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
head, and saw the caravan leader drop from his horse into the arms of a
favourite Arab. A poisoned arrow in his wounded foot had proved fatal.
The Arabs believed he had only swooned; but there was no water to revive
him, and before it could be obtained he was past the reach of
stimulants. At the same time, Barca Gana offered the major a horse; but
Maraymy exclaimed: "Do not mount him; he will die!" He therefore
remained with the black. Two Arabs, however, mounted the animal, and in
less than an hour he fell to rise no more; and, before they could
recover themselves, both the Arabs were butchered by the Felatahs.
At last a stream was reached. The horses, with the blood gushing from
their noses, rushed into the water, and the major, letting himself down,
knelt amongst them, and seemed to imbibe new life from the copious
draughts of the muddy beverage he swallowed. He then lost all
consciousness; but Maraymy told him that he had staggered across the
stream and fallen down at the foot of a tree. Here a quarter of an
hour's halt was made, to place Boo-Khaloum's body on a horse and to
collect stragglers, during which Maraymy had asked Barca Gana for
another horse, in order to carry the major on, when the chief, irritated
by his defeat, as well as by having had his horse refused, by which
means he said it had come by its death, replied: "Then leave him behind.
By the head of the Prophet! believers enough have breathed their last
to-day! What is there extraordinary in a Christian's death?" His old
antagonist, Malem Chadily, replied: "No; God has preserved him, let us
not forsake him." Maraymy returned to the tree, awoke the major, and,
again mounting, they moved on as before, though with less speed.
The effect produced on the horses wounded by arrows was extraordinary;
immediately after drinking they dropped and instantly died, the blood
gushing from their mouths, noses, and ears. More than thirty horses
were lost at this spot from the effects of the poison.
After riding forty-five miles, it was past midnight before they halted
in the territories of the Sultan of Mandara, the major thoroughly
worn-out. The bournous thrown over him by the Arab teemed with vermin,
and it was evening the next day before he could get a shirt, when a man
gave him one, on the promise of getting a new one at Kouka. Maraymy all
the time tended him with the greatest care while he slept for a whole
night and day under a tree.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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