energetic man, with a genius
for organisation. He bought cloth enough for a hundred men for two
years, glass beads, brass wire and other goods in request among the
natives. He bought saddles and tents, guns and cartridges, boats,
medicine, tools, provisions and asses. Two English sailors volunteered
for the expedition, and he took them into his service, but both died in
the fever country. Black porters were engaged, and twenty men he called
his soldiers carried guns. After he had crossed over from Zanzibar to
the African mainland, the equipment of the expedition was completed at
Bagamoyo, and Stanley made haste to get away before the rainy season
commenced.

The great and well-found caravan of 192 men in all trooped westwards in
five detachments. Stanley himself led the last detachment, and before
them lay the wilderness, the interior of Africa with its dark recesses.
At the first camping-ground tall maize was growing and manioc plants
were cultivated in extensive fields. The latter is a plant with large
root bulbs chiefly composed of starch, but also containing a poisonous
milky juice which is deadly if the roots be eaten without preparation.
When the sap has been removed by proper treatment, however, the roots
are crushed into flour, from which a kind of bread is made. Round a
swamp in the neighbourhood grew low fan-palms and acacias among
luxuriant grass and reeds.

Next day they marched under ebony and calabash trees, from the shells of
which the natives make vessels of various shapes, for while they are
growing the fruits can be forced by outward pressure into almost any
desired form. Pheasants and quails, water-hens and pigeons flew up
screaming when the black porters tramped along the path, winding in
single file through the grass as high as a man. Hippopotami lay snorting
unconcernedly in a stream that was crossed.

Then came the forerunners of the rainy season, splashing and pelting
over the country, and pouring showers pattered on the grass. Both the
horses of the caravan succumbed, one or two fellows who found Bagamoyo
more comfortable ran away, and a dozen porters fell ill of fever.
Stanley was still full of energy, and beat the reveille in the morning
himself with an iron ladle on an empty tin. On they went through dense
jungle. Now a gang of slaves toils along, their chains clanking at every
weary step. Here again is a river, and there the road runs up a hill.
Here the country is barren, but soon after