ON AFRICAN SOIL. 643 



" Henry M. Stanley," " New York Herald." People high and 

 low were gazing in perplexity at that bit of card-board when 

 Mr. Stanley embarked his expedition for the African coast, on 

 the 5th of February. 



A white man named Shaw had been employed at Zanzibar, 

 and six of the men who had gained considerable reputation 

 before, as " Speke's Faithfuls ; " these six men were named re- 

 spectively, Bombay, Uledi, Ulimengo, Baruti, Ambari, and 

 Mabruki, who had obtained the distinction " bull-headed," 

 from Captain Burton. With his escort thus perfected, two 

 horses, two donkeys, and almost a boat-load of " money," Mr. 

 Stanley entered the harbor of Bagamoyo, early in February, 

 1871. 



" Bagamoyo is a small port on the Mrima ; this narrow strip 

 of land has attracted the gaze of the civilized world, because of 

 its conspicuous connection with the slave-trade; within the coast 

 limits of this small district are to be found the ports through 

 which by far the greater number of human beings bought or 

 captured or kidnapped in the interior are shipped abroad. 

 There are Mombasah, Bueni, Saadani, Whinde, Bagamoyo, 

 Kaole, Kenduchi, Dar Salaam, Mbuamaji, and Kilwa, with their 

 records of violence, just as they have been seen by so many 

 thousands of helpless victims of ' man's inhumanity to man/ 

 gazing the last time toward their homes." 



The traveller, who approaches this famous coast from the 

 sea, is constrained to gaze with peculiar interest on the scene 

 which lies before him. " On one side," writes Mr. Burton, " lies 

 the Indian ocean, illimitable toward the east, dimpled with its 

 'anerithmon gelasma/ and broken westward by a thin line of 

 foam, creaming upon the whitest and finest of sand, the detritus 

 of coralline and madrepore. It dents the coast deeply, forming 

 bays, bayous, lagoons, and backwaters, where, after breaking 

 their force upon bars and black ledges of sand and rock, upon 

 diabolitos or sun-stained masses of a coarse conglomerate, and 

 upon strong wiers planted in crescent shape, the waters lie at 

 rest in the arms of the land like sheets of oil. The points and 

 islets formed by these sea-streams are almost flush with the 

 briny surface, yet they are overgrown with a profuse vegetation, 

 the result of tropical suns and copious showers, which supply 

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