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
When these two things have been accomplished, then, and not till then,
can the mystery of the Nile be explained. The two countries through
which the marvellous lacustrine river, the Lualaba, flows, with its
manifold lakes and broad expanse of water, are Rua (the Uruwwa of Speke)
and Manyuema. For the first time Europe is made aware that between
the Tanganika and the known sources of the Congo there exist teeming
millions of the negro race, who never saw, or heard of the white people
who make such a noisy and busy stir outside of Africa. Upon the minds
of those who had the good fortune to see the first specimen of these
remarkable white races in Dr. Livingstone, he seems to have made a
favourable impression, though, through misunderstanding his object, and
coupling him with the Arabs, who make horrible work there, his life
was sought after more than once. These two extensive countries, Rua
and Manyuema, are populated by true heathens, governed, not as the
sovereignties of Karagwah, Urundi, and Uganda, by despotic kings, but
each village by its own sultan or lord. Thirty miles outside of their
own immediate settlements, the most intelligent of these small chiefs
seem to know nothing. Thirty miles from the Lualaba, there were but few
people who had ever heard of the great river. Such ignorance among
the natives of their own country naturally increased the labours of
Livingstone. Compared with these, all tribes and nations in Africa with
whom Livingstone came in contact may be deemed civilized, yet, in
the arts of home manufacture, these wild people of Manyuema were far
superior to any he had seen. Where other tribes and nations contented
themselves with hides and skins of animals thrown negligently over their
shoulders, the people of Manyuema manufactured a cloth from fine grass,
which may favorably compare with the finest grass cloth of India. They
also know the art of dyeing them in various colours--black, yellow,
and purple. The Wangwana, or freed-men of Zanzibar, struck with the
beauty of the fabric, eagerly exchange their cotton cloths for fine
grass cloth; and on almost every black man from Manyuema I have seen
this native cloth converted into elegantly made damirs (Arabic)--short
jackets. These countries are also very rich in ivory. The fever for
going to Manyuema to exchange tawdry beads for its precious tusks is
of the same kind as that which impelled men to go to the gulches and
placers of California, Colorado, Montana, and Idaho; after nuggets to
Australia, and diamonds to Cape Colony. Manyuema is at present the El
Dorado of the Arab and the Wamrima tribes. It is only about four years
since that the first Arab returned from Manyuema, with such wealth of
ivory, and reports about the fabulous quantities found there, that ever
since the old beaten tracks of Karagwah, Uganda, Ufipa, and Marungu have
been comparatively deserted. The people of Manyuema, ignorant of the
value of the precious article, reared their huts upon ivory stanchions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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