In his second journey Stanley crossed the lake from Ujiji, and plunged into the wilderness beyond its western shore, in a determination to reach the Atlantic Ocean by descending the Lualaba River. He believed the Lualaba flowed into the Congo, and by following its course he could reach the coast. The country was entirely unknown, as not even the Arab traders had ever explored it, and no one could tell what the explorer would encounter. There was a rumor that powerful tribes dwelt on the Congo, but no one could give an idea of their numbers and strength, or say whether they would be friendly or hostile. The work accomplished by Stanley is thus described by an able writer[7] in _Harper's Magazine_ for October, 1878: [7] Hon. John Russell Young, now (1883) United States Minister to China. "Stanley gave nine months to the exploration of the Lualaba, or rather to the Livingstone, as he called it, and as it must be called for all time. Before he went out on this mission we knew there were two rivers--the Congo and the Lualaba. We knew that the Congo ran into the Atlantic Ocean, but its source was lost in cataracts. The Portuguese were content to scatter a few settlements about its mouth, and trade for gums and ivory along its banks. But it was an unknown river beyond the cataracts. We knew there was a river in the middle of Africa called the Lualaba; we knew it had a swift current, that it was a river of large volume. But beyond that we knew nothing. Some had one theory, others had another. Livingstone was convinced that it ran into the Nile, was really the source of the Nile; and who would question even the theory of so great a master? What Stanley did was to show that the Congo and Lualaba were one and the same; that the Congo, instead of losing itself among the rapids, was to force itself into the very heart of the continent; that the Lualaba, instead of going north and submitting to the usurping waters of the Nile, was to turn to the west and force its way to the sea; that these two rivers were to disappear from the map, and be known as one river--the Livingstone; that this river was to be two thousand nine hundred miles in length; that for nearly ten degrees of longitude it was to be continuously navigable; that its volume was one million eight hundred thousand cubic feet a second; that the entire area it drains is eight hundred thousand square miles--in other words, that here was an immense waterway three thousand miles into the centre of Africa, navigable, with the exception of two breaks, which engineering science can easily surmount--a waterway into a tropical empire, rich in woods and metals and gracious soil, in fruits and grains, the sure home of a civilized empire in the years to come. As Petermann, the eminent German geographer, put it, Stanley's work