4 miles below seventh cataract, } Stanley Falls 1511 } River at Ntamo, above first } 898 5 inches nearly. cataract, Livingstone Falls 1147 } River —— } uninterrupted. Feet 364 CHAPTER XII. The struggle with the river renewed—Passing the “Father”—In the “Cauldron”—Poor Kalulu!—Soudi’s strange adventures—At the “Whirlpool Narrows”—Lady Alice Rapids—Our escape from death—“Isles of Eden”—Thieves amongst us—The Inkisi Falls—The canoes dragged over the mountain—Trade along the Livingstone—Ulcers and entozoa—An artful compound. _Mar. 15._—The wide wild land which, by means of the greatest river of Africa, we have pierced, is now about to be presented in a milder aspect than that which has filled the preceding pages with records of desperate conflicts and furious onslaughts of savage men. The people no longer resist our advance. Trade has tamed their natural ferocity, until they no longer resent our approach with the fury of beasts of prey. It is the dread river itself of which we shall have now to complain. It is no longer the stately stream whose mystic beauty, noble grandeur, and gentle uninterrupted flow along a course of nearly nine hundred miles, ever fascinated us, despite the savagery of its peopled shores, but a furious river rushing down a steep bed obstructed by reefs of lava, projected barriers of rock, lines of immense boulders, winding in crooked course through deep chasms, and dropping down over terraces in a long series of falls, cataracts, and rapids. Our frequent contests with the savages culminated in tragic struggles with the mighty river as it rushed and roared through the deep, yawning pass that leads from the broad table-land down to the Atlantic Ocean. Those voiceless and lone streams meandering between the thousand isles of the Livingstone; those calm and silent wildernesses of water over which we had poured our griefs and wailed in our sorrow; those woody solitudes, where nightly we had sought to soothe our fevered brows, into whose depths we breathed our vows; that sea-like amplitude of water which had proved our refuge in distress, weird in its stillness, and solemn in its mystery, are now exchanged for the cliff-lined gorge, through which with inconceivable fury the Livingstone sweeps with foaming billows into the broad Congo, which, at a distance of only 155 geographical miles, is nearly 1100 feet below the summit of the first fall.