How I found Livingstone : $b Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. LivingstoneStanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
History
How I found Livingstone : $b Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone
Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Livingstone, David, 1813-1873
Rubuga, in the days of Burton, according to his book, was a prosperous
district. Even when we passed, the evidences of wealth and prosperity
which it possessed formerly, were plain enough in the wide extent of its
grain fields, which stretched to the right and left of the Unyanyembe
road for many a mile. But they were only evidences of what once were
numerous villages, a well-cultivated and populous district, rich in
herds of cattle and stores of grain. All the villages are burnt down,
the people have been driven north three or four days from Rubuga, the
cattle were taken by force, the grain fields were left standing, to be
overgrown with jungle and rank weeds. We passed village after village
that had been burnt, and were mere blackened heaps of charred timber and
smoked clay; field after field of grain ripe years ago was yet standing
in the midst of a crop of gums and thorns, mimosa and kolquall.
We arrived at the village, occupied by about sixty Wangwana, who have
settled here to make a living by buying and selling ivory. Food is
provided for them in the deserted fields of the people of Rubuga. We
were very tired and heated from the long march, but the pagazis had all
arrived by 3 p.m.
At the Wangwana village we met Amer bin Sultan, the very type of an
old Arab sheikh, such as we read of in books, with a snowy beard, and
a clean reverend face, who was returning to Zanzibar after a ten years'
residence in Unyanyembe. He presented me with a goat; and a goatskin
full of rice; a most acceptable gift in a place where a goat costs five
cloths.
After a day's halt at Rubuga, during which I despatched soldiers
to notify Sheikh Sayd bin Salim and Sheikh bin Nasib, the two chief
dignitaries of Unyanyembe, of my coming, on the 21st of June we resumed
the march for Kigwa, distant five hours. The road ran through another
forest similar to that which separated Tura from Rubuga, the country
rapidly sloping as we proceeded westward. Kigwa we found to have been
visited by the same vengeance which rendered Rubuga such a waste.
The next day, after a three and a half hours' rapid march, we crossed
the mtoni--which was no mtoni--separating Kigwa from Unyanyembe
district, and after a short halt to quench our thirst, in three and a
half hours more arrived at Shiza. It was a most delightful march, though
a long one, for its picturesqueness of scenery which every few minutes
was revealed, and the proofs we everywhere saw of the peaceable and
industrious disposition of the people. A short half hour from Shiza we
beheld the undulating plain wherein the Arabs have chosen to situate the
central depot which commands such wide and extensive field of trade. The
lowing of cattle and the bleating of the goats and sheep were everywhere
heard, giving the country a happy, pastoral aspect.
The Sultan of Shiza desired me to celebrate my arrival in Unyanyembe,
with a five-gallon jar of pombe, which he brought for that purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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