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
Whither could Dr. Livingstone march with these few men, and the few
table-cloths and beads that remained to him from the store squandered by
the imbecile Sherif? This was a puzzling question. Had Dr. Livingstone
been in good health, his usual hardihood and indomitable spirit had
answered it in a summary way. He might have borrowed some cloth from
Sayd bin Majid at an exorbitant price, sufficient to bring him to
Unyanyembe and the sea-coast. But how long would he have been compelled
to sit down at Ujiji, waiting and waiting for the goods that were said
to be at Unyanyembe, a prey to high expectations, hoping day after day
that the war would end--hoping week after week to hear that his goods
were coming? Who knows how long his weak health had borne up against the
several disappointments to which he would be subjected?
Though it was with all due deference to Dr. Livingstone's vast
experience as a traveller, I made bold to suggest the following courses
to him, either of which he could adopt:
Ist. To go home, and take the rest he so well deserved and, as he
appeared then, to be so much in need of.
2nd. To proceed to Unyanyembe, receive his goods, and enlist pagazis
sufficient to enable him to travel anywhere, either to Manyuema or
Rua, and settle the Nile problem, which he said he was in a fair way of
doing.
3rd. To proceed to Unyanyembe, receive his caravan, enlist men, and try
to join Sir Samuel Baker, either by going to Muanza, and sailing through
Ukerewe or Victoria N'Yanza in my boats--which I should put up--to
Mtesa's palace at Uganda, thus passing by Mirambo and Swaruru of Usui,
who would rob him if he took the usual caravan road to Uganda; thence
from Mtesa to Kamrasi, King of Unyoro, where he would of course hear
of the great white man who was said to be with a large force of men at
Gondokoro.
4th. To proceed to Unyanyembe, receive his caravan, enlist men, and
return to Ujiji, and back to Manyuema by way of Uguhha.
5th. To proceed by way of the Rusizi through Ruanda, and so on to Itara,
Unyoro, and Baker.
For either course, whichever he thought most expedient, I and my men
would assist him as escort and carriers, to the best of our ability. If
he should elect to go home, I informed him I should be proud to escort
him, and consider myself subject to his commands--travelling only when
he desired, and camping only when he gave the word.
6th. The last course which I suggested to him, was to permit me to
escort him to Unyanyembe, where he could receive his own goods, and
where I could deliver up to him a large supply of first-class cloth and
beads, guns and ammunition, cooking utensils, clothing, boats, tents,
&c., and where he could rest in a comfortable house, while I would hurry
down to the coast, organise a new expedition composed of fifty or sixty
faithful men, well armed, by whom I could send an additional supply of
needful luxuries in the shape of creature comforts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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