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
Altogether the Expedition numbers on the day of departure three white
men, twenty-three soldiers, four supernumeraries, four chiefs, and one
hundred and fifty-three pagazis, twenty-seven donkeys, and one cart,
conveying cloth, beads, and wire, boat-fixings, tents, cooking utensils
and dishes, medicine, powder, small shot, musket-balls, and metallic
cartridges; instruments and small necessaries, such as soap, sugar, tea,
coffee, Liebig's extract of meat, pemmican, candles, &c., which make
a total of 153 loads. The weapons of defence which the Expedition
possesses consist of one double-barrel breech-loading gun, smooth bore;
one American Winchester rifle, or "sixteen-shooter;" one Henry rifle,
or "sixteen-shooter;" two Starr's breech-loaders, one Jocelyn
breech-loader, one elephant rifle, carrying balls eight to the pound;
two breech-loading revolvers, twenty-four muskets (flint locks), six
single-barrelled pistols, one battle-axe, two swords, two daggers
(Persian kummers, purchased at Shiraz by myself), one boar-spear,
two American axes 4 lbs. each, twenty-four hatchets, and twenty-four
butcher-knives.
The Expedition has been fitted with care; whatever it needed was not
stinted; everything was provided. Nothing was done too hurriedly, yet
everything was purchased, manufactured, collected, and compounded with
the utmost despatch consistent with efficiency and means. Should it fail
of success in its errand of rapid transit to Ujiji and back, it must
simply happen from an accident which could not be controlled. So much
for the _personnel_ of the Expedition and its purpose, until its _point
de mire_ be reached.
We left Bagamoyo the attraction of all the curious, with much eclat, and
defiled up a narrow lane shaded almost to twilight by the dense umbrage
of two parallel hedges of mimosas. We were all in the highest spirits.
The soldiers sang, the kirangozi lifted his voice into a loud bellowing
note, and fluttered the American flag, which told all on-lookers, "Lo, a
Musungu's caravan!" and my heart, I thought, palpitated much too quickly
for the sober face of a leader. But I could not check it; the enthusiasm
of youth still clung to me--despite my travels; my pulses bounded with
the full glow of staple health; behind me were the troubles which had
harassed me for over two months. With that dishonest son of a Hindi,
Soor Hadji Palloo, I had said my last word; of the blatant rabble, of
Arabs, Banyans, and Baluches I had taken my last look; with the Jesuits
of the French Mission I had exchanged farewells, and before me beamed
the sun of promise as he sped towards the Occident. Loveliness glowed
around me. I saw fertile fields, riant vegetation, strange trees--I
heard the cry of cricket and pee-wit, and sibilant sound of many
insects, all of which seemed to tell me, "At last you are started." What
could I do but lift my face toward the pure-glowing sky, and cry, "God
be thanked!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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