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

as I had been previously informed, the

third caravan, which had started out of Bagamoyo so well fitted

and supplied. The leader, who was no other than the white man

Farquhar, was sick-a-bed with swollen legs (Bright’s disease),

unable to move.

 

As he heard my voice, Farquhar staggered out of his tent, so

changed from my spruce mate who started from Bagamoyo, that I

hardly knew him at first. His legs were ponderous, elephantine,

since his leg-illness was of elephantiasis, or dropsy. His face

was of a deathly pallor, for he had not been out of his tent for

two weeks.

 

A breezy hill, overlooking the village of Kiora, was chosen by me

for my camping-ground, and as soon as the tents were pitched, the

animals attended to, and a boma made of thorn bushes, Farquhar was

carried up by four men into my tent. Upon being questioned as to

the cause of his illness, he said he did not know what had caused

it. He had no pain, he thought, anywhere. I asked, “Do you not

sometimes feel pain on the right side?”—“Yes, I think I do; but

I don’t know.”—” Nor over the left nipple sometimes—a quick

throbbing, with a shortness of breath?”—” Yes, I think I have.

I know I breathe quick sometimes.” He said his only trouble was

in the legs, which were swollen to an immense size. Though he

had a sound appetite, he yet felt weak in the legs.

 

From the scant information of the disease and its peculiarities,

as given by Farquhar himself, I could only make out, by studying

a little medical book I had with me, that “a swelling of the legs,

and sometimes of the body, might result from either heart, liver,

or kidney disease.” But I did not know to what to ascribe the

disease, unless it was to elephantiasis—a disease most common in

Zanzibar; nor did I know how to treat it in a man who, could not

tell me whether he felt pain in his head or in his back, in his

feet or in his chest.

 

It was therefore fortunate for me that I overtook him at Kiora;

though he was about to prove a sore incumbrance to me, for he was

not able to walk, and the donkey-carriage, after the rough

experience of the Makata valley, was failing. I could not possibly

leave him at Kiora, death would soon overtake him there; but how

long I could convey a man in such a state, through a country

devoid of carriage, was a question to be resolved by circumstances.

 

On the 11th of May, the third and fifth caravans, now united,

followed up the right bank of the Mukondokwa, through fields of

holcus, the great Mukondokwa ranges rising in higher altitude as

we proceeded west, and enfolding us in the narrow river valley round

about. We left Muniyi Usagara on our right, and soon after found

hill-spurs athwart our road, which we were obliged to ascend and

descend.

 

A march of eight miles from the ford of Misonghi brought us to

another ford of the Mukondokwa, where we bid a long adieu to

Burton’s road, which led up to the Goma pass and up the steep

slopes of Rubeho. Our road left the right bank and followed the

left over a country quite the reverse of the Mukondokwa Valley,

enclosed between mountain ranges. Fertile soils and spontaneous

vegetation, reeking with miasma and overpowering from their odour,

we had exchanged for a drouthy wilderness of aloetic and

cactaceous plants, where the kolquall and several thorn bushes grew

paramount.

 

Instead of the tree-clad heights, slopes and valleys, instead of

cultivated fields, we saw now the confines of uninhabited wilderness.

The hill-tops were bared of their bosky crowns, and revealed their

rocky natures bleached white by rain and sun. Nguru Peak, the

loftiest of the Usagara cones, stood right shoulderwards of us

as we ascended the long slope of dun-grey soil which rose beyond

the brown Mukondokwa on the left.

 

At the distance of two miles from the last ford, we found a neat

khambi, situated close to the river, where it first broke into a

furious rapid.

 

The next morning the caravan was preparing for the march, when

I was informed that the “Bana Mdogo”—little master—Shaw, had not

yet arrived with the cart, and the men in charge of it. Late the

previous night I had despatched one donkey for Shaw, who had said

he was too ill to walk, and another for the load that was on the

cart; and had retired satisfied that they would soon arrive. My

conclusion, when I learned in the morning that the people had not

yet come in, was that Shaw was not aware that for five days we

should have to march through a wilderness totally uninhabited. I

therefore despatched Chowpereh, a Mgwana soldier, with the following

note to him:—“You will, upon receipt of this order pitch the

cart into the nearest ravine, gully, or river, as well as all the

extra pack saddles; and come at once, for God’s sake, for we must

not starve here!”

 

One, two, three, and four hours were passed by me in the utmost

impatience, waiting, but in vain, for Shaw. Having a long march

before us, I could wait no longer, but went to meet his party

myself. About a quarter of mile from the ford I met the van of

the laggards—stout burly Chowpereh—and, O cartmakers, listen!

he carried the cart on his head—wheels, shafts, body, axle,

and all complete; he having found that carrying it was much

easier than drawing it. The sight was such a damper to my regard

for it as an experiment, that the cart was wheeled into the

depths of the tall reeds, and there left. The central figure was

Shaw himself, riding at a gait which seemed to leave it doubtful on

my mind whether he or his animal felt most sleepy. Upon

expostulating with him for keeping the caravan so long waiting when

there was a march on hand, in a most peculiar voice—which he always

assumed when disposed to be ugly-tempered—he said he had done the

best he could; but as I had seen the solemn pace at which he

rode, I felt dubious about his best endeavours; and of course

there was a little scene, but the young European mtongi of an East

African expedition must needs sup with the fellows he has chosen.

