How I found Livingstone : $b Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone — John Shaqi
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 isle of Zanzibar with its groves of cocoa-nut, mango, clove,
and cinnamon, and its sentinel islets of Chumbi and French, with its
whitewashed city and jack-fruit odor, with its harbor and ships that
tread the deep, faded slowly from view, and looking westward, the
African continent rose, a similar bank of green verdure to that which
had just receded till it was a mere sinuous line above the horizon,
looming in a northerly direction to the sublimity of a mountain chain.
The distance across from Zanzibar to Bagamoyo may be about twenty-five
miles, yet it took the dull and lazy dhows ten hours before they dropped
anchor on the top of the coral reef plainly visible a few feet below the
surface of the water, within a hundred yards of the beach.
The newly-enlisted soldiers, fond of noise and excitement, discharged
repeated salvos by way of a salute to the mixed crowd of Arabs, Banyans,
and Wasawahili, who stood on the beach to receive the Musungu (white
man), which they did with a general stare and a chorus of "Yambo, bana?"
(how are you, master?)
In our own land the meeting with a large crowd is rather a tedious
operation, as our independent citizens insist on an interlacing of
fingers, and a vigorous shaking thereof before their pride is satisfied,
and the peaceful manifestation endorsed; but on this beach, well lined
with spectators, a response of "Yambo, bana!" sufficed, except with one
who of all there was acknowledged the greatest, and who, claiming, like
all great men, individual attention, came forward to exchange another
"Yambo!" on his own behalf, and to shake hands. This personage with a
long trailing turban, was Jemadar Esau, commander of the Zanzibar force
of soldiers, police, or Baluch gendarmes stationed at Bagamoyo. He had
accompanied Speke and Grant a good distance into the interior, and they
had rewarded him liberally. He took upon himself the responsibility of
assisting in the debarkation of the Expedition, and unworthy as was his
appearance, disgraceful as he was in his filth, I here commend him for
his influence over the rabble to all future East African travellers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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