The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873: Continued By A Narrative Of His Last Moments And Sufferings, Obtained From His Faithful Servants Chuma And SusiLivingstone, David
History
The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873: Continued By A Narrative Of His Last Moments And Sufferings, Obtained From His Faithful Servants Chuma And Susi
Livingstone, David
Africa, Central -- Description and travel
In conversing with a prince at Johanna, one of the Comoro islands lying
off the north end of Madagascar, he took occasion to extol the wisdom of
the Arabs in keeping strict watch over their wives. On suggesting that
their extreme jealousy made them more like jailers than friends of their
wives, or, indeed, that they thus reduced themselves to the level of the
inferior animals, and each was like the bull of a herd and not like a
reasonable man--"fuguswa"--and that they gave themselves a vast deal of
trouble for very small profit; he asserted that the jealousy was
reasonable because all women were bad, they could not avoid going
astray. And on remarking that this might be the case with Arab women,
but certainly did not apply to English women, for though a number were
untrustworthy, the majority deserved all the confidence their husbands
could place in them, he reiterated that women were universally bad. He
did not believe that women ever would be good; and the English allowing
their wives to gad about with faces uncovered, only showed their
weakness, ignorance, and unwisdom.
The tendency and spirit of the age are more and more towards the
undertaking of industrial enterprises of such magnitude and skill as to
require the capital of the world for their support and execution--as the
Pacific Railroad, Suez Canal, Mont Cenis Tunnel, and railways in India
and Western Asia, Euphrates Railroad, &c. The extension and use of
railroads, steamships, telegraphs, break down nationalities and bring
peoples geographically remote into close connection commercially and
politically. They make the world one, and capital, like water, tends to
a common level.
[Geologists will be glad to find that the Doctor took pains to arrange
his observations at this time in the following form.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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