Slowly recovering from the effects of famine and fatigue incident to this arduous journey, Stanley returned to Europe in January, 1878, and was met, as he stepped out of the express train at Marseilles, by two commissioners of King Leopold of Belgium, who informed him that his Majesty contemplated a new enterprise in Africa and desired his assistance. While heartily indorsing the proposed work of Leopold his physical condition was such that active co-operation was impossible, and he was even unable to visit his Majesty. Five months later, with physical energies renewed, after a visit to Leopold, Stanley eventually agreed to the proposition which contemplated the establishment of a grand commercial enterprise for controlling the trade of the valley of the Congo. It involved the erection of commercial and military stations along the overland route and the establishment of steam communication wherever available. In short, a colony of Europeans was to be founded in the Congo Basin, whose great fertility, healthy climate, and enormous population seemed to especially favor the development of African civilization. The action of Leopold evidently grew out of Stanley's declarations that "the question of this mighty waterway (the Congo) will become a political one in time," and his conviction that any power possessing the Congo would absorb the whole enormous trade behind, as this river was and must continue to be, the grand commercial highway of West and Central Africa. Stanley accepted the mission, visited Zanzibar, where he enlisted sixty-eight Zanzibari, mostly his old soldiers, and by sea reached Banana Point, on the west coast, August 14, 1879. Two years previous he had reached this place after descending the newly discovered Congo; now he was re-entering its fertile basin in order to establish civilized settlements, with the intention of subduing Central Africa by peaceful ways and to remould it into harmony with modern ideas, so that justice and order should ever obtain, violence and the slave trade forever cease. [Illustration: Finding Nelson in Distress at Starvation Camp.]