Johnston made no objection to all this. He estimated that the necessary
amount of baggage would thus be doubled, perhaps trebled, and that the
1,600 or 2,400 _pagazis_ that would be required would make the expedition
too cumbrous. Dr. Strahl proposed that transportation by _pagazis_ should
be relinquished altogether, and that beasts of burden should be used
exclusively. He knew well that in the low lands of Equatorial Africa the
tsetse-fly and the bad water were particularly fatal to horses; but these
difficulties were not to be anticipated on our route, which would soon take
us to the high land where the animals would be safe. And the difficulty due
to the peculiar character of the roads in Central Africa could be easily
overcome. These roads possess--as he had learnt from Johnston's
descriptions, among others--where they pass through thickets or bush, a
breadth of scarcely two feet, and are too narrow for pack-horses, which
have often to be unloaded at such places, and the transportation of the
luggage has to be effected by porters. This last expedient would either be
impossible or would involve an incalculable loss of time in the case of a
caravan possessing only beasts of burden with a proportionately small
number of drivers and attendants. But he thought that the roads could
everywhere be made passable for even beasts of burden by means of an
adequate number of well-equipped _éclaireurs_, or advance-guard. Johnston
was of the same opinion: if he were furnished with a hundred natives--whom
he would get from the population on the coast--supplied with axes and
fascine-knives, he would undertake to lead a caravan of beasts of burden to
the Kenia without any delay worth mentioning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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