On the 15th, they made but six miles and a half and yet, short as was the distance, it took the men carrying the boat twenty-four hours to make it, and all were so weary that a halt of an entire day was ordered to let them rest. In addition to this, the forest became ten times more matted than before. Both the heavier timber and the undergrowth grew thicker and thicker, shutting out not only the light of the sun, but every particle of moving air, so that the atmosphere became suffocating and stifling. Panting for breath, the little army crawled and wormed itself through the interlacing branches, and when night came down were utterly disheartened. Even the elegant Tipo-tipo now gave out, and came to Stanley to be released from his engagement. It was in vain that the latter appealed to his honor, his pride and fear of ridicule should he now turn back to Nyangwe. But to everything he could urge, the very sensible answer was returned: "If there is nothing worse than this before us, it will yet take us, at the rate we are going, a year to make the sixty marches and as long a time to return. You are only killing everybody by your obstinacy; such a country was never made for decent men to travel in, it was made for pagans and monkeys." It is in circumstances like these that those qualities which have made Stanley the most successful explorer of modern times, exhibit themselves. Napoleon said, when speaking of troops, "Even brave soldiers have their '_moment de peur_,'" the time when they shrink. But this man seems an exception to this rule. To him the moment of fear never seems to come, for he never feels the contagion of example. He adheres to his resolution to go on, if but a handful stand by him. He seems impervious to the contagion that seizes others, and a panic in battle would sweep by him unmoved. After talking to Tipo-tipo for two hours, he finally got him to agree to accompany him twenty marches farther. There were two things in this village, shut up in the heart of the forest, that impressed Stanley very much. He found here a primitive forge, in which the natives smelted iron-ore, found in the neighborhood, and a smithy, in which the iron was worked up into instruments of all kinds, from a small knife to a cleaver; hatchets, hammers, even wire and ornaments for the arms and legs were made. How this rude people, to whom even an Arab trader had never come, should have discovered the properties of iron-ore, how to disengage the iron and then work it into every variety of instruments, is inexplicable. The whole must have been the product of the brain of some native genius.