The Bangala, or “the Ashantees of the Livingstone River,” as Stanley characterizes them, are a strong and a superior people, and they fought fiercely against Stanley, when he was passing their country in 1877.[58] “The senior chief, Mata Bwyki (lord of many guns), was [now, in October, 1883,] an old grey-haired man,” says Stanley, “of Herculean stature and breadth of shoulder, with a large square face, and an altogether massive head, out of which his solitary eye seemed to glare with penetrative power. I should judge him to be six feet, two inches, in height. He had a strong, sonorous voice, which, when lifted to speak to his tribe, was heard clearly several hundred yards off. He was now probably between seventy-five and eighty years old.... He was not the tallest man, nor the best looking, nor the sweetest-dispositioned man, I had met in all Africa; but if the completeness and perfection of the human figure, combining size with strength, and proportion of body, limbs, and head, with an expression of power in the face, be considered, he must have been at one time the grandest type of physical manhood to be found in Equatorial Africa. As he stood before us on this day, we thought of him as an ancient Milo, an aged Hercules, an old Samson--a really grand looking old man. At his side were seven tall sons, by different mothers, and although they were stalwart men and boys, the whitened crown of Mata Bwyki’s head rose by a couple of inches above the highest head.” Nearly two thousand persons assembled, at Iboko, to witness the “palaver” that must precede a decision to enter into “strong friendship.” At the place of meeting, “mats of split rattan were spread in a large semicircle around a row of curved and box stools, for the principal chiefs. In the centre of the line, opposite this, was left a space for myself and people,” continues Stanley. “We had first to undergo the process of steady and silent examination from nearly two thousand pairs of eyes. Then, after Yumbila, the guide, had detailed in his own manner, who we were, and what was our mission up the great river; how we had built towns at many places, and made blood-brotherhood with the chiefs of great districts, such as Irebu, Ukuti, Usindi, Ngombé, Lukolela, Bolobo, Mswata, and Kintamo, he urged upon them the pleasure it would be to me to make a like compact, sealed with blood, with the great chiefs of populous Iboko. He pictured the benefits likely to accrue to Iboko, and Mata Bwyki in particular, if a bond of brotherhood was made between two chiefs like Mata Bwyki and Tandelay, [Stanley,] or as he was known, Bula Matari.”