It is hardly necessary to say that so great an enterprise was not possible of achievement without loss of life, and much personal sacrifice and suffering; that many men of high intellectual power and indomitable courage fell by the way, martyrs to disease, treachery, and the innumerable accidents by flood and field which ever dog the footsteps of pioneer explorers. The official records of the expeditions, for the most part vouched for by independent testimony (chiefly English), establish beyond possibility of dispute the patient forbearance and humanity of the explorers in their dealings with the natives. The dignity of truth is lost with too much protesting, and that some few mistakes were committed here and there, the result of over-zealousness on the part of particular individuals, is frankly admitted, such admission in no way detracting from the confident assertion that no exploration of unknown lands had ever before been made which occasioned so small an amount of friction with their indigenous occupiers. A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it. Mistake, error, is the discipline through which we all advance, and the greatest of faults is to be conscious of none. [Sidenote: A Bad Start.] The first Belgian expedition arrived at Zanzibar in December, 1877, having been three months on its voyage from Ostend. It was commanded by Captain Crespel, an officer of the Belgian Army, and included, besides Lieutenant Cambier, also of the Belgian Army, Dr. Maes, and M. Marno, an Austrian. Some time was spent by these explorers in Zanzibar, purchasing supplies and engaging an escort, before starting for the interior; a task in which they were assisted by the Sultan, Seyyid Burghash, an enlightened ruler, opposed to slavery and sympathetic with the expedition and its objects. Unfortunately, these favourable auspices were not followed by correspondingly happy events. In less than a month after the arrival of the expedition in Zanzibar, Dr. Maes was dead of fever; and Captain Crespel, who was ill from the first moment that he set foot on African soil, survived Dr. Maes only a few days. Shortly before these two sad events, Cambier and Marno had started on their journey into the interior, and at once became the victims of every sort of misfortune. Their cattle were tormented and destroyed by the tsetse fly, which in that year assumed the proportions of a plague, and, their route lying through a marshy region, progress was rendered impossible. Two months later they returned to Zanzibar worn out and dispirited, having achieved nothing, only to be greeted by the melancholy news of the death of Captain Crespel and Dr. Maes. Command of the expedition now devolved upon Lieutenant Cambier, who resolved to await reinforcements from Belgium.