and shutting out the opposite banks. Keeping down the right channel, they passed through enchanting scenery, undisturbed by war-drums and savage shouts. Though the water was smooth on their side, over the island, on the other, they could hear the roar of rapids, and a few miles farther down the loud roar of the seventh and last cataract of the "Stanley Falls" burst on their ears, filling the solitude with its loud thunder. The river here was over a mile wide, and the fall of such an immense body of water over a high ledge made the earth tremble. It was one incessant fight, either with the savages or with nature, and it seemed as if fate determined to wear out these indomitable men. Soon the loud war-drums, and horns, and battle-shouts were mingled with the roar of the cataract, showing that here, too, they must fight before they could get below it. Dropping down as near as it was safe to the commencement of the rapids, they pulled ashore and pitched their camp in a dense forest. Fearful of being attacked before they could intrench, they immediately set to work with their axes to throw together a brushwood fence, while thirty soldiers were stationed in front toward the river, to repel assault. They had hardly completed it before the naked cannibals were upon them with a fury that threatened to break through their defenses. All this time out from the woods, adown the gorge through which the river plunged, war-drums and horns were heard summoning the thickly-scattered villages to the scene of combat. Before the steady fire of the musketeers the savages suffered so severely that at sunset they abandoned the attack and withdrew. Stanley now secured his boats and strengthened the brushwood fence, and laid his plans for the morning. The camp was roused at five o'clock, and they pushed on to a point nearer the falls, so that the work of carrying around them was completed before the Wangas opened battle. Everything being made secure, they waited for the expected attack to begin, but, no enemy appearing, Stanley sent out scouts to ascertain what they were about. They brought back word that no savages were to be seen. On advancing to the villages, Stanley found to his astonishment that they were all deserted. Why, or whither they had fled was a profound mystery. Here was a town or cluster of villages, each with four or five streets running through it, and capable of containing two thousand inhabitants, deserted in a single night. The silence of death reigned over it.