Stanley in Africa: The Wonderful Discoveries and Thrilling Adventures of the Great African Explorer, and Other Travelers, Pioneers and MissionariesBoyd, James P. (James Penny)
History
Stanley in Africa: The Wonderful Discoveries and Thrilling Adventures of the Great African Explorer, and Other Travelers, Pioneers and Missionaries
Boyd, James P. (James Penny)
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton), 1841-1904
On Nov. 9, 1887, Stanley says, “We entered the country of the powerful
Chief Mazamboni. The villages were scattered so thickly that no road
except through them could be found. The natives sighted us, but we were
prepared. We seized a hill as soon as we arrived in the center of a
mass of villages, and built a zareba as fast as billhooks could cut the
brushwood. The war cries were terrible from hill to hill, pealing across
the intervening valleys. The people gathered in hundreds at every point,
war horns and drums announcing the struggle. After a slight skirmish,
ending in our capture of a cow, the first beef we had tasted since we
left the ocean, the night passed peacefully, both sides preparing for the
morrow.
“Here Mr. Stanley narrates how negotiations with natives failed,
Mazamboni declining a peace offering, and how a detachment of 40 persons,
led by Lieutenant Stairs, and another of 30, under command of Mr.
Jephson, with sharpshooters, left the zareba and assaulted and carried
the villages, driving the natives into a general rout. The march was
resumed on the 12th and here were constant little fights.
“On the afternoon of the 13th,” says Mr. Stanley, “we sighted the Nyanza,
with Kavalli, the objective point of the expedition. Six miles off I had
told the men to prepare to see the Nyanza. They murmured and doubted,
saying, “Why does the master continually talk this way? Nyanza indeed.”
When they saw the Nyanza below them, many came to kiss my hands. We were
now at an altitude of 5,200 feet above the sea, with the Albert Nyanza
2,900 feet below, in one degree twenty minutes. The south end of the
Nyanza lay largely mapped for about six miles south of this position and
right across to the eastern shore. Every dent in its low, flat shore
was visible, and traced like a silver snake on the dark ground was the
tributary Lanilki, flowing into the Albert Nyanza from the south-west.
“After a short halt to enjoy the prospect, we commenced the rugged and
stony descent. Before the rear guard had descended 100 feet the natives
from the plateau poured after them, keeping the rear guard busy until
within a few hundred feet of the Nyanza plain. We camped at the foot of
the plateau wall, the aneroids reading 2,500 feet above the sea level. A
night attack was made, but the sentries sufficed to drive our assailants
off.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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