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
Below the confluence of the Leeba with the Zambesi, the abundance of game
on the banks of the river is more remarkable. The air is found darkened
by the flight of innumerable water fowl, fish-hawks, cranes, and waders
of many varieties. The earth teems with insect life and the waters swarm
with fish life. As an instance of the prodigious quantity and exceeding
tameness of wild animals here, Livingstone mentions that “eighty-one
buffaloes marched in slow procession before our fire one evening within
gun shot, and herds of splendid deer sat by day without fear at two
hundred yards distance, while all through the night the lions were heard
roaring close to the camp.” In the heat of the day sleek elands, tall as
ordinary horses, with black glossy bodies and delicately striped skins,
browsed or reclined in the shade of the forest trees. Troops of graceful,
agile antelopes, of similar species, scour across the pasture lands to
seek the cool retreat of some deep dell in the woods, or a solitary
rhinoceros comes grunting down to the bank in search of some soft place
where he can roll his horny hide in the mud. The trees themselves have a
variety and beauty which the sombre evergreen foliage of higher latitudes
lacks, and which is equally wanting in the dust colored groves of the
desert further south.
The voyage down the stream is by no means without incident. The river
swarms with hippopotami and crocodiles. The former lead a lazy sleepy
life by day in the bottom of the stream, coming now and then to the
surface to breathe and exchange a snort of recognition with their
acquaintances, and are only too well pleased to let the passer by go in
peace, if he will but let them alone. In districts where they are hunted,
they are wary and take care to push no more than the tip of their snouts
out of the water, or lie in some bed of rushes where they breathe so
softly that they cannot be heard. But in a place where they have not been
disturbed, they can be seen swimming about, and sometimes the female
hippopotamus can be seen with the little figure of her calf floating on
her neck. Certain elderly males who are expelled from the herd become
soured in temper and are dangerous to encounter, and so also is a mother
if robbed of her young. Such a one made an attack on Livingstone’s boat,
when descending the Zambesi in 1855, butting it from beneath until the
fore end stood out of water, and throwing one of the natives into the
stream. By diving and holding on to the grass at the bottom, while the
angry beast was looking for him on the surface, he escaped its vengeance
and, the boat being fortunately close to the shore, the rest of the
crew got off unharmed. The alligators of this part of the Zambesi are
peculiarly rapacious and aggressive, and the chances are that anybody
unlucky enough to fall into the river will find his way into the mouth
of a watchful crocodile. Every year these ferocious reptiles carry off
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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