[Illustration: FLOATING ISLAND IN STANLEY POOL.]
"It is the dread river itself of which we shall have now to complain. It is no longer the stately stream, whose mystic beauty, noble grandeur, and gentle, uninterrupted flow along a course of nearly nine hundred miles ever fascinated us, despite the savagery of its peopled shores, but a furious river, rushing down a steep bed obstructed by reefs of lava, projected barriers of rock, lines of immense boulders, winding in crooked course through deep chasms, and dropping down over terraces in a long series of falls, cataracts, and rapids. Our frequent contests with the savages culminated in tragic struggles with the mighty river as it rushed and roared through the deep, yawning pass that leads from the broad table-land down to the Atlantic Ocean.
"Those voiceless and lone streams meandering between the thousand isles of the Livingstone; those calm and silent wildernesses of water over which we had poured our griefs and wailed in our sorrow; those woody solitudes where nightly we had sought to soothe our fevered brows, into whose depths we breathed our vows; that sealike amplitude of water which had proved our refuge in distress, weird in its stillness, and solemn in its mystery, are now exchanged for the cliff-lined gorge, through which with inconceivable fury the Livingstone sweeps with foaming billows into the broad Congo, which, at a distance of only one hundred and fifty-five geographical miles, is nearly eleven hundred feet below the summit of the first fall.
[Illustration: VILLAGE IN THE VALLEY OF THE CONGO.]
"On the 16th of March, having explored as far as the Gordon-Bennett River, and obtained a clear idea of our situation during the 15th, we began our labors with energy. Goods, asses, women, and children, with the guard under Frank, first moved overland to a temporary halting-place near the confluence. Then, manning the boat, I led the canoe-men from point to point along the right bank, over the first rapids. We had some skilful work to perform to avoid being swept away by the velocity of the current; but whenever we came to rocks we held the rattan hawsers in our hands, and, allowing the stream to take them beyond these dangerous points, brought them into the sheltered lee. Had a hawser parted nothing could have saved the canoe or the men in it, for at the confluence of the Gordon-Bennett with the great river the entire river leaps headlong into an abysm of waves and foam. Arriving in the Gordon-Bennett, we transported the expedition across, and then our labors ended at 5 P.M. for the day.