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 road led up through the valley of the Loajeri, after leaving its
delta, a valley growing ever narrower, until it narrowed into a ravine
choked by the now roaring, bellowing river, whose resistless rush seemed
to affect the very air we breathed. It was getting oppressive, this
narrowing ravine, and opportunely the road breasted a knoll, then a
terrace, then a hill, and lastly a mountain, where we halted to encamp.
As we prepared to select a camping-place, the Doctor silently pointed
forward, and suddenly a dead silence reigned everywhere. The quinine
which I had taken in the morning seemed to affect me in every crevice of
my brain; but a bitter evil remained, and, though I trembled under the
heavy weight of the Reilly rifle, I crept forward to where the Doctor
was pointing. I found myself looking down a steep ravine, on the other
bank of which a fine buffalo cow was scrambling upward. She had just
reached the summit, and was turning round to survey her enemy, when I
succeeded in planting a shot just behind the shoulder blade, and close
to the spine, evoking from her a deep bellow of pain. "She is shot! she
is shot!" exclaimed the Doctor; "that is a sure sign you have hit her."
And the men even raised a shout at the prospect of meat. A second,
planted in her spine, brought her to her knees, and a third ended her.
We thus had another supply of provisions, which, cut up and dried over
a fire, as the Wangwana are accustomed to do, would carry them far over
the unpeopled wilderness before us. For the Doctor and myself, we had
the tongue, the hump, and a few choice pieces salted down, and in a few
days had prime corned beef. It is not inapt to state that the rifle had
more commendations bestowed on it than the hunter by the Wangwana.
The next day we continued the march eastward, under the guidance of
our kirangozi; but it was evident, by the road he led us, that he knew
nothing of the country, though, through his volubility, he had led us to
believe that he knew all about Ngondo, Yombeh, and Pumburu's districts.
When recalled from the head of the caravan, we were about to descend
into the rapid Loajeri, and beyond it were three ranges of impassable
mountains, which we were to cross in a north-easterly direction; quite
out of our road. After consulting with the Doctor, I put myself at the
head of the caravan, and following the spine of the ridge, struck off
due east, regardless of how the road ran. At intervals a travelled road
crossed our path, and, after following it a while, we came to the ford
of the Loajeri. The Loajeri rises south and south-east of Kakungu Peak.
We made the best we could of the road after crossing the river, until
we reached the main path that runs from Karah to Ngondo and Pumburu, in
Southern Kawendi.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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