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

on the 18th July, 1866,

at a village belonging to a chief of the Wahiyou, situate eight

days’ march south of the Rovuma, and overlooking the watershed

of the Lake Nyassa. The territory lying between the Rovuma River

and this Wahiyou village was an uninhabited wilderness, during

the transit of which Livingstone and his expedition suffered

considerably from hunger and desertion of men.

 

Early in August, 1866, the Doctor came to the country of Mponda,

a chief who dwelt near the Lake Nyassa. On the road thither, two

of the liberated slaves deserted him. Here also, Wekotani, a

protege of the Doctor, insisted upon his discharge, alleging as

an excuse—an excuse which the Doctor subsequently found to be

untrue—that he had found his brother. He also stated that his

family lived on the east side of the Nyassa Lake. He further

stated that Mponda’s favourite wife was his sister. Perceiving

that Wekotani was unwilling to go with him further, the Doctor

took him to Mponda, who now saw and heard of him for the first

time, and, having furnished the ungrateful boy with enough cloth

and beads to keep him until his “big brother” should call for him,

left him with the chief, after first assuring himself that he

would receive honourable treatment from him. The Doctor also

gave Wekotanti writing-paper—as he could read and write, being

accomplishments acquired at Bombay, where he had been put to

school—so that, should he at any time feel disposed, he might

write to his English friends, or to himself. The Doctor further

enjoined him not to join in any of the slave raids usually made

by his countrymen, the men of Nyassa, on their neighbours. Upon

finding that his application for a discharge was successful,

Wekotani endeavoured to induce Chumah, another protege of the

Doctor’s, and a companion, or chum, of Wekotani, to leave the

Doctor’s service and proceed with him, promising, as a bribe,

a wife and plenty of pombe from his “big brother.” Chumah, upon

referring the matter to the Doctor, was advised not to go, as he

(the Doctor) strongly suspected that Wekotani wanted only to make

him his slave. Chumah wisely withdrew from his tempter. From

Mponda’s, the Doctor proceeded to the heel of the Nyassa, to the

village of a Babisa chief, who required medicine for a skin

disease. With his usual kindness, he stayed at this chief’s

village to treat his malady.

 

While here, a half-caste Arab arrived from the western shore of the

lake, and reported that he had been plundered by a band of Mazitu,

at a place which the Doctor and Musa, chief of the Johanna men,

were very well aware was at least 150 miles north-north-west of

where they were then stopping. Musa, however, for his own reasons

—which will appear presently—eagerly listened to the Arab’s tale,

and gave full credence to it. Having well digested its horrible

details, he came to the Doctor to give him the full benefit of what

he had heard with such willing ears. The traveller patiently

listened to the narrative, which lost nothing of its portentous

significance through Musa’s relation, and then asked Musa if he

believed it. “Yes,” answered Musa, readily; “he tell me true,

true. I ask him good, and he tell me true, true.” The Doctor,

however, said he did not believe it, for the Mazitu would not have

been satisfied with merely plundering a man, they would have

murdered him; but suggested, in order to allay the fears of his

Moslem subordinate, that they should both proceed to the chief

with whom they were staying, who, being a sensible man, would be

able to advise them as to the probability or improbability of the

tale being correct. Together, they proceeded to the Babisa chief,

who, when he had heard the Arab’s story, unhesitatingly denounced

the Arab as a liar, and his story without the least foundation in

fact; giving as a reason that, if the Mazitu had been lately in

that vicinity, he should have heard of it soon enough.

 

But Musa broke out with “No, no, Doctor; no, no, no; I no want to

go to Mazitu. I no want Mazitu to kill me. I want to see my

father, my mother, my child, in Johanna. I want no Mazitu.”

These are Musa’s words ipsissima verba.

 

To which the Doctor replied, “I don’t want the Mazitu to kill me

either; but, as you are afraid of them, I promise to go straight

west until we get far past the beat of the Mazitu.”

 

Musa was not satisfied, but kept moaning and sorrowing, saying,

“If we had two hundred guns with us I would go; but our small

party of men they will attack by night, and kill all.”

 

The Doctor repeated his promise, “But I will not go near them;

I will go west.”

 

As soon as he turned his face westward, Musa and the Johanna men

ran away in a body.

 

The Doctor says, in commenting upon Musa’s conduct, that he felt

strongly tempted to shoot Musa and another ringleader, but was,

nevertheless, glad that he did not soil his hands with their vile

blood. A day or two afterwards, another of his men—Simon Price by

name—came to the Doctor with the same tale about the Mazitu, but,

compelled by the scant number of his people to repress all such

tendencies to desertion and faint-heartedness, the Doctor silenced

him at once, and sternly forbade him to utter the name of the

Mazitu any more.

 

Had the natives not assisted him, he must have despaired of ever

being able to penetrate the wild and unexplored interior which he

was now about to tread. “Fortunately,” as the Doctor says with

unction, “I was in a country now, after leaving the shores of

Nyassa, which the foot of the slave-trader has not trod; it was a

new and virgin land, and of course, as I have always found in such

cases, the natives were really good and hospitable, and for very

small portions of cloth my baggage was conveyed from village to

village by them.” In many other ways the traveller, in his

extremity, was kindly treated by the yet unsophisticated and

innocent natives.

