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

Nile by this, by tracing it to its connection

with either Baker’s Lake, or Petherick’s branch of the Nile. If

I had only gone one month further, I could have said, ‘the work

is done.”’

 

Some of these men who had turned the Doctor back from his

interesting discoveries were yet in Ujiji, and had the Government

Enfield rifles in their hands, which they intended to retain until

their wages had been paid to them; but as they had received $60

advance each at Zanzibar from the English Consul, with the

understanding entered into by contract that they should follow

their master wherever he required them to go; and as they had

not only not gone where they were required to proceed with him,

but had baffled and thwarted him, it was preposterous that a few

men should triumph over the Doctor, by keeping the arms given to

him by the Bombay Government. I had listened to the Arab

sheikhs, friends of the Doctor, advising them in mild tones to give

them up; I had witnessed the mutineer’s stubbornness; and it was

then, on the burzani of Sayd bin Majid’s house, that I took

advantage to open my mind on the subject, not only for the

benefit of the stubborn slaves, but also for the benefit of the

Arabs; and to tell them that it was well that I had found

Livingstone alive, for if they had but injured a hair of his head,

I should have gone back to the coast, to return with a party which

would enable me to avenge him. I had been waiting to see

Livingstone’s guns returned to him every day, hoping that I should

not have to use force; but when a month or more had elapsed, and

still the arms had not been returned, I applied for permission to

take them, which was granted. Susi, the gallant servant of Dr.

Livingstone, was immediately despatched with about a dozen armed

men to recover them, and in a few minutes we had possession of them

without further trouble.

 

The Doctor had resolved to accompany me to Unyanyembe, in order to

meet his stores, which had been forwarded from Zanzibar, November

1st, 1870. As I had charge of the escort, it was my duty to

study well the several routes to Unyanyembe from Ujiji. I was

sufficiently aware of the difficulties and the responsibilities

attached to me while escorting such a man. Besides, my own

personal feelings were involved in the case. If Livingstone

came to any harm through any indiscretion of mine while he was

with me, it would immediately be said, “Ah! had he not

accompanied Stanley, he would have been alive now.”

 

I took out my chart—the one I had made myself—in which I had

perfect faith, and I sketched out a route which would enable us

to reach Unyanyembe without paying a single cloth as tribute,

and without encountering any worse thing than a jungle, by which

we could avoid all the Wavinza and the plundering Wahha. This

peaceable, secure route led by water, south, along the coast of

Ukaranga and Ukawendi, to Cape Tongwe. Arriving at Cape Tongwe,

I should be opposite the village of Itaga, Sultan Imrera, in the

district of Rusawa of Ukawendi; after which we should strike my

old road, which I had traversed from Unyanyembe, when bound for

Ujiji. I explained it to the Doctor, and he instantly recognised

its feasibility and security; and if I struck Imrera, as I

proposed to do, it would demonstrate whether my chart was correct

or not.

 

We arrived at Ujiji from our tour of discovery, north of the

Tanganika, December 13th; and from this date the Doctor commenced

writing his letters to his numerous friends, and to copy into his

mammoth Letts’s Diary, from his field books, the valuable

information he had acquired during his years of travel south and

west of the Tanganika. I sketched him while sitting in his

shirt-sleeves in the veranda, with his Letts’s Diary on his knee;

and the likeness on the frontispiece is an admirable portrait of

him, because the artist who has assisted me, has with an intuitive

eye, seen the defects in my own sketch; and by this I am enabled

to restore him to the reader’s view exactly as I saw him—as he

pondered on what he had witnessed during his long marches.

 

Soon after my arrival at Ujiji, he had rushed to his paper, and

indited a letter to James Gordon Bennett, Esq., wherein he

recorded his thanks; and after he had finished it, I asked him

to add the word “Junior” to it, as it was young Mr. Bennett to

whom he was indebted. I thought the letter admirable, and

requested the Doctor not to add another word to it. The feelings

of his heart had found expression in the grateful words he had

written; and if I judged Mr. Bennett rightly, I knew he would

be satisfied with it. For it was not the geographical news he

cared so much about, as the grand fact of Livingstone’s being

alive or dead.

 

In this latter part of December he was writing letters to his

children, to Sir Roderick Murchison, and to Lord Granville.

He had intended to have written to the Earl of Clarendon, but

it was my sad task to inform him of the death of that

distinguished nobleman.

 

In the meantime I was preparing the Expedition for its return

march to Unyanyembe, apportioning the bales and luggage, the

Doctor’s large tin boxes, and my own among my own men; for I

had resolved upon permitting the Doctor’s men to march as

passengers, because they had so nobly performed their duty

to their master.

 

Sayd bin Majid had left, December 12, for Mirambo’s country,

to give the black Bonaparte battle for the murder of his son

Soud in the forests of Wilyankuru; and he had taken with him 300

stout fellows, armed with guns, from Ujiji. The stout-hearted

old chief was burning with rage and resentment, and a fine warlike

figure he made with his 7-foot gun. Before we had departed for

the Rusizi, I had wished him bon voyage, and expressed a hope

that he would rid the Central African world of the tyrant Mirambo.

