Was it to one of the factories of Angola, and would it be an affair of a few halting-places only, or would this convoy travel for hundreds of miles still, across Central Africa?
The principal market of the contractors is that of N'yangwe, in Manyema, on that meridian which divides the African continent into two almost equal parts, there where extends the country of the great lakes, that Livingstone was then traversing.

But it was far from the camp on the Coanza to that village.

Months of travel would not suffice to reach it.
That was one of Dick Sand's most serious thoughts; for, once at N'yangwe, in case even Mrs.Weldon, Hercules, the other blacks and he should succeed in escaping, how difficult it would be, not to say impossible, to return to the seacoast, in the midst of the dangers of such a long route.
But Dick Sand soon had reason to think that the convoy would soon reach its destination.

Though he did not understand the language employed by the chiefs of the caravan, sometimes Arab, sometimes the African idiom, he remarked that the name of an important market of that region was often pronounced.

It was the name Kazounde, and he knew that a very great trade in slaves was carried on there.