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 following morning found us much fatigued after the long marches
from Ugombo, and generally disposed to take advantage of the precious
luxuries Mpwapwa offered to caravans fresh from the fly-plagued lands
of the Waseguhha and Wadoe. Sheikh Thani--clever but innocently-speaking
old Arab--was encamped under the grateful umbrage of a huge Mtamba
sycamore, and had been regaling himself with fresh milk, luscious
mutton, and rich bullock humps, ever since his arrival here, two days
before; and, as he informed me, it did not suit his views to quit such
a happy abundance so soon for the saline nitrous water of Marenga Mkali,
with its several terekezas, and manifold disagreeables. "No!" said he to
me, emphatically, "better stop here two or three days, give your tired
animals some rest; collect all the pagazis you can, fill your inside
with fresh milk, sweet potatoes, beef, mutton, ghee, honey, beans,
matama, maweri, and nuts;--then, Inshallah! we shall go together through
Ugogo without stopping anywhere." As the advice tallied accurately with
my own desired and keen appetite for the good things he named, he had
not long to wait for my assent to his counsel. "Ugogo," continued he,
"is rich with milk and honey--rich in flour, beans and almost every
eatable thing; and, Inshallah! before another week is gone we shall be
in Ugogo!"
I had heard from passing caravans so many extremely favourable reports
respecting Ugogo and its productions that it appeared to me a very Land
of Promise, and I was most anxious to refresh my jaded stomach with some
of the precious esculents raised in Ugogo; but when I heard that Mpwapwa
also furnished some of those delicate eatables, and good things, most of
the morning hours were spent in inducing the slow-witted people to part
with them; and when, finally, eggs, milk, honey, mutton, ghee, ground
matama and beans had been collected in sufficient quantities to produce
a respectable meal, my keenest attention and best culinary talents were
occupied for a couple of hours in converting this crude supply into
a breakfast which could be accepted by and befit a stomach at once
fastidious and famished, such as mine was. The subsequent healthy
digestion of it proved my endeavours to have been eminently successful.
At the termination of this eventful day, the following remark was jotted
down in my diary: "Thank God! After fifty-seven days of living
upon matama porridge and tough goat, I have enjoyed with unctuous
satisfaction a real breakfast and dinner."
It was in one of the many small villages which are situated upon the
slopes of the Mpwapwa that a refuge and a home for Farquhar was found
until he should be enabled by restored health to start to join us at
Unyanyembe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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