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
Our second evening at Mukamba's, Susi, the Doctor's servant, got
gloriously drunk, through the chief's liberal and profuse gifts of
pombe. Just at dawn neat morning I was awakened by hearing several
sharp, crack-like sounds. I listened, and I found the noise was in our
hut. It was caused by the Doctor, who, towards midnight, had felt some
one come and lie down by his side on the same bed, and, thinking it was
me, he had kindly made room, and laid down on the edge of the bed. But
in the morning, feeling rather cold, he had been thoroughly awakened,
and, on rising on his elbow to see who his bed-fellow was, he
discovered, to his great astonishment, that it was no other than his
black servant, Susi, who taking possession of his blankets, and folding
them about himself most selfishly, was occupying almost the whole bed.
The Doctor, with that gentleness characteristic of him, instead of
taking a rod, had contented himself with slapping Susi on the back,
saying, "Get up, Susi, will you? You are in my bed. How dare you, sir,
get drunk in this way, after I have told you so often not to. Get up.
You won't? Take that, and that, and that." Still Susi slept and grunted;
so the slapping continued, until even Susi's thick hide began to feel
it, and he was thoroughly awakened to the sense of his want of devotion
and sympathy for his master in the usurping of even his master's bed.
Susi looked very much crestfallen after this exposé of his infirmity
before the "little master," as I was called.
The next day at dusk--Mukamba having come to bid us good-bye, and
requested that as soon as we reached his brother Ruhinga, whose country
was at the head of the lake, we would send our canoe back for him, and
that in the meanwhile we should leave two of our men with him, with
their guns, to help defend him in case Warumashanya should attack him
as soon as we were gone--we embarked and pulled across. In nine hours we
had arrived at the head of the lake in Mugihewa, the country of Ruhinga;
Mukamba's elder brother. In looking back to where we had come from we
perceived that we had made a diagonal cut across from south-east to
north-west, instead of having made a direct east and west course; or,
in other words, from Mugere--which was at least ten miles from the
northernmost point of the eastern shore--we had come to Mugihewa,
situated at the northernmost point of the western shore. Had we
continued along the eastern shore, and so round the northern side of the
lake, we should have passed by Mukanigi, the country of Warumashanya,
and Usumbura of Simveh, his ally and friend. But by making a diagonal
course, as just described, we had arrived at the extreme head of the
lake without any difficulty.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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