How I Found Livingstone - Henry M. Stanley (best ereader for comics txt) 📗
- Author: Henry M. Stanley
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at a village belonging to a chief of the Wahiyou, situate eight
days’ march south of the Rovuma, and overlooking the watershed
of the Lake Nyassa. The territory lying between the Rovuma River
and this Wahiyou village was an uninhabited wilderness, during
the transit of which Livingstone and his expedition suffered
considerably from hunger and desertion of men.
Early in August, 1866, the Doctor came to the country of Mponda,
a chief who dwelt near the Lake Nyassa. On the road thither, two
of the liberated slaves deserted him. Here also, Wekotani, a
protege of the Doctor, insisted upon his discharge, alleging as
an excuse—an excuse which the Doctor subsequently found to be
untrue—that he had found his brother. He also stated that his
family lived on the east side of the Nyassa Lake. He further
stated that Mponda’s favourite wife was his sister. Perceiving
that Wekotani was unwilling to go with him further, the Doctor
took him to Mponda, who now saw and heard of him for the first
time, and, having furnished the ungrateful boy with enough cloth
and beads to keep him until his “big brother” should call for him,
left him with the chief, after first assuring himself that he
would receive honourable treatment from him. The Doctor also
gave Wekotanti writing-paper—as he could read and write, being
accomplishments acquired at Bombay, where he had been put to
school—so that, should he at any time feel disposed, he might
write to his English friends, or to himself. The Doctor further
enjoined him not to join in any of the slave raids usually made
by his countrymen, the men of Nyassa, on their neighbours. Upon
finding that his application for a discharge was successful,
Wekotani endeavoured to induce Chumah, another protege of the
Doctor’s, and a companion, or chum, of Wekotani, to leave the
Doctor’s service and proceed with him, promising, as a bribe,
a wife and plenty of pombe from his “big brother.” Chumah, upon
referring the matter to the Doctor, was advised not to go, as he
(the Doctor) strongly suspected that Wekotani wanted only to make
him his slave. Chumah wisely withdrew from his tempter. From
Mponda’s, the Doctor proceeded to the heel of the Nyassa, to the
village of a Babisa chief, who required medicine for a skin
disease. With his usual kindness, he stayed at this chief’s
village to treat his malady.
While here, a half-caste Arab arrived from the western shore of the
lake, and reported that he had been plundered by a band of Mazitu,
at a place which the Doctor and Musa, chief of the Johanna men,
were very well aware was at least 150 miles north-north-west of
where they were then stopping. Musa, however, for his own reasons
—which will appear presently—eagerly listened to the Arab’s tale,
and gave full credence to it. Having well digested its horrible
details, he came to the Doctor to give him the full benefit of what
he had heard with such willing ears. The traveller patiently
listened to the narrative, which lost nothing of its portentous
significance through Musa’s relation, and then asked Musa if he
believed it. “Yes,” answered Musa, readily; “he tell me true,
true. I ask him good, and he tell me true, true.” The Doctor,
however, said he did not believe it, for the Mazitu would not have
been satisfied with merely plundering a man, they would have
murdered him; but suggested, in order to allay the fears of his
Moslem subordinate, that they should both proceed to the chief
with whom they were staying, who, being a sensible man, would be
able to advise them as to the probability or improbability of the
tale being correct. Together, they proceeded to the Babisa chief,
who, when he had heard the Arab’s story, unhesitatingly denounced
the Arab as a liar, and his story without the least foundation in
fact; giving as a reason that, if the Mazitu had been lately in
that vicinity, he should have heard of it soon enough.
But Musa broke out with “No, no, Doctor; no, no, no; I no want to
go to Mazitu. I no want Mazitu to kill me. I want to see my
father, my mother, my child, in Johanna. I want no Mazitu.”
These are Musa’s words ipsissima verba.
To which the Doctor replied, “I don’t want the Mazitu to kill me
either; but, as you are afraid of them, I promise to go straight
west until we get far past the beat of the Mazitu.”
Musa was not satisfied, but kept moaning and sorrowing, saying,
“If we had two hundred guns with us I would go; but our small
party of men they will attack by night, and kill all.”
The Doctor repeated his promise, “But I will not go near them;
I will go west.”
As soon as he turned his face westward, Musa and the Johanna men
ran away in a body.
The Doctor says, in commenting upon Musa’s conduct, that he felt
strongly tempted to shoot Musa and another ringleader, but was,
nevertheless, glad that he did not soil his hands with their vile
blood. A day or two afterwards, another of his men—Simon Price by
name—came to the Doctor with the same tale about the Mazitu, but,
compelled by the scant number of his people to repress all such
tendencies to desertion and faint-heartedness, the Doctor silenced
him at once, and sternly forbade him to utter the name of the
Mazitu any more.
