Note 2 — Section 146. MR. H. M. STANLEY’S APPEAL⁠[1] FOR SUPPLIES. I.

The village of N’sanda is three days’ journey from Embomma, or Boma, which is a small town on the Congo or Livingstone River at a distance of sixty-five English miles from the Atlantic, and, with regard to Stanley’s position, may be considered the van of civilisation in Africa, being the first place inhabited by Europeans.—For the full understanding of this letter, it may be useful to observe that it was written at the critical period when, at their journey home from the sources of the Nile, and almost at the end of all their troubles, the heroic travellers of more than 7000 miles through Equatorial Africa found themselves face to face with the grimmest of all enemies—starvation. Nearly forty men filled the sick list with dysentery, ulcers, and scurvy, and the number of victims of the latter disease was steadily increasing. For a considerable time the people had had no other food but a few ground-nuts and bananas, and were scarcely more than skin and bone. In this extremity Mr. Stanley determined to despatch four of his strongest and swiftest men with this letter to Embomma, where he was told there was one Englishman, one Frenchman, and three Portuguese. He then intended to follow these men as quickly as possible with the rest of his people, and to meet them and the expected supplies on the road to Boma, thus gaining at least one or two days, which might turn out to be of the greatest importance to his starving followers.