Stanley knew even more than this. His heroic nature took no stock in the “horrible climate” of Africa, which he had tested for so many years. He was fully persuaded that the plateaus of the Upper Congo and the central continent were healthier than the lands of Arkansas, which has doubled its population in twenty-five years. He treated the coast as but a thin line, the mere shell of an egg, yet he saw it dotted with settlements along every available water-way——the Kwanza, Congo, Kwilu, Ogowai, Muni, Camaroon, Oil, Niger, Roquelle, Gambia and Senegal rivers. He asked himself, What is left? And the answer came——Nothing, except the basins of the four mighty streams——the Congo, the Nile, the Niger and the Shari (Shire), all of which require railways to link them with the sea. His projected railway from Vivi, around the cataracts of the Congo, to Stanley Pool, 147 miles long, would open nearly 11,000 miles of navigable water-way, and the trade of 43,000,000 people, worth millions of dollars annually. The first results of Stanley’s efforts in behalf of a “Free Congo State” were, as already indicated, the formation of an international association, whose president was Colonel Strauch, and to whose existence and management the leading powers of the world gave their assent. It furnished the means for his return to Africa, with plenty of help and with facilities for navigating the Congo, in order to establish towns, conclude treaties with the natives, take possession of the lands, fix metes and bounds and open commerce——in a word, to found a State according to his ideal, and firmly fix it among the recognized empires of the world.