions in developing strong men. Despotism cannot fetter thought—that is free everywhere—but it can and does restrain its outworking into practical action. Free institutions do not make great men, but they allow those endowed by nature with extraordinary gifts free scope for action. This fact never had, perhaps, a more striking illustration than in the French Revolution. The iron frame-work of despotism h

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CHAPTER II. DESCRIPTION OF AFRICA.

All there was of civilization in the world was found at one time in Africa. Art and science had their home there, while now as a whole it is regarded as the most benighted and barbarous portion of the earth and is, not inaptly, called "the dark continent." With a breadth at the equator of four thousand five hundred miles, with the exception of thin lines of sea-coast on each side, this vast space has been as much unknown as the surface of a distant planet. The Barbary States and Egypt on the Med

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CHAPTER III. STANLEY'S SEARCH FOR LIVINGSTONE.

We have seen how suddenly Mr. Stanley was called from Spain, to take charge of an expedition in search of Livingstone, how he was sent to see Baker who was about to enter Africa from the north, and how he was first sent east. But the time came at last for him to enter upon his work in earnest, and he sailed from Bombay, on the 12th of October, for Zanzibar. On board the barque was a Scotchman, named Farquhar, acting as first mate. Taking a fancy to him, Stanley engaged him to accompany the exped

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CHAPTER IV. WILD EXPERIENCES.

Stanley had now traveled one hundred and nineteen miles in fourteen marches, occupying one entire month lacking one day, and making, on an average, four miles a day. This was slow work. The rainy season now set in, and day after day it was a regular down-pour. Stanley was compelled to halt, while disgusting insects, beetles, bugs, wasps, centipedes, worms and almost every form of the lower animal life, took possession of his tent, and gave him the first real taste of African life. On the morning

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CHAPTER V. TRIALS BY THE WAY.

On the 22d of May the two other caravans of Stanley joined him, only three hours' march from Mpwapwa, so that the one caravan numbered some four hundred souls, but it was none too large to insure a safe transit through dreaded Ugogo. A waterless desert thirty miles across, and which it would take seventeen hours to traverse, now lay before them. On the way, Stanley was struck down with fever and, borne along in a hammock, was indifferent to the herds of giraffes, and zebras, and antelopes that s

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CHAPTER VI. ADVENTURES IN GREAT VARIETY.

Stanley received a noiseless ovation in Unyanyembe as he walked with the governor to his house. Soldiers and men by the hundreds, hovered round their chief, staring at him, while the naked children peered between the legs of the parents. Tea was served in a silver tea-pot and a sumptuous breakfast was furnished, which Stanley devoured as only a hungry man can, who has been shut up for so many months in the wilds of Africa. Then pipes and tobacco were produced, and amid the whiffs of smoke came o

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CHAPTER VII. THE END APPROACHES.

The following extract from Stanley's journal, written up that night after his hunting tour, shows that this strong, determined, fearless man was not merely a courageous lion, but that he possessed also the eye of an artist and the soul of a poet. With a few strokes of his pen, he sketches a picture on the banks of the forest-lined river, full of life and beauty: "The adventures of the day were over; the azure of the sky had changed to a deep gray; the moon was appearing just over the trees; the

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CHAPTER VIII. STANLEY MEETS LIVINGSTONE.

Stanley's excitement at this supreme moment of his life can never be described or even imagined. When he started from Zanzibar, he knew he had thrown the dice which were to fix his fate. Successful, and his fame was secure, while failure meant death; and all the chances were against him. How much he had taken upon himself no one but he knew; into what gloomy gulfs he had looked before he started, he alone was conscious. Of the risks he ran, of the narrow escapes he had made, of the toils and suf

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CHAPTER IX. STANLEY'S HOMEWARD MARCH.

Rest and repose were now enjoyed to the full by Stanley. His long struggles, his doubts and fears, his painful anxiety were over, and the end toward which he had strained with such unflagging resolution, the most disheartening circumstances, and which at times seemed to recede the more as he pressed forward, was at last reached. The sweet repose, the calm satisfaction and enjoyment which always come with the consciousness of complete success, now filled his heart, and he felt as none can feel bu

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CHAPTER X. STANLEY'S MAIN EXPEDITION.

