The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868Livingstone, David
History
The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868
Livingstone, David
Africa, Central -- Description and travel
In the evening we reached the village of Cherekalongwa on the brook
Pamchololo, and were very jovially received by the headman with beer.
He says that Mukate,[19] Kabinga, and Mponda alone supply the
slave-traders now by raids on the Manganja, but they go S.W. to the
Maravi, who, impoverished by a Mazitu raid, sell each other as well.
_14th, September, 1866._--At Cherekalongwa's (who has a skin disease,
believed by him to have been derived from eating fresh-water turtles),
we were requested to remain one day in order that he might see us. He
had heard much about us; had been down the Shire, and as far as
Mosambique, but never had an Englishman in his town before. As the
heat is great we were glad of the rest and beer, with which he very
freely supplied us.
I saw the skin of a Phenembe, a species of lizard which devours
chickens; here it is named Salka. It had been flayed by a cut up the
back--body, 12 inches; across belly, 10 inches.
After nearly giving up the search for Dr. Roscher's point of reaching
the Lake--because no one, either Arab or native, had the least idea of
either Nusseewa or Makawa, the name given to the place--I discovered
it in Lessefa, the accentuated _e_ being sounded as our _e_ in _set_.
This word would puzzle a German philologist, as being the origin of
Nussewa, but the Waiyau pronounce it Losewa, the Arabs Lussewa, and
Roscher's servant transformed the _L_ and _e_ into _N_ and _ee_, hence
Nusseewa. In confirmation of this rivulet Lesefa, which is opposite
Kotakota, or, as the Arabs pronounce it, Nkotakota, the chief is
Mangkaka (Makawa), or as there is a confusion of names as to chief it
may be Mataka, whose town and district is called Moembe, the town
Pamoembe = Mamemba.
I rest content with Kingomango so far verifying the place at which he
arrived two months after we had discovered Lake Nyassa. He deserved
all the credit due to finding the way thither, but he travelled as an
Arab, and no one suspected him to be anything else. Our visits have
been known far and wide, and great curiosity excited; but Dr. Roscher
merits the praise only of preserving his _incognito_ at a distance
from Kilwa: his is almost the only case known of successfully assuming
the Arab guise--Burckhardt is the exception. When Mr. Palgrave came to
Muscat, or a town in Oman where our political agent Col. Desborough
was stationed, he was introduced to that functionary by an interpreter
as Hajee Ali, &c. Col. Desborough replied, "You are no Hajee Ali, nor
anything else but Gifford Palgrave, with whom I was schoolfellow at
the Charter House." Col. Desborough said he knew him at once, from a
peculiar way of holding his head, and Palgrave begged him not to
disclose his real character to his interpreter, on whom, and some
others, he had been imposing. I was told this by Mr. Dawes, a
Lieutenant in the Indian navy, who accompanied Colonel Pelly in his
visit to the Nejed, Riad, &c, and took observations for him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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