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
We were shown into a hut, which the Doctor and I shared between us. What
followed on that day I have but a dim recollection, having been struck
down by fever--the first since leaving Unyanyembe. I dimly recollect
trying to make out what age Mukamba might be, and noting that he was
good-looking withal, and kindly-disposed towards us. And during the
intervals of agony and unconsciousness, I saw, or fancied I saw,
Livingstone's form moving towards me, and felt, or fancied I felt,
Livingstone's hand tenderly feeling my hot head and limbs. I had
suffered several fevers between Bagamoyo and Unyanyembe, without
anything or anybody to relieve me of the tedious racking headache and
pain, or to illumine the dark and gloomy prospect which must necessarily
surround the bedside of the sick and solitary traveller. But though this
fever, having enjoyed immunity from it for three months, was more severe
than usual, I did not much regret its occurrence, since I became the
recipient of the very tender and fatherly kindness of the good man whose
companion I now found myself.
The next morning, having recovered slightly from the fever, when Mukamba
came with a present of an ox, a sheep, and a goat, I was able to attend
to the answers which he gave to the questions about the Rusizi River
and the head of the lake. The ever cheerful and enthusiastic Mgwana was
there also, and he was not a whit abashed, when, through him, the chief
told us that the Rusizi, joined by the Ruanda, or Luanda, at a distance
of two days' journey by water, or one day by land from the head of the
lake, flowed INTO the lake.
Thus our hopes, excited somewhat by the positive and repeated assurances
that the river flowed out away towards Karagwah, collapsed as speedily
as they were raised.
We paid Mukamba the honga, consisting of nine doti and nine fundo of
samsam, lunghio, muzurio n'zige. The printed handkerchiefs, which I had
in abundance at Unyanyembe, would have gone well here. After receiving
his present, the chief introduced his son, a tall youth of eighteen or
thereabouts, to the Doctor, as a would-be son of the Doctor; but, with
a good-natured laugh, the Doctor scouted all such relationship with him,
as it was instituted only for the purpose of drawing more cloth out of
him. Mukamba took it in good part, and did not insist on getting more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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