Stanley, after he had found Livingstone, naturally thought much of the latter's explorations. Africa had become to him an absorbing subject, and he began to imbibe the spirit of Livingstone. This was natural, for Stanley had already won fame there, and why should he not win still greater laurels in the same field? This feeling was much increased after the death of the great explorer, leaving his work unfinished, which Stanley longed to complete. True, Cameron was on the ground to accomplish this

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CHAPTER XI. PRESSING TOWARDS THE INTERIOR.

For a half an hour after the magic doctor left, Stanley sat quietly in his camp, his anxieties now thoroughly dissipated, thinking over his speedy departure for the Nyanza. The camp was situated on the margin of a vast wilderness, which stretched he knew not how far westward, while away to the north, south and east extended a wide, open plain, dotted over, as far as the eye could see, with villages. There were nearly two hundred of them, looking is the distance like clusters of beehives. Everyth

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CHAPTER XII. EXPLORATION OF THE VICTORIA NYANZA.

Stanley felt, as he stood and looked off on the broad expanse of water, like one who had achieved a great victory, and he said that the wealth of the universe could not then bribe him to turn back from his work. The boat of a white man had never been launched on its surface, and he longed to see the Lady Alice afloat, that he might change the guesses of Livingstone, Speke and others, into certainty. He had started to complete Livingstone's unfinished work, and now he was in a fair way to do it.

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CHAPTER XIII. EXPLORATION OF THE VICTORIA NYANZA.

The voyage continued along the northern and then along the western shore of the lake, revealing at almost every turn new features of scenery and some new formation of land or new characteristic of the people, till the journey was like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope. A tribe friendly and trusting would be succeeded by one suspicious or treacherous, so that it was impossible to be governed by any general rule, and Stanley was compelled to be constantly on the alert, watching the motions of each tri

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CHAPTER XIV. EXPLORATION OF THE VICTORIA NYANZA.

Though this royal hospitality was very grateful after his long toils, and though intercourse with a white man in that remote land was refreshing, and though he longed to rest, yet Stanley felt he must be about his work. To finish this would require much time, and he had now been long absent from his men, who might prove intractable while he was away, and he was anxious to get back, for the exploration of this lake was only the beginning of what he proposed to do. With two canoes belonging to his

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CHAPTER XV. AN INTERVAL OF REST.

The next morning, as Stanley looked out of his tent-door upon the broad and beautiful lake, it was with that intense feeling of satisfaction with which one contemplates a great and perilous undertaking, which, after being well-nigh abandoned, is at last successfully accomplished. The waters, glittering in the morning sun, had but a short time before seemed to him an angry foe, but now they wore a friendly aspect. They seemed to belong to him. Livingstone, and Speke, and Burton, and others had lo

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CHAPTER XVI. PREPARATIONS FOR FURTHER EXPLORATIONS.

Stanley now rested a few days on this island before beginning his explorations. It was associated in his mind with bitter memories, and, as he wandered over it, he remembered the insults he had received, and his almost miraculous escape from death near it. The treacherous Bumbireh was almost in sight, and it awakened in him a strong desire for revenge, and he determined to visit the island again, and demand reparation for the wrongs he had received, and if it was not given, to make war on them a

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CHAPTER XVII. THE EXPEDITION TO ALBERT NYANZA.

Stanley's expedition consisted of one hundred and eighty men, which, with the troops Mtesa gave him, made a total of two thousand two hundred and ninety men. To this little army were attached some five hundred women and children, making a sum total of two thousand eight hundred. With this force, all ordinary opposition could be overcome, and as it moved off with the sound of drums and horns, and the waving of the English and American flags, conspicuous amid those of the negro army, it presented

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CHAPTER XVIII. EXPLORATIONS OF LAKE TANGANIKA.

It was with strange feelings that Stanley caught from the last ridge the sparkling waters of Tanganika. Sweet associations were awakened at the sight, as he remembered with what a thrilling heart he first saw it gleam in the landscape. Then it was the end of a long, wasting and perilous journey—the goal of his ambition, the realization of his fondest hopes; for on its shores he believed the object for which he had toiled so long was resting. No more welcome sight ever dawned on mortal eye than i

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CHAPTER XIX. NYANGWE AND ITS HISTORY.

