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)
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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
While we were striding onward, at the rate of nearly three miles an
hour, the caravan I perceived sheered off from the road, resuming it
about fifty yards ahead of something on the road, to which the attention
of the men was directed. On coming up, I found the object to be the
dead body of a man, who had fallen a victim to that fearful scourge
of Africa, the small-pox. He was one of Oseto's gang of marauders, or
guerillas, in the service of Mkasiwa of Unyanyembe, who were hunting
these forests for the guerillas of Mirambo. They had been returning from
Ukonongo from a raid they had instituted against the Sultan of Mbogo,
and they had left their comrade to perish in the road. He had apparently
been only one day dead.
Apropos of this, it was a frequent thing with us to discover a skeleton
or a skull on the roadside. Almost every day we saw one, sometimes two,
of these relics of dead, and forgotten humanity.
Shortly after this we emerged from the forest, and entered a mbuga, or
plain, in which we saw a couple of giraffes, whose long necks were seen
towering above a bush they had been nibbling at. This sight was greeted
with a shout; for we now knew we had entered the game country, and that
near the Gombe creek, or river, where we intended to halt, we should see
plenty of these animals.
A walk of three hours over this hot plain brought us to the cultivated
fields of Manyara. Arriving before the village-gate, we were forbidden
to enter, as the country was throughout in a state of war, and it
behoved them to be very careful of admitting any party, lest the
villagers might be compromised. We were, however, directed to a khambi
to the right of the village, near some pools of clear water, where we
discovered some half dozen ruined huts, which looked very uncomfortable
to tired people.
After we had built our camp, the kirangozi was furnished with some
cloths to purchase food from the village for the transit of a wilderness
in front of us, which was said to extend nine marches, or 135 miles.
He was informed that the Mtemi had strictly prohibited his people from
selling any grain whatever.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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