Kinene answered: “It is the will of Kibonge. I must obey him.”
Three persons stepped forward and held Emin securely as he tried to free
himself. When he saw that his efforts were useless, he said: “This is a
mistake. Here is a letter from Kibonge which promises me safe conduct.”
Kinene replied: “Pasha, if you can read Arabic, read this letter.”
And Emin read the second letter of the false Kibonge, which ordered him
to be killed. He gave a deep sigh, then frowned and said: “Well, you
will kill me, but do not think that I am the only white man in this
country. Many will come to avenge my death and believe me, in two years
there will not be a single Arab left in this region to tell the story of
the destruction of his people.”
Kinene remained unmoved and when Emin saw there was no hope of escape he
protested no longer and Ismaili, his treacherous guide, severed the head
of the defenseless one from his body.
Two years elapsed before definite news of Emin’s fate was received, and
as nothing was heard of him all that time, it was generally believed
that he had been killed by Arabs, and that the truth had been concealed.
At last Baron Dhanis, at the head of a Belgian expedition, came to the
vicinity of Kinene’s possessions. There by chance Emin’s trunk and diary
were found in a cabin, and the discovery led to the arrest of Ismaili
and three others, who had participated in the murder, and their
confession. The murderers were condemned to be hanged. A year later the
treacherous Kibonge was made to pay for his infamy, for he was taken
prisoner by a European expedition and put to death.
Thus Emin, the quiet, genial man, who never did an injury to anyone, but
conferred almost endless benefactions, died as he had lived—alone. The
serious, strenuous work of his life brought him little gratitude. He
lived to see the collapse of his great creation—the Equatorial
Provinces. But the one thing which was his consolation in all his hard
days and which was occupying him at the very hour of his death was his
devotion to science, which did not die with him, but has been and always
will be of great value to the world. The museums of Europe tell of the
activity of this collector, and scholars who have studied his diaries
are amazed at the richness of their contents. He will never die in the
memory of his own people or of the civilized world; his name is
indelibly engraved upon the tablets of history.
Footnotes
[1]Dr. Wilhelm Junker was born at Moscow in 1846 and died at St.
Petersburg in 1892. Between 1873 and 1886 he explored Algeria, Tunis,
Lower Egypt, and a considerable part of Central Africa.
[2]Lado is in Central Africa on the White Nile, near Gondokoro, and was
founded by General Gordon in 1874.
[3]The Bari are a negro race in the eastern Soudan, and are both
agricultural and pastoral.
[4]Termites are white ants which grow to a very large size in Africa.
[5]The native name of the sweet potato.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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