 

On the 20th of December the rainy season was ushered in with heavy

rain, thunder, lightning, and hail; the thermometer falling to

66 degrees Fahrenheit. The evening of this day I was attacked with

urticaria, or “nettle rash,” for the third time since arriving in

Africa, and I suffered a woeful sickness; and it was the forerunner

of an attack of remittent fever, which lasted four days. This is

the malignant type, which has proved fatal to so many African

travellers on the Zambezi, the White Nile, the Congo, and the Niger.

The head throbs, the pulses bound, the heart struggles painfully,

while the sufferer’s thoughts are in a strange world, such only as

a sick man’s fancy can create. This was the fourth attack of

fever since the day I met Livingstone. The excitement of the

march, and the high hope which my mind constantly nourished,

had kept my body almost invincible against an attack of fever

while advancing towards Ujiji; but two weeks after the great event

had transpired my energies were relaxed, my mind was perfectly

tranquil, and I became a victim.

 

Christmas came, and the Doctor and I had resolved upon the blessed

and time-honoured day being kept as we keep it in Anglo-Saxon

lands, with a feast such as Ujiji could furnish us. The fever had

quite gone from me the night before, and on Christmas morning,

though exceedingly weak, I was up and dressed, and lecturing

Ferajji, the cook, upon the importance of this day to white men,

and endeavouring to instil into the mind of the sleek and pampered

animal some cunning secrets of the culinary art. Fat broad-tailed

sheep, goats, zogga and pombe, eggs, fresh milk, plantains, singwe,

fine cornflour, fish, onions, sweet potatoes, &c., &c., were

procured in the Ujiji market, and from good old Moeni Kheri.

But, alas! for my weakness. Ferajji spoiled the roast, and our

custard was burned—the dinner was a failure. That the fat-brained

rascal escaped a thrashing was due only to my inability to lift

my hands for punishment; but my looks were dreadful and alarming,

and capable of annihilating any one except Ferajji. The stupid,

hard-headed cook only chuckled, and I believe he had the subsequent

gratification of eating the pies, custards, and roast that his

carelessness had spoiled for European palates.

 

Sayd bin Majid, previous to his departure, had left orders that

we should be permitted to use his canoe for our homeward trip,

and Moeni Kheri kindly lent his huge vessel for the same purpose.

The Expedition, now augmented by the Doctor and his five servants,

and their luggage, necessitated the employment of another canoe.

We had our flocks of milch-goats and provision of fat sheep for

the jungle of Ukawendi, the transit of which I was about to attempt.

Good Halimah, Livingstone’s cook, had made ready a sackful of fine

flour, such as she only could prepare in her fond devotion for her

master. Hamoydah, her husband, also had freely given his

assistance and attention to this important article of food.

I purchased a donkey for the Doctor, the only one available in

Ujiji, lest the Doctor might happen to suffer on the long march

from his ancient enemy. In short, we were luxuriously furnished

with food, sheep, goats, cheese, cloth, donkeys, and canoes,

sufficient to convey us a long distance; we needed nothing more.

 

The 27th of December has arrived; it is the day of our departure

from Ujiji. I was probably about to give an eternal farewell to

the port whose name will for ever be sacred in my memory. The

canoes—great lumbering hollow trees—are laden with good things;

the rowers are in their places; the flag of England is hoisted at

the stern of the Doctor’s canoe; the flag of America waves and

rustles joyously above mine; and I cannot look at them without

feeling a certain pride that the two Anglo-Saxon nations are

represented this day on this great inland sea, in the face of

wild nature and barbarism.

 

We are escorted to our boats by the great Arab merchants, by the

admiring children of Unyamwezi, by the freemen of Zanzibar, by

wondering Waguhha and Wajiji, by fierce Warundi, who are on this

day quiet, even sorrowful, that the white men are going-“Whither?”

they all ask.

 

At 8 A.M. we start, freely distributing our farewells as the

Arabs and quidnuncs wave their hands. On the part of one or two

of them there was an attempt to say something sentimental and

affecting, especially by the convicted sinner Mohammed bin Sali;

but though outwardly I manifested no disapprobation of his words,

or of the emphatic way in which he shook my hand, I was not sorry

to see the last of him, after his treachery to Livingstone in

1869. I was earnestly requested to convey to Unyanyembe “Mengi

salaams” to everybody, but had I done so, as he evidently desired

me to do, I would not have been surprised at being regarded by all

as hopelessly imbecile.

 

We pushed off from the clayey bank at the foot of the market-place,

while the land party, unencumbered with luggage, under the

leadership of gigantic Asmani and Bombay, commenced their journey

southward along the shores of the lake. We had arranged to meet them

at the mouth of every river to transport them across from bank to bank.

 

The Doctor being in Sayd bin Majid’s boat, which was a third or so

shorter than the one under my command, took the lead, with the

British flag, held aloft by a bamboo, streaming behind like a

crimson meteor.