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
The traveller must needs make his way into the African interior after
a fashion very different from that to which he has been accustomed in
other countries. He requires to take with him just what a ship must have
when about to sail on a long voyage. He must have his slop chest, his
little store of canned dainties, and his medicines, besides which, he
must have enough guns, powder, and ball to be able to make a series of
good fights if necessary. He must have men to convey these miscellaneous
articles; and as a man's maximum load does not exceed 70 lbs., to convey
11,000 lbs. requires nearly 160 men.
Europe and the Orient, even Arabia and Turkestan, have royal ways
of travelling compared to Africa. Specie is received in all those
countries, by which a traveller may carry his means about with him on
his own person. Eastern and Central Africa, however, demand a necklace,
instead of a cent; two yards of American sheeting, instead of half a
dollar, or a florin, and a kitindi of thick brass-wire, in place of a
gold piece.
The African traveller can hire neither wagons nor camels, neither
horses nor mules, to proceed with him into the interior. His means of
conveyance are limited to black and naked men, who demand at least $15 a
head for every 70 lbs. weight carried only as far as Unyanyembe.
One thing amongst others my predecessors omitted to inform men bound for
Africa, which is of importance, and that is, that no traveller should
ever think of coming to Zanzibar with his money in any other shape than
gold coin. Letters of credit, circular notes, and such civilized things
I have found to be a century ahead of Zanzibar people.
Twenty and twenty-five cents deducted out of every dollar I drew on
paper is one of the unpleasant, if not unpleasantest things I have
committed to lasting memory. For Zanzibar is a spot far removed from all
avenues of European commerce, and coin is at a high premium. A man
may talk and entreat, but though he may have drafts, cheques, circular
notes, letters of credit, a carte blanche to get what he wants, out of
every dollar must, be deducted twenty, twenty-five and thirty cents,
so I was told, and so was my experience. What a pity there is no
branch-bank here!
I had intended to have gone into Africa incognito. But the fact that a
white man, even an American, was about to enter Africa was soon known
all over Zanzibar. This fact was repeated a thousand times in the
streets, proclaimed in all shop alcoves, and at the custom-house. The
native bazaar laid hold of it, and agitated it day and night until my
departure. The foreigners, including the Europeans, wished to know the
pros and cons of my coming in and going out.
My answer to all questions, pertinent and impertinent, was, I am going
to Africa. Though my card bore the words
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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