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 country in which we now found ourselves, Mugihewa, is situated in
the delta of the Rusizi River. It is an extremely flat country, the
highest part of which is not ten feet above the lake, with numerous
depressions in it overgrown with the rankest of matete-grass and the
tallest of papyrus, and pond-like hollows, filled with stagnant water,
which emit malaria wholesale. Large herds of cattle are reared on it;
for where the ground is not covered with marshy plants it produces rich,
sweet grass. The sheep and goats, especially the former, are always in
good condition; and though they are not to be compared with English
or American sheep, they are the finest I have seen in Africa. Numerous
villages are seen on this land because the intervening spaces are not
occupied with the rank and luxuriant jungle common in other parts of
Africa. Were it not for the Euphorbia kolquall of Abyssinia--which some
chief has caused to be planted as a defence round the villages--one
might see from one end of Mugihewa to the other. The waters along the
head of the lake, from the western to the eastern shores, swarm with
crocodiles. From the banks, I counted ten heads of crocodiles, and the
Rusizi, we were told, was full of them.
Ruhinga, who came to see us soon after we had taken up our quarters
in his village, was a most amiable man, who always contrived to see
something that excited his risibility; though older by five or six years
perhaps--he said he was a hundred years old--than Mukamba, he was not
half so dignified, nor regarded with so much admiration by his people
as his younger brother. Ruhinga had a better knowledge, however, of the
country than Mukamba, and an admirable memory, and was able to impart
his knowledge of the country intelligently. After he had done the
honours as chief to us--presented us with an ox and a sheep, milk
and honey--we were not backward in endeavouring to elicit as much
information as possible out of him.
The summary of the information derived from Ruhinga may be stated as
follows:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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