Had the natives not assisted him, he must have despaired of ever
being able to penetrate the wild and unexplored interior which he
was now about to tread. “Fortunately,” as the Doctor says with
unction, “I was in a country now, after leaving the shores of
Nyassa, which the foot of the slave-trader has not trod; it was a
new and virgin land, and of course, as I have always found in such
cases, the natives were really good and hospitable, and for very
small portions of cloth my baggage was conveyed from village to
village by them.” In many other ways the traveller, in his
extremity, was kindly treated by the yet unsophisticated and
innocent natives.
On leaving this hospitable region in the early part of December,
1866, the Doctor entered a country where the Mazitu had exercised
their customary marauding propensities. The land was swept clean
of provisions and cattle, and the people had emigrated to other
countries, beyond the bounds of those ferocious plunderers.
Again the Expedition was besieged by pinching hunger from which
they suffered; they had recourse to the wild fruits which some
parts of the country furnished. At intervals the condition of
the hard-pressed band was made worse by the heartless desertion
of some of its members, who more than once departed with the
Doctor’s personal kit, changes of clothes, linen, &c. With more
or less misfortunes constantly dogging his footsteps, he traversed
in safety the countries of the Babisa, Bobemba, Barungu, Ba-ulungu,
and Lunda.
In the country of Lunda lives the famous Cazembe, who was first
made known to Europeans by Dr. Lacerda, the Portuguese traveller.
Cazembe is a most intelligent prince; he is a tall, stalwart man,
who wears a peculiar kind of dress, made of crimson print, in the
form of a prodigious kilt. In this state dress, King Cazembe
received Dr. Livingstone, surrounded by his chiefs and body-guards.
A chief, who had been deputed by the King and elders to discover
all about the white man, then stood up before the assembly, and
in a loud voice gave the result of the inquiry he had instituted.
He had heard that the white man had come to look for waters,
for rivers, and seas; though he could not understand what the
white man could want with such things, he had no doubt that the
object was good. Then Cazembe asked what the Doctor proposed
doing, and where he thought of going. The Doctor replied that
he had thought of proceeding south, as he had heard of lakes
and rivers being in that direction. Cazembe asked, “What can you
want to go there for? The water is close here. There is plenty
of large water in this neighbourhood.” Before breaking up the
assembly, Cazembe gave orders to let the white man go where he
would through his country undisturbed and unmolested. He was the
first Englishman he had seen, he said, and he liked him.
Shortly after his introduction to the King, the Queen entered the
large house, surrounded by a body-guard of Amazons with spears.
She was a fine, tall, handsome young woman, and evidently thought
she was about to make an impression upon the rustic white man, for
she had clothed herself after a most royal fashion, and was armed
with a ponderous spear. But her appearance—so different from what
the Doctor had imagined—caused him to laugh, which entirely
spoiled the effect intended; for the laugh of the Doctor was so
contagious, that she herself was the first to imitate it, and the
Amazons, courtier-like, followed suit. Much disconcerted by this,
the Queen ran back, followed by her obedient damsels—a retreat
most undignified and unqueenlike, compared with her majestic advent
into the Doctor’s presence. But Livingstone will have much to say
about his reception at this court, and about this interesting King
and Queen; and who can so well relate the scenes he witnessed, and
which belong exclusively to him, as he himself?
Soon after his arrival in the country of Lunda, or Londa, and
before he had entered the district ruled over by Cazembe, he had
crossed a river called the Chambezi, which was quite an important
stream. The similarity of the name with that large and noble
river south, which will be for ever connected with his name, misled
Livingstone at that time, and he, accordingly, did not pay to it
the attention it deserved, believing that the Chambezi was but the
headwaters of the Zambezi, and consequently had no bearing or
connection with the sources of the river of Egypt, of which he was
in search. His fault was in relying too implicitly upon the
correctness of Portuguese information. This error it cost him
many months of tedious labour and travel to rectify.
From the beginning of 1867—the time of his arrival at Cazembe’s—
till the middle of March, 1869—the time of his arrival at Ujiji—
he was mostly engaged in correcting the errors and misrepresentations
of the Portuguese travellers. The Portuguese, in speaking of the
River Chambezi, invariably spoke of it as “our own Zambezi,”—
that is, the Zambezi which flows through the Portuguese
possessions of the Mozambique. “In going to Cazembe from
Nyassa,” said they, “you will cross our own Zambezi.” Such
positive and reiterated information—given not only orally, but
in their books and maps—was naturally confusing. When the Doctor
perceived that what he saw and what they described were at
variance, out of a sincere wish to be correct, and lest he might
have been mistaken himself, he started to retravel the ground he
had travelled before. Over and over again he traversed the several
countries watered by the several rivers of the complicated water
system, like an uneasy spirit. Over and over again he asked the
same questions from the different peoples he met, until he was
obliged to desist, lest they might say, “The man is mad; he has
got water on the brain!”
But his travels and tedious labours in Lunda and the adjacent
countries have established beyond doubt—first, that the Chambezi
is a totally distinct river from the Zambezi of the Portuguese;
and, secondly, that the Chambezi, starting from about latitude
11 degrees south, is no other than the most southerly feeder of
the great Nile; thus giving that famous river a length of over
2,000 miles of direct latitude; making
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