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

“I have waited years for letters, and I have been

taught patience. I can surely afford to wait a few hours longer.

No, tell me the general news: how is the world getting along?

 

“You probably know much already. Do you know that the Suez Canal

is a fact—is opened, and a regular trade carried on between Europe

and India through it?”

 

“I did not hear about the opening of it. Well, that is grand news!

What else?”

 

Shortly I found myself enacting the part of an annual periodical

to him. There was no need of exaggeration of any penny-a-line

news, or of any sensationalism. The world had witnessed and

experienced much the last few years. The Pacific Railroad had been

completed <1869>; Grant had been elected President of the United States;

Egypt had been flooded with savans: the Cretan rebellion had

terminated <1866-1868>; a Spanish revolution had driven Isabella

from the throne of Spain, and a Regent had been appointed: General

Prim was assassinated; a Castelar had electrified Europe with his

advanced ideas upon the liberty of worship; Prussia had humbled Denmark,

and annexed Schleswig-Holstein <1864>, and her armies were now around

Paris; the “Man of Destiny” was a prisoner at Wilhelmshohe;

the Queen of Fashion and the Empress of the French was a fugitive;

and the child born in the purple had lost for ever the Imperial

crown intended for his head; the Napoleon dynasty was extinguished

by the Prussians, Bismarck and Von Moltke; and France, the proud

empire, was humbled to the dust.

 

What could a man have exaggerated of these facts? What a budget

of news it was to one who had emerged from the depths of the

primeval forests of Manyuema! The reflection of the dazzling

light of civilisation was cast on him while Livingstone was thus

listening in wonder to one of the most exciting pages of history

ever repeated. How the puny deeds of barbarism paled before

these! Who could tell under what new phases of uneasy life Europe

was labouring even then, while we, two of her lonely children,

rehearsed the tale of her late woes and glories? More worthily,

perhaps, had the tongue of a lyric Demodocus recounted them; but,

in the absence of the poet, the newspaper correspondent performed

his part as well and truthfully as he could.

 

Not long after the Arabs had departed, a dishful of hot hashed-meat

cakes was sent to us by Sayd bin Majid, and a curried chicken was

received from Mohammed bin Sali, and Moeni Kheri sent a dishful of

stewed goat-meat and rice; and thus presents of food came in

succession, and as fast as they were brought we set to. I had a

healthy, stubborn digestion—the exercise I had taken had put it in

prime order; but Livingstone—he had been complaining that he had

no appetite, that his stomach refused everything but a cup of tea

now and then—he ate also—ate like a vigorous, hungry man; and,

as he vied with me in demolishing the pancakes, he kept repeating,

“You have brought me new life. You have brought me new life.”

 

“Oh, by George!” I said, “I have forgotten something. Hasten,

Selim, and bring that bottle; you know which and bring me the silver

goblets. I brought this bottle on purpose for this event, which

I hoped would come to pass, though often it seemed useless to expect

it.”

 

Selim knew where the bottle was, and he soon returned with it—a

bottle of Sillery champagne; and, handing the Doctor a silver

goblet brimful of the exhilarating wine, and pouring a small

quantity into my own, I said,

 

“Dr. Livingstone, to your very good health, sir.”

 

“And to yours!” he responded, smilingly.

 

And the champagne I had treasured for this happy meeting was drunk

with hearty good wishes to each other.

 

But we kept on talking and talking, and prepared food was being

brought to us all that afternoon; and we kept on eating each time

it was brought, until I had eaten even to repletion, and the Doctor

was obliged to confess that he had eaten enough. Still, Halimah,

the female cook of the Doctor’s establishment, was in a state of

the greatest excitement. She had been protruding her head out of

the cookhouse to make sure that there were really two white men

sitting down in the veranda, when there used to be only one, who

would not, because he could not, eat anything; and she had been

considerably exercised in her mind about this fact. She was

afraid the Doctor did not properly appreciate her culinary

abilities; but now she was amazed at the extraordinary quantity

of food eaten, and she was in a state of delightful excitement.

We could hear her tongue rolling off a tremendous volume of

clatter to the wondering crowds who halted before the kitchen

to hear the current of news with which she edified them. Poor,

faithful soul! While we listened to the noise of her furious

gossip, the Doctor related her faithful services, and the

terrible anxiety she evinced when the guns first announced

the arrival of another white man in Ujiji; how she had been

flying about in a state cf the utmost excitement, from the kitchen

into his presence, and out again into the square, asking all sorts

of questions; how she was in despair at the scantiness of the

general larder and treasury of the strange household; how she

was anxious to make up for their poverty by a grand appearance—

to make up a sort of Barmecide feast to welcome the white man.

“Why,” said she, “is he not one of us? Does he not bring plenty

of cloth and beads? Talk about the Arabs! Who are they that

they should be compared to white men? Arabs, indeed!”

