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

with a

very earnest request to Capt. Webb that he would procure from

Tarya Topan the introductory letter so long delayed. It was the

last card in my hand.

 

On the third day the Arab returned, bringing with him not only

the letter to Soor Hadji Palloo, but an abundance of good things

from the ever-hospitable house of Mr. Webb. In a very short time

after the receipt of his letter, the eminent young man Soor Hadji

Palloo came to visit me, and informed me he had been requested by

Tarya Topan to hire for me one hundred and forty pagazis to

Unyanyembe in the shortest time possible. This he said would be

very expensive, for there were scores of Arabs and Wasawabili

merchants on the look out for every caravan that came in from the

interior, and they paid 20 doti, or 80 yards of cloth, to each

pagazi. Not willing or able to pay more, many of these merchants

had been waiting as long as six months before they could get their

quota. “If you,” continued he, “desire to depart quickly, you

must pay from 25 to 40 doti, and I can send you off before one

month is ended. “In reply, I said, “Here are my cloths for pagazis

to the amount of $1,750, or 3,500 doti, sufficient to give one

hundred and forty men 25 doti each. The most I am willing to pay

is 25 doti: send one hundred and forty pagazis to Unyanyembe

with my cloth and wire, and I will make your heart glad with the

richest present you have ever received.” With a refreshing naivete,

the “young man” said he did not want any present, he would get

me my quota of pagazis, and then I could tell the “Wasungu” what

a good “young man” he was, and consequently the benefit he would

receive would be an increase of business. He closed his reply

with the astounding remark that he had ten pagazis at his house

already, and if I would be good enough to have four bales of cloth,

two bags of beads, and twenty coils of wire carried to his house,

the pagazis could leave Bagamoyo the next day, under charge of

three soldiers.

 

“For, he remarked, “it is much better and cheaper to send many

small caravans than one large one. Large caravans invite attack,

or are delayed by avaricious chiefs upon the most trivial pretexts,

while small ones pass by without notice.”

 

The bales and the beads were duly carried to Soor Hadji Palloo’s

house, and the day passed with me in mentally congratulating myself

upon my good fortune, in complimenting the young Hindi’s talents

for business, the greatness and influence of Tarya Topan, and the

goodness of Mr. Webb in thus hastening my departure from Bagamoyo.

I mentally vowed a handsome present, and a great puff in my book,

to Soor Hadji Palloo, and it was with a glad heart that I prepared

these soldiers for their march to Unyayembe.

 

The task of preparing the first caravan for the Unyanyembe road

informed me upon several things that have escaped the notice of

my predecessors in East Africa, a timely knowledge of which would

have been of infinite service to me at Zanzibar, in the purchase

and selection of sufficient and proper cloth.

 

The setting out of the first caravan enlightened me also on the

subject of honga, or tribute. Tribute had to be packed by itself,

all of choice cloth; for the chiefs, besides being avaricious, are

also very fastidious. They will not accept the flimsy cloth of the

pagazi, but a royal and exceedingly high-priced dabwani, Ismahili,

Rehani, or a Sohari, or dotis of crimson broad cloth. The tribute

for the first caravan cost $25. Having more than one hundred and

forty pagazis to despatch, this tribute money would finally amount

to $330 in gold, with a minimum of 25c. on each dollar. Ponder on

this, O traveller! I lay bare these facts for your special instruction.

 

But before my first caravan was destined to part company with me,

Soor Hadji Palloo—worthy young man—and I were to come to a

definite understanding about money matters. The morning appointed

for departure Soor Hadji Palloo came to my hut and presented his

bill, with all the gravity of innocence, for supplying the pagazis

with twenty-five doti each as their hire to Unyanyembe, begging

immediate payment in money. Words fail to express the astonishment

I naturally felt, that this sharp-looking young man should so soon

have forgotten the verbal contract entered into between him and

myself the morning previous, which was to the effect that out of

the three thousand doti stored in my tent, and bought expressly

for pagazi hire, each and every man hired for me as carriers from

Bagamoyo to Unyanyembe, should be paid out of the store there in

my tent. when I asked if he remembered the contract, he replied

in the affirmative: his reasons for breaking it so soon were,

that he wished to sell his cloths, not mine, and for his cloths

he should want money, not an exchange. But I gave him to comprehend

that as he was procuring pagazis for me, he was to pay my pagazis

with my cloths; that all the money I expected to pay him, should be

just such a sum I thought adequate for his trouble as my agent,

and that only on those terms should he act for me in this or any

other matter, and that the “Musungu” was not accustomed to eat

his words.

