How I Found Livingstone, Henry M. Stanley [best fantasy books to read txt] 📗

know you belong to him, since you bought from

us yesterday two doti worth of meat?’ ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I am

running away; I want to get to Simbamwenni. If you will take me

there, I will give you a doti.’ We said to him then, `Come into

our house, and we will talk it over quietly. When he was in our

house in an inner room, we locked him up, and went out again to

the watch; but leaving word with the women to look out for him.

We knew that, if you wanted him, you would send askari (soldiers)

after him. We had but lit our pipes when we saw two men armed

with short guns, and having no loads, coming along the road,

looking now and then on the ground, as if they were looking at

footmarks. We knew them to be the men we were expecting; so we

hailed them, and said, `Masters, what are ye looking for?’

They said, ‘We are looking for a man who has deserted our master.

Here are his footsteps. If you have been long in your hut you

must have seen him, Can you tell us where he is?’ We said,

‘yes; he is in our house. If you will come with us, we will

give him up to you; but your master must give us something for

catching him.’”

 

As Kigondo had promised to deliver Kingaru up, there remained

nothing further to do for Uledi and Sarmean but to take charge of

their prisoner, and bring him and his captors to my camp on the

western bank of the Makata. Kingaru received two dozen lashes,

and was chained; his captor a doti, besides five khete of red

coral beads for his wife.

 

That down-pour of rain which visited us the day we crossed the

Makata proved the last of the Masika season. As the first rainfall

which we had experienced occurred on the 23rd March, and the last

on the 30th April, its duration was thirty-nine days. The seers of

Bagamoyo had delivered their vaticinations concerning this same

Masika with solemnity. “For forty days,” said they, “rain would

fall incessantly;” whereas we had but experienced eighteen days’

rain. Nevertheless, we were glad that it was over, for we were

tired of stopping day after day to dry the bales and grease the

tools and ironware, and of seeing all things of cloth and leather

rot visibly before our eyes.

 

The 1st of May found us struggling through the mire and water

of the Makata with a caravan bodily sick, from the exertion and

fatigue of crossing so many rivers and wading through marshes.

Shaw was still suffering from his first mukunguru; Zaidi, a

soldier, was critically ill with the small-pox; the kichuma-chuma,

“little irons,” had hold of Bombay across the chest, rendering

him the most useless of the unserviceables; Mabruk Saleem, a

youth of lusty frame, following the example of Bombay, laid

himself down on the marshy ground, professing his total inability

to breast the Makata swamp; Abdul Kader, the Hindi tailor and

adventurer—the weakliest of mortal bodies—was ever ailing for

lack of “force,” as he expressed it in French, i.e. “strength,”

ever indisposed to work, shiftless, mock-sick, but ever hungry.

“Oh! God,” was the cry of my tired soul, “were all the men of

my Expedition like this man I should be compelled to return.

Solomon was. wise perhaps from inspiration, perhaps from

observation; I was becoming wise by experience, and I was

compelled to observe that when mud and wet sapped the physical

energy of the lazily-inclined, a dog-whip became their backs,

restoring them to a sound—sometimes to an extravagant activity.

 

For thirty miles from our camp was the Makata plain an extensive

swamp. The water was on an average one foot in depth; in some

places we plunged into holes three, four, and even five feet deep.

Plash, splash, plash, splash, were the only sounds we heard from

the commencement of the march until we found the bomas occupying

the only dry spots along the line of march. This kind of work

continued for two days, until we came in sight of the Rudewa river,

another powerful stream with banks brimful of rushing rain-water.

Crossing a branch of the Rudewa, and emerging from the dank reedy

grass crowding the western bank, the view consisted of an immense

sheet of water topped by clumps of grass tufts and foliage of

thinly scattered trees, bounded ten or twelve miles off by the

eastern front of the Usagara mountain range. The acme of

discomfort and vexation was realized on the five-mile march from

the Rudewa branch. As myself and the Wangwana appeared with the

loaded donkeys, the pagazis were observed huddled on a mound. When

asked if the mound was the camp, they replied “No.” “Why, then,

do you stop here?”—Ugh! water plenty!!” “One drew a line across

his loins to indicate the depth of water before us, another drew a

line across his chest, another across his throat another held his

hand over his head, by which he meant that we should have to swim.

Swim five miles through a reedy marsh! It was impossible; it was

also impossible that such varied accounts could all be correct.

Without hesitation, therefore, I ordered the Wangwana to proceed

with the animals. After three hours of splashing through four

feet of water we reached dry land, and had traversed the swamp

of Makata. But not without the swamp with its horrors having

left a durable impression upon our minds; no one was disposed

to forget its fatigues, nor the nausea of travel which it almost

engendered. Subsequently, we had to remember its passage still

more vividly, and to regret that we had undertaken the journey

during the Masika season, when the animals died from this date

by twos and threes, almost every day, until but five sickly

worn-out beasts remained; when the Wangwana, soldiers, and

pagazis sickened of diseases innumerable; when I myself was

finally compelled to lie a-bed with an attack of acute dysentery

which brought me to the verge of the grave. I suffered more,

perhaps, than I might have done had I taken the proper medicine,

but my over-confidence in that compound, called “Collis Brown’s

Chlorodyne,” delayed the cure which ultimately resulted from

a judicious use of Dover’s powder. In no one single case of

diarrhoea or acute dysentery had this “Chlorodyne,” about which

so much has been said, and written, any effect of lessening the

attack whatever, though I used three bottles. To the dysentery

contracted during, the transit of the Makata swamp, only two

fell victims, and those were a pagazi and my poor little dog

“Omar,” my companion from India.

