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 next sultan's tembe through whose territory we marched, this being
on the 30th May, was at Kididimo, but four miles from Bihawna. The road
led through a flat elongated plain, lying between two lengthy hilly
ridges, thickly dotted with the giant forms of the baobab. Kididimo is
exceedingly bleak in aspect. Even the faces of the Wagogo seemed to have
contracted a bleak hue from the general bleakness around. The water of
the pits obtained in the neighbourhood had an execrable flavor, and two
donkeys sickened and died in less than an hour from its effects.
Man suffered nausea and a general irritability of the system, and
accordingly revenged himself by cursing the country and its imbecile
ruler most heartily. The climax came, however, when Bombay reported,
after an attempt to settle the Muhongo, that the chief's head had grown
big since he heard that the Musungu had come, and that its "bigness"
could not be reduced unless he could extract ten doti as tribute. Though
the demand was large, I was not in a humour--being feeble, and almost
nerveless, from repeated attacks of the Mukunguru--to dispute the sum:
consequently it was paid without many words. But the Arabs continued the
whole afternoon negotiating, and at the end had to pay eight doti each.
Between Kididimo and Nyambwa, the district of the Sultan Pembera Pereh,
was a broad and lengthy forest and jungle inhabited by the elephant,
rhinoceros, zebra, deer, antelope, and giraffe. Starting at dawn of
the 31st; we entered the jungle, whose dark lines and bosky banks were
clearly visible from our bower at Kididimo; and, travelling for two
hours, halted for rest and breakfast, at pools of sweet water surrounded
by tracts of vivid green verdure, which were a great resort for the wild
animals of the jungle, whose tracks were numerous and recent. A narrow
nullah, shaded deeply with foliage, afforded excellent retreats from
the glaring sunshine. At meridian, our thirst quenched, our hunger
satisfied, our gourds refilled, we set out from the shade into the
heated blaze of hot noon. The path serpentined in and out of jungle, and
thin forest, into open tracts of grass bleached white as stubble, into
thickets of gums and thorns, which emitted an odour as rank as a stable;
through clumps of wide-spreading mimosa and colonies of baobab, through
a country teeming with noble game, which, though we saw them frequently,
were yet as safe from our rifles as if we had been on the Indian Ocean.
A terekeza, such as we were now making, admits of no delay. Water we
had left behind at noon: until noon of the next day not a drop was to be
obtained; and unless we marched fast and long on this day, raging
thirst would demoralize everybody. So for six long weary hours we toiled
bravely; and at sunset we camped, and still a march of two hours, to be
done before the sun was an hour high, intervened between us and our camp
at Nyambwa. That night the men bivouacked under the trees, surrounded by
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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