How I Found Livingstone - Henry M. Stanley (best ereader for comics txt) 📗

dying Sebituane’s regard for the little boy

“Robert.” Mrs. Livingstone and family were taken to the Cape of

Good Hope, and thence sent to England, where Robert was put in the

charge of a tutor; but wearied of inactivity, when he was about

eighteen, he left Scotland and came to Natal, whence he endeavoured

to reach his father. Unsuccessful in his attempt, he took ship and

sailed for New York, and enlisted in the Northern Army, in a New

Hampshire regiment of Volunteers, discarding his own name of Robert

Moffatt Livingstone, and taking that of Rupert Vincent that his

tutor, who seems to have been ignorant of his duties to the youth,

might not find him. From one of the battles before Richmond, he

was conveyed to a North Carolina hospital, where he died from his

wounds.

 

On the 7th of February we arrived at the Gombe, and camped near

one of its largest lakes. This lake is probably several miles in

length, and swarms with hippopotami and crocodiles.

 

From this camp I despatched Ferajji, the cook, and Chowpereh to

Unyanyembe, to bring the letters and medicines that were sent to

me from Zanzibar, and meet us at Ugunda, while the next day we moved

to our old quarters on the Gombe, where we were first introduced to

the real hunter’s paradise in Central Africa. The rain had

scattered the greater number of the herds, but there was plenty of

game in the vicinity. Soon after breakfast I took Khamisi and

Kalulu with me for a hunt. After a long walk we arrived near a

thin jungle, where I discovered the tracks of several animals—boar,

antelope, elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, and an unusual

number of imprints of the lion’s paw. Suddenly I heard Khamisi

say, “Master, master! here is a `simba!’ (lion);” and he came

up to me trembling with excitement and fear—for the young fellow

was an arrant coward—to point out the head of a beast, which could

be seen just above the tall grass, looking steadily towards us.

It immediately afterwards bounded from side to side, but the grass

was so high that it was impossible to tell exactly what it was.

Taking advantage of a tree in my front, I crept quietly onwards,

intending to rest the heavy rifle against it, as I was so weak

from the effects of several fevers that I felt myself utterly

incapable of supporting my rifle for a steady aim. But my

surprise was great when I cautiously laid it against the tree,

and then directed its muzzle to the spot where I had seen him

stand. Looking further away—to where the grass was thin and

scant—I saw the animal bound along at a great rate, and that

it was a lion: the noble monarch of the forest was in full

flight! From that moment I ceased to regard him as the

“mightiest among the brutes;” or his roar as anything more

fearful in broad daylight than a sucking dove’s.

 

The next day was also a halt, and unable to contain my longing

for the chase, where there used to be such a concourse of game

of all kinds, soon after morning coffee, and after despatching

a couple of men with presents to my friend Ma-manyara, of

ammonia-bottle memory, I sauntered out once more for the park.

Not five hundred yards from the camp, myself and men were suddenly

halted by hearing in our immediate vicinity, probably within

fifty yards or so, a chorus of roars, issuing from a triplet

of lions. Instinctively my fingers raised the two hammers, as

I expected a general onset on me; for though one lion might fly,

it was hardly credible that three should. While looking keenly

about I detected, within easy rifle-shot, a fine hartebeest,

trembling and cowering behind a tree, as if it expected the fangs

of the lion in its neck. Though it had its back turned to me, I

thought a bullet might plough its way to a vital part, and without

a moment’s hesitation I aimed and fired. The animal gave a

tremendous jump, as if it intended to take a flying leap through

the tree; but recovering itself it dashed through the underbrush

in a different direction from that in which I supposed the lions

to be, and I never saw it again, though I knew I had struck it

from the bloody trail it left; neither did I see nor hear anything

more of the lions. I searched far and wide over the park-land for

prey of some kind, but was compelled to return unsuccessful to camp.

 

Disgusted with my failure, we started a little after noon for

Manyara, at which place we were hospitably greeted by my friend,

who had sent men to tell me that his white brother must not halt

in the woods but must come to his village. “We received a present

of honey and food from the chief, which was most welcome to us in

our condition. Here was an instance of that friendly disposition

among Central African chiefs when they have not been spoiled by

the Arabs, which Dr. Livingstone found among the Babisa and

Ba-ulungu, and in Manyuema. I received the same friendly

recognition from all the chiefs, from Imrera, in Ukawendi,

to Unyanyembe, as I did from Ma-manyara.

 

On the 14th we arrived at Ugunda, and soon after we had established

ourselves comfortably in a hut which the chief lent us for our use,

in came Ferajji and Chowpereh, bringing with them Sarmean and Uledi

Manwa Sera, who, it will be recollected, were the two soldiers sent

to Zanzibar with letters and who should Sarmean have in charge but

the deserter Hamdallah, who decamped at Manyara, as we were going

to Ujiji. This fellow, it seems, had halted at Kigandu, and had

informed the chief and the doctor of the village that he had been

sent by the white man to take back the cloth left there for the

cure of Mabruk Saleem; and the simple chief had commanded it to

be given up to him upon his mere word, in consequence of which

the sick man had died.

