How I found Livingstone : $b Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone — John Shaqi
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
These troubles were the greatest that I could at this time imagine.
I have already stated that I had $1,750 worth of pagazis' clothes,
or 3,500 doti, stored in my tent, and above what my bales contained.
Calculating one hundred and forty pagazis at 25 doti each, I supposed I
had enough, yet, though I had been trying to teach the young Hindi that
the Musungu was not a fool, nor blind to his pilfering tricks, though
the 3,500 doti were all spent; though I had only obtained one hundred
and thirty pagazis at 25 doti each, which in the aggregate amounted to
3,200 doti: Soor Hadji Palloo's bill was $1,400 cash extra. His plea was
that he had furnished Ulyah clothes for Muhongo 240 doti, equal in value
to 960 of my doti, that the money was spent in ferry pice, in presents
to chiefs of caravans of tents, guns, red broad cloth, in presents to
people on the Mrima (coast) to induce them to hunt up pagazis. Upon this
exhibition of most ruthless cheating I waxed indignant, and declared to
him that if he did not run over his bill and correct it, he should go
without a pice.
But before the bill could be put into proper shape, my words, threats,
and promises falling heedlessly on a stony brain, a man, Kanjee by name,
from the store of Tarya Topan, of Zanzibar, had to come over, when the
bill was finally reduced to $738. Without any disrespect to Tarya Topan,
I am unable to decide which is the most accomplished rascal, Kanjee,
or young Soor Hadji Palloo; in the words of a white man who knows them
both, "there is not the splitting of a straw between them." Kanjee is
deep and sly, Soor Hadji Palloo is bold and incorrigible. But peace be
to them both, may their shaven heads never be covered with the troublous
crown I wore at Bagamoyo!
My dear friendly reader, do not think, if I speak out my mind in this
or in any other chapter upon matters seemingly trivial and unimportant,
that seeming such they should be left unmentioned. Every tittle related
is a fact, and to knew facts is to receive knowledge.
How could I ever recite my experience to you if I did not enter upon
these miserable details, which sorely distract the stranger upon his
first arrival? Had I been a Government official, I had but wagged my
finger and my quota of pagazis had been furnished me within a week; but
as an individual arriving without the graces of official recognition,
armed with no Government influence, I had to be patient, bide my time,
and chew the cud of irritation quietly, but the bread I ate was not all
sour, as this was.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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