Great African Travellers: From Mungo Park to Livingstone and StanleyKingston, William Henry Giles
History
Great African Travellers: From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley
Kingston, William Henry Giles
Africa -- Description and travel; Africa -- Discovery and exploration; Explorers
Senna, which was visited on the way, being situated on low ground, is a
fever-giving place. The steamer, of course, caused great astonishment
to the people, who assembled in crowds to witness her movements,
whirling round their arms to show the way the paddles revolved.
Tete was reached on the 8th of September. No sooner did Dr Livingstone
go on shore, than his Makololo rushed down to the water's edge, and
manifested the greatest joy at seeing him. Six of the young men had
foolishly gone off to make money by dancing before some of the
neighbouring chiefs, when they fell into the hands of Bonga, who,
declaring that they had brought witchcraft medicine to kill him, put
them all to death.
The Portuguese at this place keep numerous slaves, whom they treat with
tolerable humanity. When they can they purchase the whole of a family,
thus taking away the chief inducement for running off.
The expedition having heard of the Kebrabasa Falls, steamed up the
river, and on the 24th of November reached Panda Mokua, where the
navigation ends, about two miles below them. Hence the party started
overland, by a frightfully rough path among rocky hills, where no shade
was to be found. At last their guides declared that they could go no
further; indeed, the surface of the ground was so hot that the soles of
the Makololos' feet became blistered. The travellers, however, pushed
on. Passing round a steep promontory, they beheld the river at their
feet, the channel jammed in between two mountains with perpendicular
sides, and less than fifty yards wide. There is a sloping fall of about
twenty feet in height, and another at a distance of thirty yards above
it. When, however, the river rises upwards of eighty feet
perpendicularly, as it does in the rainy season, the cataract might be
passed in boats.
After returning to Tete, the steamer went up the Shire, January, 1859.
The natives, as they passed them, collected at their villages in large
numbers, armed with bows and poisoned arrows, threatening to attack
them. Dr Livingstone, however, went on shore, and explained to the
chief, Tingane, that they had come neither to take slaves nor to fight,
but wished to open up a path by which his countrymen could ascend to
purchase their cotton. On this Tingane at once became friendly.
Their progress was arrested, after steaming up a hundred miles in a
straight line, although, counting the windings of the river, double that
distance, by magnificent cataracts known to the natives as those of the
Mamvira, but called by the expedition the Murchison Falls.
Rain prevented them making observations, and they returned at a rapid
rate down the river.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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