 

Upon Sarmean’s arrival in Unyanyembe from Zanzibar, about fifty

days after the Expedition had departed for Ujiji the news he

received was that the white man (Shaw) was dead; and that a man

called Hamdallah, who had engaged himself as one of my guides,

but who had shortly after returned, was at Unyanyembe. He had

left him unmolested until the appearance of Ferajji and his

companion, when they at once, in a body, made a descent on his

hut and secured him. With the zeal which always distinguished

him in my service, Sarmean had procured a forked pole, between

the prongs of which the neck of the absconder was placed; and

a cross stick, firmly lashed, effectually prevented him from

relieving himself of the incumbrance attached to him so

deftly.

 

There were no less than seven packets of letters and newspapers

from Zanzibar, which had been collecting during my absence from

Unyanyembe. These had been intrusted at various times to the

chiefs of caravans, who had faithfully delivered them at my

tembe, according to their promise to the Consul. There was one

packet for me, which contained two or three letters for

Dr. Livingstone, to whom, of course, they were at once transferred,

with my congratulations. In the same packet there was also a

letter to me from the British Consul at Zanzibar requesting me

to take charge of Livingstone’s goods and do the best I could

to forward them on to him, dated 25th September, 1871, five days

after I left Unyanyembe on my apparently hopeless task.

 

“Well, Doctor,” said I to Livingstone, “the English Consul

requests me to do all I can to push forward your goods to you.

I am sorry that I did not get the authority sooner, for I should

have attempted it; but in the absence of these instructions I

have done the best I could by pushing you towards the goods.

The mountain has not been able to advance towards Mohammed,

but Mohammed has been compelled to advance towards the mountain.”

 

But Dr. Livingstone was too deeply engrossed in his own letters

from home, which were just a year old.

 

I received good and bad news from New York, but the good news was

subsequent, and wiped out all feelings that might have been evoked

had I received the bad only. But the newspapers, nearly a hundred

of them, New York, Boston, and London journals, were full of most

wonderful news. The Paris Commune was in arms against the National

Assembly; the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the ancient city Lutetia

Parisiorum had been set in flames by the blackguards of

Saint-Antoine! French troops massacring and murdering men,

women, and children; rampant diabolism, and incarnate revenge were

at work in the most beautiful city in the world! Fair women

converted into demons, and dragged by ruffianly soldiery through

the streets to universal execration and pitiless death; children

of tender age pinned to the earth and bayoneted; men innocent or

not, shot, cut, stabbed, slashed, destroyed—a whole city given

up to the summa injuria of an infuriate, reckless, and brutal army!

Oh France! Oh Frenchmen! Such things are unknown even in the

heart of barbarous Central Africa. We spurned the newspapers with

our feet; and for relief to sickened hearts gazed on the comic side

of our world, as illustrated in the innocent pages of `Punch.’

Poor ‘Punch!’ good-hearted, kindly-natured `Punch!’ a traveller’s

benison on thee! Thy jokes were as physic; thy innocent satire

was provocative of hysteric mirth.

 

Our doors were crowded with curious natives, who looked with

indescribable wonder at the enormous sheets. I heard them repeat

the words, “Khabari Kisungu”—white man’s news—often, and heard

them discussing the nature of such a quantity of news, and

expressing their belief that the “Wasungu” were “mbyah sana,”

and very “mkali;” by which they meant to say that the white men

were very wicked, and very smart and clever though the term

wicked is often employed to express high admiration.

 

On the fourth day from Ugunda, or the 18th of February, and the

fifty-third day from Ujiji, we made our appearance with flags

flying and guns firing in the valley of Kwihara, and when the

Doctor and myself passed through the portals of my old quarters

I formally welcomed him to Unyanyembe and to my house.

 

Since the day I had left the Arabs, sick and, weary almost with

my life, but, nevertheless, imbued with the high hope that my

mission would succeed, 131 days had elapsed—with what vicissitudes

of fortune the reader well knows—during which time I had journeyed

over 1,200 miles.

 

The myth after which I travelled through the wilderness proved to

be a fact; and never was the fact more apparent than when the

Living Man walked with me arm in arm to my old room, and I said

to him, “Doctor, we are at last HOME!”

 

CHAPTER XV. HOMEWARD BOUND.—LIVINGSTONE’S LAST WORDS

THE FINAL FAREWELL

 

Unyanyembe was now to me a terrestrial Paradise. Livingstone was

no less happy; he was in comfortable quarters, which were a palace

compared to his hut in Ujiji. Our storerooms were full of the

good things of this life, besides cloth, beads, wire, and the

thousand and one impedimenta and paraphernalia of travel with which

I had loaded over one hundred and fifty men at Bagamoyo. I had

seventy-four loads of miscellaneous things, the most valuable of

which were now to be turned over to Livingstone, for his march back

to the sources of the Nile.

 

It was a great day with, us when, with hammer and chisel, I broke

open the Doctor’s boxes, that we might feast our famished stomachs

on the luxuries which were to redeem us from the effect