Three months later, in April, 1875, when Stanley found himself and his party in the treacherous toils of Shekka, the King of Bumbireh, he made several vain attempts to “induce Shekka, with gifts, to go through the process of blood-brotherhood.” Stanley’s second captain, Safeni, was the adroit, but unsuccessful, agent in the negotiations. “Go frankly and smilingly, Safeni, up to Shekka, on the top of that hill,” said Stanley, “and offer him these three fundo of beads, and ask him to exchange blood with you.” But the wily king was not to be dissuaded from his warlike purposes in that way. “Safeni returned. Shekka had refused the pledge of peace.”[32] His desire was to take blood, if at all, without any exchange. After still another three months, in July, 1875, Stanley, at Refuge Island, reports better success in securing peace and friendship through blood-giving and blood-receiving. “Through the influence of young Lukanjah--the cousin of the King of Ukerewé”--he says, “the natives of the mainland had been induced to exchange their churlish disposition for one of cordial welcome; and the process of blood-brotherhood had been formally gone through [with], between Manwa Sera, on my part, and Kijaju, King of Komeh, and the King of Itawagumba, on the other part.”[33] It was at “Kampunzu, in the district of Uvinza, where dwell the true aborigines of the forest country,”--a people whom Stanley afterwards found to be cannibals--that this rite was once more observed between the explorers and the natives. “Blood-brotherhood being considered as a pledge of good-will and peace,” says Stanley, “Frank Pocock [a young Englishman who was an attendant of Stanley] and the chief [of Kampunzu] went through the ordeal; and we interchanged presents”--as is the custom in the observance of this rite.[34] At the island of Mpika, on the Livingstone River, in December, 1876, there was another bright episode in Stanley’s course of travel, through this mode of sealing friendship. Disease had been making sad havoc in Stanley’s party. He had been compelled to fight his way along through a region of cannibals. While he was halting for a breakfast on the river bank over against Mpika, an attack on him was preparing by the excited inhabitants of the island. Just then his scouts captured a native trading party of men and women who were returning to Mpika, from inland; and to them his interpreters made clear his pacific intentions. “By means of these people,” he says, “we succeeded in checking the warlike demonstrations of the islanders, and in finally persuading them to make blood-brotherhood; after which we invited canoes to come and receive [these hostages] their friends. As they hesitated to do so, we embarked them in our own boat, and conveyed them across to the island. The news then spread quickly along the whole length of the island that we were friends, and as we resumed our journey, crowds from the shore cried out to us, ‘_Mwendé Ki-vuké-vuké_’ (‘Go in peace!’)”[35]