From the start, also, he had to attend to the carrying of boats, so as to pass insuperable cataracts.
Under the equator, at the point where the Loualaba makes a bend to the northeast, fifty-four boats, manned by several hundred natives, attacked Stanley's little fleet, which succeeded in putting them to flight.

Then the courageous American, reascending as far as the second degree of northern latitude, ascertained that the Loualaba was the upper Zaire, or Congo, and that by following its course he could descend directly to the sea.
This he did, fighting nearly every day against the tribes that lived near the river.

On June 3d, 1877, at the passage of the cataracts of Massassa, he lost one of his companions, Francis Pocock.

July 18th he was drawn with his boat into the falls of M'belo, and only escaped death by a miracle.
Finally, August 6th, Henry Stanley arrived at the village of Ni-Sanda, four days' journey from the coast.
Two days after, at Banza-M'bouko, he found the provisions sent by two merchants from Emboma.
He finally rested at this little coast town, aged, at thirty-five years, by over-fatigue and privations, after an entire passage of the African continent, which had taken two years and nine months of his life.
However, the course of the Loualaba was explored as far as the Atlantic; and if the Nile is the great artery of the North, if the Zambesi is the great artery of the East, we now know that Africa still possesses in the West the third of the largest rivers in the world--a river which, in a course of two thousand, nine hundred miles, under the names of Loualaba, Zaire, and Congo, unites the lake region with the Atlantic Ocean.
However, between these two books of travel--Stanley's and Cameron's--the province of Angola is somewhat better known in this year than in 1873, at that period when the "Pilgrim" was lost on the African coast.

It was well known that it was the seat of the western slave-trade, thanks to its important markets of Bihe, Cassange, and Kazounde.
It was into this country that Dick Sand had been drawn, more than one hundred miles from the coast, with a woman exhausted by fatigue and grief, a dying child, and some companions of African descent, the prey, as everything indicated, to the rapacity of slave merchants.
Yes, it was Africa, and not that America where neither the natives, nor the deer, nor the climate are very formidable.