Nyangwe is the farthest point west in Africa ever reached by a white man who came in from the east. It is about three hundred and fifty miles from Ujiji, or a little over the distance across New York State, but the journey is not made in one day—Stanley was forty days in accomplishing it. Here he found that Livingstone, the first white man ever seen there, must have remained from six to twelve months. Livingstone had made a profound impression on the natives of this region. "Did you know him?" a

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CHAPTER XX. ORGANIZING A NEW EXPEDITION.

Arriving near Nyangwe, one of the first to meet Stanley was the Arab, Tipo-tipo, or Tipo-tib, or Tippu-tib (which is the proper spelling neither Cameron nor Stanley seems to know), who had once conducted Cameron as far as Utotera or the Kasongo country. He was a splendid specimen of a man physically, and just the one to give Stanley all the information he wanted respecting Cameron's movements. He told him that the latter wanted to follow the river to the sea, but that his men were unwilling to g

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CHAPTER XXI. THROUGH THE FORESTS.

On the 5th of November, Stanley, at the head of his motley array, turned his back on Nyangwe and his face to the wilderness. It was an eventful morning for him. Eighteen hundred miles of an unknown country stretched before him, wrapped in profound mystery, peopled with races of which the outside world had never heard, and filled with dangers that would appall the bravest heart. He felt, as he turned and gave a last look at Nyangwe, that the die was cast—his fate for good or ill was sealed. What

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CHAPTER XXII. FLOATING DOWN THE CONGO.

Having been ferried across the river by the natives, Stanley felt quite secure of the friendship of this first tribe he had met on the banks of the Lualaba. But here he resolved to change its name to Livingstone, which ever after he continues to call it. Villages lined the banks, all, he says, adorned with skulls of human beings. But instead of finding the inhabitants of them friendly, there were none to be seen; all had mysteriously disappeared, whether from fright or to arouse the tribes below

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CHAPTER XXIII. DESCENT OF THE CONGO.

Stanley was now like Cortez when he burned his ships behind him—there was no returning—one and all must move on together to a common fate. All danger of desertion, for the present, was over, and he felt that the consciousness of there being no possible escape, and that one destiny awaited them all, not only bound them closer together, but would make them better fighters. At first, on their downward march, they met a peaceful tribe, and then a hostile one which would listen to no terms, and whose

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CHAPTER XXIV. AMONG THE CATARACTS.

It is a little singular, that in this age of inquiry and persistent effort to get at the cause of things, no one has yet attempted to explain the reason of tribal differences. Aborigines occupying the same parallels of latitude and longitude, subject to the same influences of climate, living on the same diet, are different in color, features, and more than all, in disposition. The real, or supposed influences, that lie at the bottom of the different races, do not apply here. Difference of origin

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CHAPTER XXV. EXPERIENCES BY THE WAY.

It was the 29th of April when Stanley gave his last instructions to his Arab chiefs about getting the canoes down the mountain to Nzabi, the home of the next tribe west. On his way he entered a magnificent forest—the tall and shapely trees of which reminded him of his early wanderings in the wilds of Arkansas and on our western frontiers. It was not strange, while looking at them, that he should be reminded of the "dug-outs" of the Indians which he had so often seen, and that the thought should

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CHAPTER XXVI. DEATH OF FRANK POCOKE.

Frank Pocoke, as stated previously, joined the expedition under Stanley as a servant, and his brother had fallen at what proved to be the mere outset of the real main expedition, subsequently Frank, by his intelligence, geniality, ability and courage, and perhaps quite as much by the necessity of companionship that Stanley felt the need of in that wild region, and which only a white, civilized man could furnish, had risen above the position he had taken till Stanley looked upon him more as a fri

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CHAPTER XXVII. THE COMPLETED WORK.

