"The weight and labor of our transport may be imagined when I say that we had no less than two thousand two hundred and twenty-five loads or packages, each weighing from sixty-five to seventy pounds. We had seven large store tents, and besides this we had enormous wagons, built on purpose for us in Belgium, whereon to transport the two steamers and two large steel boats, with boilers and machinery, which we had brought with us to put together on the Upper Congo. We had to go over the ground no less than thirty-three times, and our rate of progress, calculating the number of days we travelled, was only a quarter of a mile a day. After eleven months of unceasing toil the two steamers were put together at the second station above the Isangila cataract, the place where I left the _Lady Alice_ after her seven thousand mile journey with me in the Anglo-American expedition across the Dark Continent." [Illustration: THE HEIGHT OF FASHION.] From this point the river is navigable for a distance of seventy-four miles, and the steamers transported the men and material of the expedition to the foot of the next cataract. Then came more road-building, then another navigable distance, and then more roads, till at last the widening of the river was reached, at the foot of Stanley Pool. From here the great river is navigable nine hundred miles farther inland; and there are several tributary rivers where steamers can go. On one of these tributaries a lake has been discovered about seventy miles long, to which Stanley gave the name of Leopold II., in honor of the King of Belgium. The association has now seven steamers on the river: four on the lower portion, and three above Stanley Pool. By road and river there is now a direct way of communication between Central Africa and the sea-coast, where the mails are regularly carried to the officers and men in charge of the stations and the merchants engaged in business there. In speaking of his achievements Stanley says as follows: