Nowhere have I witnessed such affecting excitement except in Spain--perhaps when the Republicans stormily roared their sentiments, after listening to some glorious exhortations to stand true to the new faith in Libertad, Igualdad, and Fraternidad!
The prisoner also wept, and after the noose was flung aside knelt down and vowed to die at my feet. We shook hands and I said, "It is God's work, thank Him."
Merrily the trumpet blared once more, and at once rose every voice, "By the help of God! By the help of God!" The detail for the day sprang to their posts, received their heavy load for the day, and marched away rejoicing as to a feast. Even the officers smiled their approval. Never was there such a number of warmed hearts in the forest of the Congo as on that day.
The land and river columns reached the Lenda within an hour, and about the same time. This was apparently a deep river about a hundred yards wide. On the west side of the confluence was a small village, but its plantain groves had been long ago despoiled of fruit. Soon after the ferriage was completed the men were permitted to scour the country in search of food; some on the north bank, and others on the south bank, but long before night they all returned, having been unable to find a morsel of any kind of edible.
On the 22nd, while pursuing our way by river and by land as usual, I reflected that only on the 18th I had left fifty-six invalids under the care of an Arab; yet on observing the people at the muster, I noticed that there were about fifty already incapacitated by debility. The very stoutest and most prudent were pining under such protracted and mean diet. To press on through such wastes unpeopled by the ivory hunters appeared simply impossible, but on arriving at Umeni we had the good fortune to find sufficient for a full day's rations, and hope again filled us.
The following day, one man, called "Abdallah the humped," deserted. We on the river were troubled with several rapids, and patches of broken water, and in discharging cargo, and hauling canoes, and finally we came in view of a fall of forty feet with lengths of rapids above and below.
One would have thought that by this time the Ituri would have become an insignificant stream, but when we saw the volume of water precipitated over the third large cataract, we had to acknowledge that it was still a powerful river.