How Stanley worked It.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume V, Issue 640, 30 July 1891, Page 3

How Stanley worked It.

Colonel Williams gives a most amus : ng account of Stanley’s methods of making treaties conveying to him territory. When force could not be used, Stanley, he says, would send a white man with a Zanzibari escort to a chief and his people whose lands were coveted, and tell the dusky and ingenious barbarian it was the desire of the white man's heart to put an end to fratricidal strife in the region, and confederate all African tribes for general defence. Then the envoy would overawe him with some carefully rehearsed conjuring dodges. First, says Colonel Williams, came the handshaking tnok. Stanley’s envoy carried a small electrio battery concealed in his clothes, and so adjusted than whenever he shook the chief’s hand he gave him a squeeze which sent an electric shock through his frame that nearly knocked him down Then he would tell him that he, the white envoy, was strong enough to do all kinds of Samson-like feats m the same way. After that came the burning glass trick. Biting off the end of a cigar carelessly,-Stanley’s envoy would hold up a lens and set fire to the end of his weed by the sun’s rays. He would then tell the chief that in the same manner he had such friendly relations with the sun that if he wished he could get it to burn up any native village he chose to destroy. Then followed the gun trick. The white man here took a percussion-cap gun, tore the end of paper which held the powder to the bullet, and poured the powder and paper into the gun, at the same time slipping the bullet into the sleeve of his right arm. The cap was placed on the nipple of the gun, and the black brother was implored to step off ten yards and shoot at his white brother, to demonstrate that he was a spirit and could not be killed. After much begging the black brother aims the gun at his white brother, pulls the trigger, the gun is discharged, and the white man stoops and takes the bullet from his shoe.