It was the 29th of April when Stanley gave his last instructions to his Arab chiefs about getting the canoes down the mountain to Nzabi, the home of the next tribe west. On his way he entered a magnificent forest--the tall and shapely trees of which reminded him of his early wanderings in the wilds of Arkansas and on our western frontiers. It was not strange, while looking at them, that he should be reminded of the "dug-outs" of the Indians which he had so often seen, and that the thought should occur to him to make some canoes, to take the place of those which he had lost in the passage of the rapids and falls above. It seems as if his early life had prepared him especially for all the contingencies that were to occur in his long and varied explorations in Africa. After thinking the matter over a short time, he resolved that the boats should be built, and having obtained permission of the chief of the district, he at once commenced operations. The first tree selected was more than three feet in diameter and ran up sixty feet straight before it reached a limb. As soon as it was prone on the ground the men were set to work in sections upon it, and in a week it was finished. In a week more another was completed, measuring forty-five feet in length and eighteen inches deep. All this time the canoes were advancing over the land at the rate of a little more than a third of a mile a day, and finally they reached camp the day before the second boat was finished. Things, however, had gone badly in the camp on the mountain-top after Stanley left, for the Arabs, following their apparently natural propensity, began to steal. One man, who had been caught in the act, was seized and made a prisoner by the natives who resolved to keep him as a slave. Stanley spent an entire day negotiating for his redemption, and finally had to give one hundred and fifty dollars' worth of cloth to get him released. It was plain that he could not afford to redeem many men at this price, and he distinctly told them that if after this any of them were caught stealing, they would be left in the hands of the natives, to be held as slaves for life. A terrible punishment, yet as it proved not great enough to deter them from committing the same crime afterwards, as opportunity offered. The labor of the men engaged in hauling the canoes over the high mountain had been so great, that Stanley felt that some days of rest were demanded to recuperate them. But as idleness was always the fruitful source of all kinds of evil with the Arabs, he determined to keep the men who had hewed out the two boats still at work, and set them to making a third canoe. The chief of this district now informed Stanley, greatly to his surprise and disappointment, that there were five falls immediately below him, while how many lay between these and the sea no one could tell. No matter; he must still move on, and, for the present, cling to the river on account of the sick, if for no other reason.