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
Not long after the Arabs had departed, a dishful of hot hashed-meat
cakes was sent to us by Sayd bin Majid, and a curried chicken was
received from Mohammed bin Sali, and Moeni Kheri sent a dishful of
stewed goat-meat and rice; and thus presents of food came in
succession, and as fast as they were brought we set to. I had a
healthy, stubborn digestion--the exercise I had taken had put it in
prime order; but Livingstone--he had been complaining that he had
no appetite, that his stomach refused everything but a cup of tea
now and then--he ate also--ate like a vigorous, hungry man; and,
as he vied with me in demolishing the pancakes, he kept repeating,
"You have brought me new life. You have brought me new life."
"Oh, by George!" I said, "I have forgotten something. Hasten,
Selim, and bring that bottle; you know which and bring me the silver
goblets. I brought this bottle on purpose for this event, which
I hoped would come to pass, though often it seemed useless to expect
it."
Selim knew where the bottle was, and he soon returned with it--a
bottle of Sillery champagne; and, handing the Doctor a silver
goblet brimful of the exhilarating wine, and pouring a small
quantity into my own, I said,
"Dr. Livingstone, to your very good health, sir."
"And to yours!" he responded, smilingly.
And the champagne I had treasured for this happy meeting was drunk
with hearty good wishes to each other.
But we kept on talking and talking, and prepared food was being
brought to us all that afternoon; and we kept on eating each time
it was brought, until I had eaten even to repletion, and the Doctor
was obliged to confess that he had eaten enough. Still, Halimah,
the female cook of the Doctor's establishment, was in a state of
the greatest excitement. She had been protruding her head out of
the cookhouse to make sure that there were really two white men
sitting down in the veranda, when there used to be only one, who
would not, because he could not, eat anything; and she had been
considerably exercised in her mind about this fact. She was
afraid the Doctor did not properly appreciate her culinary
abilities; but now she was amazed at the extraordinary quantity
of food eaten, and she was in a state of delightful excitement.
We could hear her tongue rolling off a tremendous volume of
clatter to the wondering crowds who halted before the kitchen
to hear the current of news with which she edified them. Poor,
faithful soul! While we listened to the noise of her furious
gossip, the Doctor related her faithful services, and the
terrible anxiety she evinced when the guns first announced
the arrival of another white man in Ujiji; how she had been
flying about in a state cf the utmost excitement, from the kitchen
into his presence, and out again into the square, asking all sorts
of questions; how she was in despair at the scantiness of the
general larder and treasury of the strange household; how she
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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