 

The Doctor and I conversed upon many things, especially upon his

own immediate troubles, and his disappointments, upon his arrival

in Ujiji, when told that all his goods had been sold, and he was

reduced to poverty. He had but twenty cloths or so left of the

stock he had deposited with the man called Sherif, the half-caste

drunken tailor, who was sent by the Consul in charge of the goods.

Besides which he had been suffering from an attack of dysentery,

and his condition was most deplorable. He was but little improved

on this day, though he had eaten well, and already began to feel

stronger and better.

 

This day, like all others, though big with happiness to me, at last

was fading away. While sitting with our faces looking to the east,

as Livingstone had been sitting for days preceding my arrival, we

noted the dark shadows which crept up above the grove of palms

beyond the village, and above the rampart of mountains which we had

crossed that day, now looming through the fast approaching

darkness; and we listened, with our hearts full of gratitude to

the Great Giver of Good and Dispenser of all Happiness, to the

sonorous thunder of the surf of the Tanganika, and to the chorus

which the night insects sang. Hours passed, and we were still

sitting there with our minds busy upon the day’s remarkable events,

when I remembered that the traveller had not yet read his letters.

 

“Doctor,” I said, “you had better read your letters. I will not

keep you up any longer.”

 

“Yes,” he answered, “it is getting late; and I will go and read

my friends’ letters. Good-night, and God bless you.”

 

“Good-night, my dear Doctor; and let me hope that your news will

be such as you desire.”

 

I have now related, by means of my Diary, “How I found Livingstone,”

as recorded on the evening of that great day. I have been averse

to reduce it by process of excision and suppression, into a mere

cold narrative, because, by so doing, I would be unable to record

what feelings swayed each member of the Expedition as well as myself

during the days preceding the discovery of the lost traveller, and

more especially the day it was the good fortune of both Livingstone

and myself to clasp each other’s hands in the strong friendship

which was born in that hour we thus strangely met. The aged

traveller, though cruelly belied, contrary to all previous expectation,

received me as a friend; and the cordial warmth with which he accepted

my greeting; the courtesy with which he tendered to me a shelter

in his own house; the simple candour of his conversation; graced

by unusual modesty of manner, and meekness of spirit, wrought in me

such a violent reaction in his favor, that when the parting

“good-night” was uttered, I felt a momentary vague fear lest the

fulness of joy which I experienced that evening would be diminished

by some envious fate, before the morrow’s sun should rise above Ujiji.

 

CHAPTER XII. INTERCOURSE WITH LIVINGSTONE AT UJIJI—

LIVINGSTONE’S OWN STORY OF HIS JOURNEYS,

HIS TROUBLES, AND DISAPPOINTMENTS.

 

“If there is love between us, inconceivably delicious, and

profitable will our intercourse be; if not, your time is lost,

and you will only annoy me. I shall seem to you stupid, and the

reputation I have false. All my good is magnetic, and I educate

not by lessons, but by going about my business.”—Emerson’s

‘Representative Men’.

 

I woke up early next morning with a sudden start. The room was

strange! It was a house, and not my tent! Ah, yes! I recollected

I had discovered Livingstone, and I was in his house. I listened,

that the knowledge dawning on me might be confirmed by the sound

of his voice. I heard nothing but the sullen roar of the surf.

 

I lay quietly in bed. Bed! Yes, it was a primitive four-poster,

with the leaves of the palm-tree spread upon it instead of down,

and horsehair and my bearskin spread over this serving me in place

of linen. I began to put myself under rigid mental cross-examination,

and to an analyzation of my position.

 

“What was I sent for?”

 

“To find Livingstone.”

 

“Have you found him?”

 

“Yes, of course; am I not in his house? Whose compass is that

hanging on a peg there? Whose clothes, whose boots, are those?

Who reads those newspapers, those ‘Saturday Reviews’ and numbers

of ‘Punch’ lying on the floor?”

 

“Well, what are you going to do now?”

 

“I shall tell him this morning who sent me, and what brought me

here. I will then ask him to write a letter to Mr. Bennett, and

to give what news he can spare. I did not come here to rob him of

his news. Sufficient for me is it that I have found him. It is a

complete success so far. But it will be a greater one if he gives

me letters for Mr. Bennett, and an acknowledgment that he has seen

me.”

 

“Do you think he will do so?”

 

“Why not? I have come here to do him a service. He has no goods.

I have. He has no men with him. I have. If I do a friendly part

by him, will he not do a friendly part by me? What says the poet?—

 

Nor hope to find

A friend, but who has found a friend in thee.

All like the purchase; few the price will pay

And this makes friends such wonders here below.

 

I have paid the purchase, by coming so far to do him a service.

But I think, from what I have seen of him last night, that he is

not such a niggard and misanthrope as I was led to believe. He

exhibited considerable emotion, despite the monosyllabic greeting,

when he shook my hand. If he were a man to feel annoyance at any

person coming after him, he would