 

The preceding paragraph embodies many more words than are contained

in it. It embodies a dialogue of an hour, an angry altercation

of half-an-hour’s duration, a vow taken on the part of Soor Hadji

Palloo, that if I did not take his cloths he should not touch my

business, many tears, entreaties, woeful penitence, and much else,

all of which were responded to with, “Do as I want you to do, or do

nothing. “Finally came relief, and a happy ending. Soor Hadji

Palloo went away with a bright face, taking with him the three

soldiers’ posho (food), and honga (tribute) for the caravan. Well

for me that it ended so, and that subsequent quarrels of a similar

nature terminated so peaceably, otherwise I doubt whether my

departure from Bagamoyo would have happened so early as it did.

While I am on this theme, and as it really engrossed every moment

of my time at Bagamoyo, I may as well be more explicit regarding

Boor Hadji Palloo and his connection with my business.

 

Soor Hadji Palloo was a smart young man of business, energetic,

quick at mental calculation, and seemed to be born for a successful

salesman. His eyes were never idle; they wandered over every

part of my person, over the tent, the bed, the guns, the clothes,

and having swung clear round, began the silent circle over again.

His fingers were never at rest, they had a fidgety, nervous

action at their tips, constantly in the act of feeling something;

while in the act of talking to me, he would lean over and feel the

texture of the cloth of my trousers, my coat, or my shoes or

socks: then he would feel his own light jamdani shirt or dabwain

loin-cloth, until his eyes casually resting upon a novelty, his

body would lean forward, and his arm was stretched out with the

willing fingers. His jaws also were in perpetual motion, caused by

vile habits he had acquired of chewing betel-nut and lime, and

sometimes tobacco and lime. They gave out a sound similar to that

of a young shoat, in the act of sucking. He was a pious

Mohammedan, and observed the external courtesies and ceremonies

of the true believers. He would affably greet me, take off his

shoes, enter my tent protesting he was not fit to sit in my

presence, and after being seated, would begin his ever-crooked

errand. Of honesty, literal and practical honesty, this youth knew

nothing; to the pure truth he was an utter stranger; the

falsehoods he had uttered during his short life seemed already to

have quenched the bold gaze of innocence from his eyes, to have

banished the colour of truthfulness from his features, to have

transformed him—yet a stripling of twenty—into a most accomplished

rascal, and consummate expert in dishonesty.

 

During the six weeks I encamped at Bagamoyo, waiting for my quota

of men, this lad of twenty gave me very much trouble. He was

found out half a dozen times a day in dishonesty, yet was in no

way abashed by it. He would send in his account of the cloths

supplied to the pagazis, stating them to be 25 paid to each; on

sending a man to inquire I would find the greatest number to have

been 20, and the smallest 12. Soor Hadji Palloo described the

cloths to be of first-class quality, Ulyah cloths, worth in the

market four times more than the ordinary quality given to the

pagazis, yet a personal examination would prove them to be the

flimsiest goods sold, such as American sheeting 2 1/2 feet broad,

and worth $2.75 per 30 yards a piece at Zanzibar, or the most

inferior Kaniki, which is generally sold at $9 per score. He

would personally come to my camp and demand 40 lbs. of Sami-Sami,

Merikani, and Bubu beads for posho, or caravan rations; an

inspection of their store before departure from their first camp

from Bagamoyo would show a deficiency ranging from 5 to 30 lbs.

Moreover, he cheated in cash-money, such as demanding $4 for

crossing the Kingani Ferry for every ten pagazis, when the fare

was $2 for the same number; and an unconscionable number of pice

(copper coins equal in value to 3/4 of a cent) were required for

posho. It was every day for four weeks that this system of

roguery was carried out. Each day conceived a dozen new schemes;

every instant of his time he seemed to be devising how to plunder,

until I was fairly at my wits’ end how to thwart him. Exposure

before a crowd of his fellows brought no blush of shame to his

sallow cheeks; he would listen with a mere shrug of the shoulders

and that was all, which I might interpret any way it pleased me.

A threat to reduce his present had no effect; a bird in the hand

was certainly worth two in the bush for him, so ten dollars’ worth

of goods stolen and in his actual possession was of more intrinsic

value than the promise of $20 in a few days, though it was that of

a white man.

 

Readers will of course ask themselves why I did not, after the

first discovery of these shameless proceedings, close my business

with him, to which I make reply, that I could not do without him

unless his equal were forthcoming, that I never felt so thoroughly

dependent on any one man as I did upon him; without his or his

duplicate’s aid, I must have stayed at Bagamoyo at least six

months, at the end of which time the Expedition would have become

valueless, the rumour of it having been blown abroad to the four

winds. It was immediate departure that was essential to my

success—departure from Bagamoyo—after which it might be possible

for me to control my own future in a great measure.

 

These troubles were the greatest that I could at this time imagine.

I have already stated that I had $1,750 worth of pagazis’

clothes, or 3,500 doti, stored in my tent, and above what my

bales contained. Calculating one hundred and forty pagazis at 25

doti each, I supposed I had enough, yet, though I had been trying

to teach the young Hindi that the Musungu was not a fool,