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 Sultana is the eldest daughter of the famous Kisabengo, a name
infamous throughout the neighbouring countries of Udoe, Ukami, Ukwere,
Kingaru, Ukwenni, and Kiranga-Wanna, for his kidnapping propensities.
Kisabengo was another Theodore on a small scale. Sprung from humble
ancestry, he acquired distinction for his personal strength, his powers
of harangue, and his amusing and versatile address, by which he gained
great ascendency over fugitive slaves, and was chosen a leader among
them. Fleeing from justice, which awaited him at the hands of the
Zanzibar Sultan, he arrived in Ukami, which extended at that time from
Ukwere to Usagara, and here he commenced a career of conquest, the
result of which was the cession by the Wakami of an immense tract of
fertile country, in the valley of the Ungerengeri. On its most desirable
site, with the river flowing close under the walls, he built his
capital, and called it Simbamwenni, which means "The Lion," or the
strongest, City. In old age the successful robber and kidnapper
changed his name of Kisabengo, which had gained such a notoriety, to
Simbamwenni, after his town; and when dying, after desiring that his
eldest daughter should succeed him, he bestowed the name of the town
upon her also, which name of Simbamwenni the Sultana now retains and is
known by.
While crossing a rapid stream, which, as I said before flowed close
to the walls, the inhabitants of Simbamwenni had a fine chance of
gratifying their curiosity of seeing the "Great Musungu," whose several
caravans had preceded him, and who unpardonably, because unlicensed, had
spread a report of his great wealth and power. I was thus the object of
a universal stare. At one time on the banks there were considerably over
a thousand natives going through the several tenses and moods of the
verb "to stare," or exhibiting every phase of the substantive, viz.--the
stare peremptory, insolent, sly, cunning, modest, and casual. The
warriors of the Sultana, holding in one hand the spear, the bow, and
sheaf or musket, embraced with the other their respective friends, like
so many models of Nisus and Euryalus, Theseus and Pirithous, Damon and
Pythias, or Achilles and Patroclus, to whom they confidentially related
their divers opinions upon my dress and colour. The words "Musungu kuba"
had as much charm for these people as the music of the Pied Piper had
for the rats of Hamelin, since they served to draw from within the walls
across their stream so large a portion of the population; and when I
continued the journey to the Ungerengeri, distant four miles, I feared
that the Hamelin catastrophe might have to be repeated before I could
rid myself of them. But fortunately for my peace of mind, they finally
proved vincible under the hot sun, and the distance we had to go to
camp.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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