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
Bombay and Uledi were far behind, with the most jaded donkeys. Shaw
was in charge of the cart, and his experiences were most bitter, as he
informed me he had expended a whole vocabulary of stormy abuse known
to sailors, and a new one which he had invented ex tempore. He did not
arrive until two o'clock next morning, and was completely worn out.
Another halt was fixed at Msuwa, that we and our animals might
recuperate. The chief of the village, a white man in everything but
colour, sent me and mine the fattest broad-tailed sheep of his
flock, with five measures of matama grain. The mutton was excellent,
unapproachable. For his timely and needful present I gave him two doti,
and amused him with an exhibition of the wonderful mechanism of the
Winchester rifle, and my breechloading revolvers.
He and his people were intelligent enough to comprehend the utility of
these weapons at an emergency, and illustrated in expressive pantomime
the powers they possessed against numbers of people armed only with
spears and bows, by extending their arms with an imaginary gun and
describing a clear circle. "Verily," said they, "the Wasungu are far
wiser than the Washensi. What heads they have! What wonderful things
they make! Look at their tents, their guns, their time-pieces, their
clothes, and that little rolling thing (the cart) which carries more
than five men,---que!"
On the 10th, recovered from the excessive strain of the last march, the
caravan marched out of Msuwa, accompanied by the hospitable villagers
as far as their stake defence, receiving their unanimous "Kwaheris."
Outside the village the march promised to be less arduous than between
Imbiki and Msuwa. After crossing a beautiful little plain intersected
by a dry gully or mtoni, the route led by a few cultivated fields, where
the tillers greeted us with one grand unwinking stare, as if fascinated.
Soon after we met one of those sights common in part of the world, to
wit a chain slave-gang, bound east. The slaves did not appear to be
in any way down-hearted on the contrary, they seemed imbued with the
philosophic jollity of the jolly servant of Martin Chuzzlewit. Were it
not for their chains, it would have been difficult to discover master
from slave; the physiognomic traits were alike--the mild benignity with
which we were regarded was equally visible on all faces. The chains were
ponderous--they might have held elephants captive; but as the slaves
carried nothing but themselves, their weight could not have been
insupportable.
The jungle was scant on this march, and though in some places the packs
met with accidents, they were not such as seriously to retard progress.
By 10 A.M. we were in camp in the midst of an imposing view of green
sward and forest domed by a cloudless sky. We had again pitched our camp
in the wilderness, and, as is the custom of caravans, fired two shots to
warn any Washensi having grain to sell, that we were willing to trade.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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