Stanley in Africa: The Wonderful Discoveries and Thrilling Adventures of the Great African Explorer, and Other Travelers, Pioneers and MissionariesBoyd, James P. (James Penny)
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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
The next morning the king’s war drums suddenly sounded the breaking up
of his immense encampment on the shore, and Stanley discovered it to be
on fire in a hundred places. All had to flee for their lives, and he
thinks hundreds must have perished in the confusion. The king denied
that he was responsible for an order which resulted in such a horror,
but Stanley thought he was guilty of a piece of unwarranted cruelty,
which illy became his new profession of faith. From that time on, his
views began to change. Ingenious, enterprising, intelligent he found
them, above any other African tribe he had met with. Their scrupulous
cleanliness, neatness, and modesty cover a multitude of faults; but for
the rest, “they are crafty, fraudful, deceiving, lying, thievish knaves,
taken as a whole, and seem to be born with an uncontrollable love of
gaining wealth by robbery, violence and murder.” Notwithstanding first
impressions to the contrary, they are more allied to the Choctaw than
the Anglo-Saxon, and are simply clever savages, whom prosperity and a
favorable climate have helped several stages on the long, toilsome road
towards civilization. There is no call upon us after all to envy their
luxurious lives of ease and plenty under the shade of their bowers of
vine, fig, and plantain trees——
“For we hold the gray Barbarian lower than the Christian child.”
Nevertheless, Uganda, from its fertility and its situation at the outlet
of the great fresh-water sea of the Nyanza, must be regarded as one of
the most hopeful fields of future commercial enterprise, and its people
as among the most promising subjects for missionary and philanthropic
efforts in Central Africa.
As for the mighty Mtesa, little has been seen or heard of him since his
friend “Stamlee” parted from him. Colonel Chaille Long, late of the
Confederate Army, afterwards in the service of Egypt, who had seen him a
few months before, did not think he would ever turn out to be a humane
monarch. But that he has not lost his interest in his white friends
and in the marvels of civilization was shown in the spring of 1880,
when a deputation of four of his chiefs appeared in London on a tour of
observation.
De Bellefonds, mentioned above as meeting Stanley at King Mtesa’s court,
was murdered, with all his party, by the Unyoro, when on his way back to
Gondokoro. Colonel Long went down the Victoria Nile from Lake Victoria
Nyanza, and midway between the Victoria and Albert Nyanza discovered
another great lake which he called Lake Ibrahim.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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