He was guided by Arabs whose trade-route extended to the great Lualaba River in the very heart of Africa some thousand miles west of Zanzibar. It was an unknown land, unvisited by Europeans when Livingstone arrived with his Arab escort at Bambarra in September 1869. "Being now well rested," he enters in his diary, "I resolved to go west to Lualaba and buy a canoe for its exploration. The Manyuema country is all surpassingly beautiful. Palms crown the highest heights of the mountains, and the forests about five miles broad are indescribable. Climbers of cable size in great numbers are hung among the gigantic trees, many unknown wild fruits abound, some the size of a child's head, and strange birds and monkeys are everywhere." With the Arab caravan he travelled almost incessantly zigzagging through the wonderful Manyuema country until, after a year's wandering, he finally reached the banks of the Lualaba (Congo) on 31st March 1871. It was a red-letter day in his life. "I went down," he says, "to take a good look at the Lualaba here. It is a mighty river at least three thousand yards broad and always deep. The banks are steep; the current is about two miles an hour away to the north." Livingstone was gazing at the second-largest river in the world--the Congo. But he thought it was the Nile, and confidently relates how it overflows all its banks annually as the Nile does. At Nyangwe, a Manyuema village, Livingstone stayed for four months. The natives were dreadful cannibals. He saw one day a man with ten human jaw-bones hung by a string over his shoulder, the owners of which he had killed and eaten. Another day a terrible massacre took place, arising from a squabble over a fowl, in which some four hundred perished. The Arabs too disgusted him with their slave-raiding, and he decided that he could no longer travel under their protection. So on 20th July 1871 he started back for Ujiji, and after a journey of seven hundred miles, accomplished in three months, he arrived, reduced to a skeleton, only to find that the rascal who had charge of his stores had stolen the whole and made away. But when health and spirit were failing, help was at hand. The meeting of Stanley and Livingstone on the shores of the Lake Tanganyika is one of the most thrilling episodes in the annals of discovery. Let them tell their own story: "When my spirits were at their lowest ebb," says Livingstone, "one morning Susi came running at the top of his speed and gasped out, 'An Englishman! I see him!' and off he darted to meet him. The American flag at the head of a caravan told of the nationality of the stranger. Bales of goods, baths of tin, huge kettles, and cooking-pots made me think, 'This must be a luxurious traveller and not one at his wits' end, like me.'"