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
A lengthy march under the deep twilight shadows of a great forest, which
protected us from the hot sunbeams, brought us, on the next day, to a
camp newly constructed by a party of Arabs from Ujiji, who had advanced
thus far on their road to Unyanyembe, but, alarmed at the reports of the
war between Mirambo and the Arabs, had returned. Our route was along the
right bank of the Rugufu, a broad sluggish stream, well choked with
the matete reeds and the papyrus. The tracks and the bois de vaches
of buffaloes were numerous, and there were several indications of
rhinoceros being near. In a deep clump of timber near this river we
discovered a colony of bearded and leonine-looking monkeys.
As we were about leaving our camp on the morning of the 28th a herd of
buffalo walked deliberately into view. Silence was quickly restored,
but not before the animals, to their great surprise, had discovered the
danger which confronted them. We commenced stalking them, but we soon
heard the thundering sound of their gallop, after which it becomes a
useless task to follow them, with a long march in a wilderness before
one.
The road led on this day over immense sheets of sandstone and iron ore.
The water was abominable, and scarce, and famine began to stare us
in the face. We travelled for six hours, and had yet seen no sign of
cultivation anywhere. According to my map we were yet two long marches
from the Malagarazi--if Captain Burton had correctly laid down the
position of the river; according to the natives' account, we should have
arrived at the Malagarazi on this day.
On the 29th we left our camp, and after a few minutes, we were in view
of the sublimest, but ruggedest, scenes we had yet beheld in Africa. The
country was cut up in all directions by deep, wild, and narrow ravines
trending in all directions, but generally toward the north-west, while
on either side rose enormous square masses of naked rock (sandstone),
sometimes towering, and rounded, sometimes pyramidal, sometimes in
truncated cones, sometimes in circular ridges, with sharp, rugged, naked
backs, with but little vegetation anywhere visible, except it obtained
a precarious tenure in the fissured crown of some gigantic hill-top,
whither some soil had fallen, or at the base of the reddish ochre scarps
which everywhere lifted their fronts to our view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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