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
One, two, three, and four hours were passed by me in the utmost
impatience, waiting, but in vain, for Shaw. Having a long march before
us, I could wait no longer, but went to meet his party myself. About a
quarter of mile from the ford I met the van of the laggards--stout
burly Chowpereh--and, O cartmakers, listen! he carried the cart on his
head--wheels, shafts, body, axle, and all complete; he having found that
carrying it was much easier than drawing it. The sight was such a damper
to my regard for it as an experiment, that the cart was wheeled into the
depths of the tall reeds, and there left. The central figure was Shaw
himself, riding at a gait which seemed to leave it doubtful on my mind
whether he or his animal felt most sleepy. Upon expostulating with him
for keeping the caravan so long waiting when there was a march on hand,
in a most peculiar voice--which he always assumed when disposed to be
ugly-tempered--he said he had done the best he could; but as I had
seen the solemn pace at which he rode, I felt dubious about his best
endeavours; and of course there was a little scene, but the young
European mtongi of an East African expedition must needs sup with the
fellows he has chosen.
We arrived at Madete at 4 P.M., minus two donkeys, which had stretched
their weary limbs in death. We had crossed the Mukondokwa about 3 P.M.,
and after taking its bearings and course, I made sure that its rise took
place near a group of mountains about forty miles north by west of Nguru
Peak. Our road led W.N.W., and at this place finally diverged from the
river.
On the 14th, after a march of seven miles over hills whose sandstone
and granite formation cropped visibly here and there above the surface,
whose stony and dry aspect seemed reflected in every bush and plant, and
having gained an altitude of about eight hundred feet above the flow
of the Mukondokwa, we sighted the Lake of Ugombo--a grey sheet of water
lying directly at the foot of the hill, from whose summit we gazed at
the scene. The view was neither beautiful nor pretty, but what I should
call refreshing; it afforded a pleasant relief to the eyes fatigued
from dwelling on the bleak country around. Besides, the immediate
neighbourhood of the lake was too tame to call forth any enthusiasm;
there were no grandly swelling mountains, no smiling landscapes--nothing
but a dun-brown peak, about one thousand feet high above the surface of
the lake at its western extremity, from which the lake derived its name,
Ugombo; nothing but a low dun-brown irregular range, running parallel
with its northern shore at the distance of a mile; nothing but a low
plain stretching from its western shore far away towards the Mpwapwa
Mountains and Marenga Mkali, then apparent to us from our coign of
vantage, from which extensive scene of dun-brownness we were glad to
rest our eyes on the quiet grey water beneath.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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