powerful Arab chief. Lastly, they organised a large army, and attacked the expedition to which I was attached; the object of which was to establish stations in Katanga, a district not under Arab influence. Had they succeeded in annihilating us, it would have been easy for them to continue by land to Stanley Pool; at the same time they hoped that their attack on Stanley Falls Station would be successful, in which case they would have descended the Congo itself with another column, and would have found small difficulty in ousting the remaining Europeans, and in subsequently establishing a Mohammedan Empire.

As will be seen from the following pages, extraordinary luck, together with good leading, was the cause of our first success. Realising what was at stake, and fully recognising the gravity of the position, the