 

On leaving this hospitable region in the early part of December,

1866, the Doctor entered a country where the Mazitu had exercised

their customary marauding propensities. The land was swept clean

of provisions and cattle, and the people had emigrated to other

countries, beyond the bounds of those ferocious plunderers.

Again the Expedition was besieged by pinching hunger from which

they suffered; they had recourse to the wild fruits which some

parts of the country furnished. At intervals the condition of

the hard-pressed band was made worse by the heartless desertion

of some of its members, who more than once departed with the

Doctor’s personal kit, changes of clothes, linen, &c. With more

or less misfortunes constantly dogging his footsteps, he traversed

in safety the countries of the Babisa, Bobemba, Barungu, Ba-ulungu,

and Lunda.

 

In the country of Lunda lives the famous Cazembe, who was first

made known to Europeans by Dr. Lacerda, the Portuguese traveller.

Cazembe is a most intelligent prince; he is a tall, stalwart man,

who wears a peculiar kind of dress, made of crimson print, in the

form of a prodigious kilt. In this state dress, King Cazembe

received Dr. Livingstone, surrounded by his chiefs and body-guards.

A chief, who had been deputed by the King and elders to discover

all about the white man, then stood up before the assembly, and

in a loud voice gave the result of the inquiry he had instituted.

He had heard that the white man had come to look for waters,

for rivers, and seas; though he could not understand what the

white man could want with such things, he had no doubt that the

object was good. Then Cazembe asked what the Doctor proposed

doing, and where he thought of going. The Doctor replied that

he had thought of proceeding south, as he had heard of lakes

and rivers being in that direction. Cazembe asked, “What can you

want to go there for? The water is close here. There is plenty

of large water in this neighbourhood.” Before breaking up the

assembly, Cazembe gave orders to let the white man go where he

would through his country undisturbed and unmolested. He was the

first Englishman he had seen, he said, and he liked him.

 

Shortly after his introduction to the King, the Queen entered the

large house, surrounded by a body-guard of Amazons with spears.

She was a fine, tall, handsome young woman, and evidently thought

she was about to make an impression upon the rustic white man, for

she had clothed herself after a most royal fashion, and was armed

with a ponderous spear. But her appearance—so different from what

the Doctor had imagined—caused him to laugh, which entirely

spoiled the effect intended; for the laugh of the Doctor was so

contagious, that she herself was the first to imitate it, and the

Amazons, courtier-like, followed suit. Much disconcerted by this,

the Queen ran back, followed by her obedient damsels—a retreat

most undignified and unqueenlike, compared with her majestic advent

into the Doctor’s presence. But Livingstone will have much to say

about his reception at this court, and about this interesting King

and Queen; and who can so well relate the scenes he witnessed, and

which belong exclusively to him, as he himself?

 

Soon after his arrival in the country of Lunda, or Londa, and

before he had entered the district ruled over by Cazembe, he had

crossed a river called the Chambezi, which was quite an important

stream. The similarity of the name with that large and noble

river south, which will be for ever connected with his name, misled

Livingstone at that time, and he, accordingly, did not pay to it

the attention it deserved, believing that the Chambezi was but the

headwaters of the Zambezi, and consequently had no bearing or

connection with the sources of the river of Egypt, of which he was

in search. His fault was in relying too implicitly upon the

correctness of Portuguese information. This error it cost him

many months of tedious labour and travel to rectify.

 

From the beginning of 1867—the time of his arrival at Cazembe’s—

till the middle of March, 1869—the time of his arrival at Ujiji—

he was mostly engaged in correcting the errors and misrepresentations

of the Portuguese travellers. The Portuguese, in speaking of the

River Chambezi, invariably spoke of it as “our own Zambezi,”—

that is, the Zambezi which flows through the Portuguese

possessions of the Mozambique. “In going to Cazembe from

Nyassa,” said they, “you will cross our own Zambezi.” Such

positive and reiterated information—given not only orally, but

in their books and maps—was naturally confusing. When the Doctor

perceived that what he saw and what they described were at

variance, out of a sincere wish to be correct, and lest he might

have been mistaken himself, he started to retravel the ground he

had travelled before. Over and over again he traversed the several

countries watered by the several rivers of the complicated water

system, like an uneasy spirit. Over and over again he asked the

same questions from the different peoples he met, until he was

obliged to desist, lest they might say, “The man is mad; he has

got water on the brain!”

 

But his travels and tedious labours in Lunda and the adjacent

countries have established beyond doubt—first, that the Chambezi

is a totally distinct river from the Zambezi of the Portuguese;

and, secondly, that the Chambezi, starting from about latitude

11 degrees south, is no other than the most southerly feeder of

the great Nile; thus giving that famous river a length of over

2,000 miles of direct latitude; making