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 swamp with its horrors having left a durable impression upon our
minds; no one was disposed to forget its fatigues, nor the nausea of
travel which it almost engendered. Subsequently, we had to remember its
passage still more vividly, and to regret that we had undertaken the
journey during the Masika season, when the animals died from this date
by twos and threes, almost every day, until but five sickly worn-out
beasts remained; when the Wangwana, soldiers, and pagazis sickened of
diseases innumerable; when I myself was finally compelled to lie a-bed
with an attack of acute dysentery which brought me to the verge of the
grave. I suffered more, perhaps, than I might have done had I taken the
proper medicine, but my over-confidence in that compound, called "Collis
Brown's Chlorodyne," delayed the cure which ultimately resulted from a
judicious use of Dover's powder. In no one single case of diarrhoea
or acute dysentery had this "Chlorodyne," about which so much has been
said, and written, any effect of lessening the attack whatever, though
I used three bottles. To the dysentery contracted during, the transit of
the Makata swamp, only two fell victims, and those were a pagazi and my
poor little dog "Omar," my companion from India.
The only tree of any prominence in the Makata valley was the Palmyra
palm (Borassus flabelliformis), and this grew in some places in numbers
sufficient to be called a grove; the fruit was not ripe while we passed,
otherwise we might have enjoyed it as a novelty. The other vegetation
consisted of the several species of thorn bush, and the graceful
parachute-topped and ever-green mimosa.
The 4th of May we were ascending a gentle slope towards the important
village of Rehenneko, the first village near to which we encamped in
Usagara. It lay at the foot of the mountain, and its plenitude and
mountain air promised us comfort and health. It was a square, compact
village, surrounded by a thick wall of mud, enclosing cone-topped huts,
roofed with bamboo and holcus-stalks; and contained a population of
about a thousand souls. It has several wealthy and populous neighbours,
whose inhabitants are independent enough in their manner, but not
unpleasantly so. The streams are of the purest water, fresh, and
pellucid as crystal, bubbling over round pebbles and clean gravel, with
a music delightful to hear to the traveller in search of such a sweetly
potable element.
The bamboo grows to serviceable size in the neighbourhood of Rehenneko,
strong enough for tent and banghy poles; and in numbers sufficient to
supply an army. The mountain slopes are densely wooded with trees that
might supply very good timber for building purposes.
We rested four days at this pleasant spot, to recruit ourselves, and to
allow the sick and feeble time to recover a little before testing their
ability in the ascent of the Usagara mountains.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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