The next morning Stanley arose with a sad and heavy heart; the cruel, relentless river seemed more remorseless than ever, and its waves flowed on with an angrier voice that seemed full of hate and defiance. Eighty men were still behind, at Mowwa, and the next day word reached Stanley that they had mutinied, declaring they would follow the river no longer, for death was in it. He, borne down with his great loss, paid no attention to the report, and stayed and mourned for his friend for three days

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CHAPTER XXVIII. THE FRUITS OF VICTORY.

After victory, the fruits of victory; and to secure the latter is often more difficult than to win the former. The soldier may conquer a realm; it requires the statesman to organize and establish sovereignty. We may be entranced with enthusiasm at the daring of the explorer; we must bow with respect to the man who transformed a wilderness into a peaceful field of industry and commerce. Doubtless, at the end of his great Congo campaign, in 1878, Mr. Stanley longed for rest and home. Up to that ti

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CHAPTER XXIX. THE CONGO FREE STATE.

Mr. Stanley's discoveries, and the enterprise of the "Committee for the Study of the Upper Congo"—which was the real name of the company under which he was sent out—soon attracted universal attention, and that, too, of a most practical kind. It became evident that the Congo Valley must have a fixed and potent government. King Leopold did not desire to assume the sole responsibility, nor, indeed, would the other European powers have agreed to his transform so large a slice of the African continen

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CHAPTER XXX. EMIN, THE LAST OF THE SOUDAN HEROES.

Mr. Stanley returned to civilization, and in 1886 revisited America for the first time in thirteen years. He was received with the highest honors, and the lectures which he delivered were attended by crowded and delighted audiences. It seemed at last as though he were to enjoy a considerable period of rest. He had opened up the Dark Continent, and founded the Congo Free State on a secure basis. He might now direct its operations from London or Brussels, and spend his years in well-won ease. But

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CHAPTER XXXI. STANLEY TO THE RESCUE.

Mr. Stanley arrived in New York, after his thirteen years' absence, on November 27th, 1886. On December 12th of the same year he was requested by the King of the Belgians to return immediately to Europe. He did so, and was commissioned to head the expedition then being formed for the relief of Emin Pasha. There was much discussion as to the route to be taken, most authorities favoring that overland from Zanzibar. But Mr. Stanley determined upon the Congo, and he described the character of the ex

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CHAPTER XXXII. STANLEY AND EMIN.

In his letter to the Emin Pasha Relief Committee Mr. Stanley closes by saying: "Let me touch more at large on the subject which brought me to this land—viz., Emin Pasha. "The Pasha has two battalions of regulars under him—the first, consisting of about seven hundred and fifty rifles, occupies Duffle, Honyu, Labore, Muggi, Kirri, Bedden, Rejaf; the second battalion, consisting of six hundred and forty men, guard the stations of Wadelai, Fatiko, Mahagi and Mswa, a line of communication along the N

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CHAPTER XXXIII. IN THE HEART OF AFRICA.

It was in April, 1889, that the thrilling narrative of Mr. Stanley's march from the Congo to the Lakes was made known. Then he disappeared again from view, but not for long. Early in November following he was heard from again, authoritatively, and in the same month the story of his work in the Equatorial Province was rehearsed to the listening world. It was on November 24th that Mr. Marston, of London, the well-known publisher, received this letter from the explorer, dated at a mission station a

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CHAPTER XXXIV. FORWARD MARCH!

"At muster this curious result was returned: There were with us one hundred and thirty-four men, eighty-four married women, one hundred and eighty-seven female domestics, seventy-four children above two years, thirty-five infants in arms—making a total of five hundred and fourteen. I have reason to believe that the number was nearer six hundred, as many were not reported from fear probably that some would be taken prisoners. "On the 10th of April we set out from Kavallis, in number about one tho

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CHAPTER XXXV. AT THE COAST AT LAST.

A special correspondent of the New York Herald reached Msuwah at 5 P. M. , on November 29th, and immediately sent to that paper the following despatch: "I have just met Henry M. Stanley, Emin Pasha, Casati, Lieutenant Stairs, Mr. Jephson, Dr. Parke, Nelson and Bonny and five hundred and sixty men, women and children. "I have found Stanley looking exceedingly hearty. He wears a Prussian cap, linen breeches and canvas shoes. "I presented him with the American flag with which I was intrusted, and i

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