So far, we have seen, these expeditions were exclusively Belgian. They owed their inception to King Leopold, by far the larger part of the heavy expense they entailed was met out of his Majesty’s private purse, and the _personnel_ was Belgian almost to a man. Humanitarian in their object, the expeditions had been conducted so humanely that no injury had resulted to any one for which the expeditions could be blamed. With the exception of the two English elephant-keepers, murdered by Arab brigands, the loss of life was wholly Belgian, resulting in every case from the trying climate of Equatorial Africa. [Sidenote: An Intrepid Journalist.] But before any Belgian expedition had started, Henry M. Stanley, the great Anglo-American traveller, had penetrated Africa as far as the mouth of the Congo, and had startled the world by the information contained in his letters addressed thence to the New York _Herald_ and the London _Daily Telegraph_. In glowing and incisive language Stanley demonstrated the future commercial importance of the superb Congo River, and significantly pointed out that, so far, no European power, except Portugal, had put forth any claim to its control—a claim which England, France, and the United States had refused to recognise. This pregnant statement excited widespread remark, but the King of the Belgians was alone in acting upon the startling information. His Majesty invited Mr. Stanley to Brussels to confer with some distinguished geographers, merchants, and financiers; and out of that meeting grew the _Comité d’Études du Haut-Congo_, to which reference has been made in an earlier chapter. Soon after, however, the name of this body was changed to that of the International Association of the Congo. Mr. Stanley was invited to enter its service, and to establish along the Congo a series of stations, designed as bases for future operations, humanitarian and commercial, _i. e._, suppression of the slave trade and securing the commerce of the Congo country. How Stanley accepted that invitation, and carried out the mission which the King of the Belgians entrusted to him, is almost as well known as the story of the same intrepid traveller’s discovery of Dr. Livingstone a few years before. With only ten companions (five Belgian, two English, two Danish, and one French), Stanley left Europe in January, 1879. At Zanzibar he hoped to be reinforced by at least some of those who had been associated with him on his previous journey. Meanwhile the steamboats _En Avant_ and _Royal_, the twin-screw steamer _La Belgique_, one-screw barge _Young Africa_, and two steel lighters, were sent direct from Belgium to the mouth of the Congo, there to await Stanley’s coming. Stanley recruited a hundred and forty blacks (Askaris and Kabindas), to say nothing of carriers, whom he obtained as he required them during his progress along the Congo. [Sidenote: Difficult Pioneering.]