The Boy Travellers on the Congo — Part 139

"After listening to this wonderful story Mr. Stanley asked the Arab if he saw any other curious things on his journey.

"'Oh, yes!' he answered. 'There are monstrous large boa-constrictors in the forest of Uregga, suspended by their tails to the branches, waiting for the passer-by or for a stray antelope. The ants in that forest are not to be despised. You cannot travel without your body being covered with them, when they sting you like wasps. The leopards are so numerous that you cannot go very far without seeing one. Almost every native wears a leopard-skin cap. The sokos (gorillas) are in the woods, and woe befall the man or woman met alone by them; for they run up to you and seize your hands, and bite the fingers off one by one, and as fast as they bite one off, they spit it out. The Wasongora Meno and Waregga are cannibals, and unless the force is very strong, they never let strangers pass. It is nothing but constant fighting. Only two years ago a party armed with three hundred guns started north of Usongora Meno; they only brought sixty guns back, and no ivory. If one tries to go by the river, there are falls after falls, which carry the people over and drown them. A party of thirty men, in three canoes, went down the river half a day's journey from Nyangwé, when the old white man (Livingstone) was living there. They were all drowned, and that was the reason he did not go on. Had he done so, he would have been eaten, for what could he have done? Ah, no. Master, the country is bad, and the Arabs have given it up. They will not try the journey into that country again, after trying it three times and losing nearly five hundred men altogether.'

"Before closing his contract with Tippu-Tib Mr. Stanley consulted Frank Pocock, his only remaining white companion, in order to obtain his views of the matter. I will read his account of the consultation and what followed it.

"At 6 P.M. a couple of saucers, filled with palm-oil and fixed with cotton-wick, were lit. It was my after-dinner hour, the time for pipes and coffee, which Frank was always invited to share.

"When he came in the coffee-pot was boiling, and little Mabruki was in waiting to pour out. The tobacco-pouch, filled with the choicest production of Africa--that of Masansi, near Uvira--was ready. Mabruki poured out the coffee, and retired, leaving us together.