Note 17 — Section 149. MR. STANLEY’S ACKNOWLEDGMENT⁠[1] OF THE PRECEDING LETTER AND THE SUPPLIES. I.

This letter, on the morning of the 7th of August, was despatched to Boma, the caravan following slowly, and reaching Boma on the 9th of August 1877, the 999th day from the date of their departure from Zanzibar. The expedition then embarked on board a steamer at Boma, and, on the 11th, descended the river Congo. After steaming northward from the mouth of the Congo for a few hours, the vessel entered the fine bay of Kabinda, on the southern shores of which the native town of that name in the county of Nyoyo is situate. The Expedition, after a stay of eight days at Kabinda, was kindly taken on board the Portuguese gunboat ‘Tamega’ to San Paulo de Loanda. Here they were treated with the utmost hospitality by the Portuguese and the officers of the English navy, who offered the Expedition a passage to Cape Town in H.M.S. ‘Industry’, Commander R. C. Dyer. The Cape of Good Hope was reached on the 21st of October. Here a telegram from the Lords of the British Admiralty was received, authorising the Commodore Francis William Sullivan to prepare H.M.S. ‘Industry’ for the reception of the Expedition and to convey them to Zanzibar, the end of their journey. On the 6th of November H.M.S. ‘Industry’ was equipped and ready for her voyage to Zanzibar, which was reached on the 20th of the same month. By this time the sick had, all but one, recovered, and had improved so much in appearance that few persons ignorant of what they had been, could have supposed that these were the living skeletons that had reeled from sheer weakness through Boma.