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
was anxious to make up for their poverty by a grand appearance--
to make up a sort of Barmecide feast to welcome the white man.
"Why," said she, "is he not one of us? Does he not bring plenty
of cloth and beads? Talk about the Arabs! Who are they that
they should be compared to white men? Arabs, indeed!"
The Doctor and I conversed upon many things, especially upon his
own immediate troubles, and his disappointments, upon his arrival
in Ujiji, when told that all his goods had been sold, and he was
reduced to poverty. He had but twenty cloths or so left of the
stock he had deposited with the man called Sherif, the half-caste
drunken tailor, who was sent by the Consul in charge of the goods.
Besides which he had been suffering from an attack of dysentery,
and his condition was most deplorable. He was but little improved
on this day, though he had eaten well, and already began to feel
stronger and better.
This day, like all others, though big with happiness to me, at last
was fading away. While sitting with our faces looking to the east,
as Livingstone had been sitting for days preceding my arrival, we
noted the dark shadows which crept up above the grove of palms
beyond the village, and above the rampart of mountains which we had
crossed that day, now looming through the fast approaching
darkness; and we listened, with our hearts full of gratitude to
the Great Giver of Good and Dispenser of all Happiness, to the
sonorous thunder of the surf of the Tanganika, and to the chorus
which the night insects sang. Hours passed, and we were still
sitting there with our minds busy upon the day's remarkable events,
when I remembered that the traveller had not yet read his letters.
"Doctor," I said, "you had better read your letters. I will not
keep you up any longer."
"Yes," he answered, "it is getting late; and I will go and read
my friends' letters. Good-night, and God bless you."
"Good-night, my dear Doctor; and let me hope that your news will
be such as you desire."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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