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
tools of foresters were almost always required; but the advance of the
expedition was often retarded by the unwillingness of the Sepoys and
Johanna men to work.
Soon after the departure of the expedition from the coast, the
murmurings and complaints of these men began, and upon every occasion
and at every opportunity they evinced a decided hostility to an advance.
In order to prevent the progress of the Doctor, and in hopes that it
would compel him to return to the coast, these men so cruelly treated
the animals that before long there was not one left alive. But as this
scheme failed, they set about instigating the natives against the white
men, whom they accused most wantonly of strange practices. As this plan
was most likely to succeed, and as it was dangerous to have such men
with him, the Doctor arrived at the conclusion that it was best to
discharge them, and accordingly sent the Sepoys back to the coast; but
not without having first furnished them with the means of subsistence on
their journey to the coast. These men were such a disreputable set that
the natives spoke of them as the Doctor's slaves. One of their worst
sins was the custom of giving their guns and ammunition to carry to the
first woman or boy they met, whom they impressed for that purpose by
such threats or promises as they were totally unable to perform, and
unwarranted in making. An hour's marching was sufficient to fatigue
them, after which they lay down on the road to bewail their hard fate,
and concoct new schemes to frustrate their leader's purposes. Towards
night they generally made their appearance at the camping-ground with
the looks of half-dead men. Such men naturally made but a poor escort;
for, had the party been attacked by a wandering tribe of natives of
any strength, the Doctor could have made no defence, and no other
alternative would have been left to him but to surrender and be ruined.
The Doctor and his little party arrived on the 18th July, 1866, at a
village belonging to a chief of the Wahiyou, situate eight days' march
south of the Rovuma, and overlooking the watershed of the Lake Nyassa.
The territory lying between the Rovuma River and this Wahiyou village
was an uninhabited wilderness, during the transit of which Livingstone
and his expedition suffered considerably from hunger and desertion of
men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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