 

We arrived at Madete at 4 P.M., minus two donkeys, which had

stretched their weary limbs in death. We had crossed the

Mukondokwa about 3 P.M., and after taking its bearings and course,

I made sure that its rise took place near a group of mountains

about forty miles north by west of Nguru Peak. Our road led

W.N.W., and at this place finally diverged from the river.

 

On the 14th, after a march of seven miles over hills whose

sandstone and granite formation cropped visibly here and there

above the surface, whose stony and dry aspect seemed reflected

in every bush and plant, and having gained an altitude of about

eight hundred feet above the flow of the Mukondokwa, we sighted the

Lake of Ugombo—a grey sheet of water lying directly at the foot

of the hill, from whose summit we gazed at the scene. The view was

neither beautiful nor pretty, but what I should call refreshing;

it afforded a pleasant relief to the eyes fatigued from dwelling on

the bleak country around. Besides, the immediate neighbourhood of

the lake was too tame to call forth any enthusiasm; there were no

grandly swelling mountains, no smiling landscapes—nothing but a

dun-brown peak, about one thousand feet high above the surface of

the lake at its western extremity, from which the lake derived its

name, Ugombo; nothing but a low dun-brown irregular range, running

parallel with its northern shore at the distance of a mile;

nothing but a low plain stretching from its western shore far away

towards the Mpwapwa Mountains and Marenga Mkali, then apparent to

us from our coign of vantage, from which extensive scene of

dun-brownness we were glad to rest our eyes on the quiet grey

water beneath.

 

Descending from the summit of the range, which bounded the lake

east for about four hundred feet, we travelled along the northern

shore. The time occupied in the journey from the eastern to the

western extremity was exactly one hour and thirty minutes.

 

As this side represents its greatest length I conclude that the

lake is three miles long by two miles greatest breadth. The

immediate shores of the lake on all sides, for at least fifty

feet from the water’s edge, is one impassable morass nourishing

rank reeds and rushes, where the hippopotamus’ ponderous form has

crushed into watery trails the soft composition of the morass

as he passes from the lake on his nocturnal excursions; the

lesser animals; such as the “mbogo” (buffalo), the “punda-terra”

(zebra); the ” twiga” (giraffe), the boar, the kudu, the

hyrax or coney and the antelope; come here also to quench

their thirst by night. The surface of the lake swarms with an

astonishing variety of water-fowl; such as black swan, duck,

ibis sacra cranes, pelicans; and soaring above on the look-out

for their prey are fish-eagles and hawks, while the neighbourhood

is resonant with the loud chirps of the guinea-fowls calling for

their young, with the harsh cry of the toucan, the cooing of the

pigeon, and the “to-whit, to-whoo” of the owl. From the long

grass in its vicinity also issue the grating and loud cry of

the florican, woodcock, and grouse.

 

Being obliged to halt here two days, owing to the desertion of the

Hindi cooper Jako with one of my best carbines, I improved the

opportunity of exploring the northern and southern shores of the

lake. At the rocky foot of a low, humpy hill on the northern

side, about fifteen feet above the present surface of the water I

detected in most distinct and definite lines the agency of waves.

From its base could be traced clear to the edge of the dank morass

tiny lines of comminuted shell as plainly marked as the small

particles which lie in rows on a beech after a receding tide.

There is no doubt that the wave-marks on the sandstone might have

been traced much higher by one skilled in geology; it was only

its elementary character that was visible to me. Nor do I

entertain the least doubt, after a two days’ exploration of the

neighbourhood, especially of the low plain at the western end,

that this Lake of Ugombo is but the tail of what was once a large

body of water equal in extent to the Tanganika; and, after

ascending half way up Ugombo Peak, this opinion was confirmed when

I saw the long-depressed line of plain at its base stretching

towards the Mpwapwa Mountains thirty miles off, and thence round

to Marenga Mkali, and covering all that extensive surface of forty

miles in breadth, and an unknown length. A depth of twelve feet

more, I thought, as I gazed upon it, would give the lake a length

of thirty miles, and a breadth of ten. A depth of thirty

feet would increase its length over a hundred miles, and give it a

breadth of fifty, for such was the level nature of the plain that

stretched west of Ugombo, and north of Marenga Mkali. Besides the

water of the lake partook slightly of the bitter nature of the

Matamombo creek, distant fifteen miles, and in a still lesser

degree of that of Marenga Mkali, forty miles off.

 

Towards the end of the first day of our halt the Hindi cooper Jako

arrived in camp, alleging as an excuse, that feeling fatigued he

had fallen asleep in some bushes