As a field for commerce, Mr. Stanley speaks of the country in the most glowing terms, and believes that it excels all other known lands for the number and rare variety of precious gifts with which nature has endowed it. He says: "The forests on the banks of the Congo are filled with precious redwood, lignum vitæ, mahogany, and fragrant gum-trees. At their base may be found inexhaustible quantities of fossil gum, with which the carriages and furniture of civilized countries are varnished; their boles exude myrrh and frankincense; their foliage is draped with orchilla-weed, useful for dye. The redwood, when cut down, chipped and rasped, produces a deep crimson powder, giving a valuable coloring; the creepers, which hang in festoons from tree to tree, are generally those from which india-rubber is produced (the best of which is worth fifty cents per lb.); the nuts of the oil palm give forth a butter, a staple article of commerce; while the fibres of others will make the best cordage. Among the wild shrubs is frequently found the coffee-plant. In its plains, jungle, and swamp luxuriate the elephants, whose tusk furnishes ivory worth from $2.00 to $2.75 per lb.; its waters teem with numberless herds of hippopotami, whose tusks are also valuable; furs of the lion, leopard, monkey, otter; hides of antelope, buffalo, goat, cattle, etc., may also be obtained. But, what is of far more value, it possesses over forty millions of moderately industrious and workable people. The copper of Lake Superior is rivaled by that of the Kwilu-Niadi Valley, and of Bembé. Rice, cotton, tobacco, maize, coffee, sugar, and wheat would thrive equally well in the broad plains of the Congo. I have heard of gold and silver, but this statement requires corroboration, and I am not disposed to touch upon what I do not personally know. A large portion of the Congo basin, at present inaccessible to the immigrant, is blessed with a temperature under which Europeans may thrive and multiply. There is no portion of it where the European trader may not fix his residence for years, and develop commerce to his own profit with as little risk as is incurred in India." Such is the country which the skill, tact, courage, and, in brief, the genius of Mr. Stanley have rescued from the degradation and barbarism of ages, and given a place among the great nations of the world. It is his fame to have been not merely an intrepid explorer, not merely a peaceful and almost bloodless conqueror, but in fully equal measure a civilizer, a trade-bearer, a statesman; the finder, the founder, and the builder of a great and mighty state. CHAPTER XXX. EMIN, THE LAST OF THE SOUDAN HEROES.