 

The only tree of any prominence in the Makata valley was the

Palmyra palm (Borassus flabelliformis), and this grew in some

places in numbers sufficient to be called a grove; the fruit was

not ripe while we passed, otherwise we might have enjoyed it as a

novelty. The other vegetation consisted of the several species of

thorn bush, and the graceful parachute-topped and ever-green

mimosa.

 

The 4th of May we were ascending a gentle slope towards the

important village of Rehenneko, the first village near to which we

encamped in Usagara. It lay at the foot of the mountain, and its

plenitude and mountain air promised us comfort and health. It was

a square, compact village, surrounded by a thick wall of mud,

enclosing cone-topped huts, roofed with bamboo and holcus-stalks;

and contained a population of about a thousand souls. It has

several wealthy and populous neighbours, whose inhabitants are

independent enough in their manner, but not unpleasantly so.

The streams are of the purest water, fresh, and pellucid as crystal,

bubbling over round pebbles and clean gravel, with a music

delightful to hear to the traveller in search of such a sweetly

potable element.

 

The bamboo grows to serviceable size in the neighbourhood of

Rehenneko, strong enough for tent and banghy poles; and in

numbers sufficient to supply an army. The mountain slopes are

densely wooded with trees that might supply very good timber for

building purposes.

 

We rested four days at this pleasant spot, to recruit ourselves,

and to allow the sick and feeble time to recover a little before

testing their ability in the ascent of the Usagara mountains.

 

The 8th of May saw us with our terribly jaded men and animals

winding up the steep slopes of the first line of hills; gaining

the summit of which we obtained a view remarkably grand, which

exhibited as in a master picture the broad valley of the Makata,

with its swift streams like so many cords of silver, as the

sunshine played on the unshadowed reaches of water, with its

thousands of graceful palms adding not a little to the charm of the

scene, with the great wall of the Uruguru and Uswapanga mountains

dimly blue, but sublime in their loftiness and immensity—forming a

fit background to such an extensive, far-embracing prospect.

 

Turning our faces west, we found ourselves in a mountain world,

fold rising above fold, peak behind peak, cone jostling cone; away

to the north, to the west, to the south, the mountain tops rolled

like so many vitrified waves; not one adust or arid spot was

visible in all this scene. The diorama had no sudden changes or

striking contrasts, for a universal forest of green trees clothed

every peak, cone, and summit.

 

To the men this first day’s march through the mountain region of

Usagara was an agreeable interlude after the successive journey

over the flats and heavy undulations of the maritime region, but

to the loaded and enfeebled animals it was most trying. We were

minus two by the time we had arrived at our camp, but seven miles

from Rehenneko, our first instalment of the debt we owed to Makata.

Water, sweet and clear, was abundant in the deep hollows of the

mountains, flowing sometimes over beds of solid granite, sometimes

over a rich red sandstone, whose soft substance was soon penetrated

by the aqueous element, and whose particles were swept away

constantly to enrich the valley below; and in other ravines it

dashed,, and roared, miniature thunder, as it leaped over granite

boulders and quartz rock.

 

The 9th of May, after another such an up-and-down course, ascending

hills and descending into the twilight depths of deepening

valleys, we came suddenly upon the Mukondokwa, and its narrow

pent-up valley crowded with rank reedy grass, cane, and thorny

bushes; and rugged tamarisk which grappled for existence with

monster convolvuli, winding their coils around their trunks with

such tenacity and strength that the tamarisk seemed grown

but for their support.

 

The valley was barely a quarter of a mile broad in some places—

at others it widened to about a mile. The hills on either side

shot up into precipitous slopes, clothed ,with mimosa, acacia,

and tamarisk, enclosing a river and valley whose curves and

folds were as various as a serpent’s.

 

Shortly after debouching into the Mukondokwa valley, we struck the

road traversed by Captains Buxton and Speke in 1857, between Mbumi

and Kadetamare (the latter place should be called Misonghi,

Kadetamare being but the name of a chief). After following the

left bank of the Mukondokwa, during which our route diverged to

every point from south-east to west, north and northeast, for

about an hour, we came to the ford. Beyond the ford, a short

half-hour’s march, we came to Kiora.

 

At this filthy village of Kiora, which was well-grounded with

goat-dung, and peopled with a wonderful number of children for a

hamlet that did not number twenty families, with a hot sun pouring

on the limited open space, with a fury that exceeded 128 degrees

Fahrenheit; which swarmed with flies and insects of known and

unknown species; I found,