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

which is remarkable for the

mighty globes of foliage which the giant sycamores and baobabs put

forth above the plain. The chief of Khonze boasts of four tembes,

out of which he could muster in the aggregate fifty armed men;

yet this fellow, instigated by the Wanyamwezi residents, prepared

to resist our advance, because I only sent him three doti—twelve

yards of cloth—as honga.

 

We were halted, waiting the return of a few friendly Wagogo

travellers who had joined us, and who were asked to assist Bombay

in the negotiation of the tribute, when the Wagogo returned to us

at breathless speed, and shouted out to me, “Why do you halt here?

Do you wish to die? These pagans will not take the tribute, but

they boast that they will eat up all your cloth.”

 

The renegade Wanyamwezi who had married into Wagogo families were

always our bane in this country. As the chief of Khonze came up

I ordered the men to load their guns, and I loaded my own

ostentatiously in his presence, and then strode up to him, and

asked if he had come to take the cloth by force, or if he were

going to accept quietly what I would give him. As the Mnyamwezi

who caused this show of hostilities was beginning to speak, I

caught him by the throat, and threatened to make his nose flatter

if he attempted to speak again in my presence, and to shoot him

first, if we should be forced to fight. The rascal was then pushed

away into the rear. The chief, who was highly amused with this

proceeding, laughed loudly at the discomfiture of the parasite,

and in a short time he and I had settled the tribute to our mutual

satisfaction, and we parted great friends. The Expedition arrived

at Sanza that night.

 

On the 31st we came to Kanyenyi, to the great Mtemi—Magomba’s—

whose son and heir is Mtundu M’gondeh. As we passed by the tembe

of the great Sultan, the msagira, or chief counsellor, a pleasant

grey-haired man, was at work making a thorn fence around a patch

of young corn. He greeted the caravan with a sonorous “Yambo,”

and, putting himself at its head, he led the way to our camp.

When introduced to me he was very cordial in his manner.

He was offered a kiti-stool and began to talk very affably.

He remembered my predecessors, Burton, Speke, and Grant, very well;

declared me to be much younger than any of them; and, recollecting

that one of the white men used to drink asses’ milk (Burton?),

offered to procure me some. The way I drank it seemed to give

him very great satisfaction.

 

His son, Unamapokera, was a tall man of thirty or thereabouts,

and he conceived a great friendship for me, and promised that the

tribute should be very light, and that he would send a man to show

me the way to Myumi, which was a village on the frontier of Kanyenyi,

by which I would be enabled to avoid the rapacious Kisewah, who was

in the habit of enforcing large tribute from caravans.

 

With the aid of Unamapokera and his father, we contrived to be

mulcted very lightly, for we only paid ten doti, while Burton was

compelled to pay sixty doti or two hundred and forty yards of cloth.

 

On the 1st of April, rising early, we reached Myumi after a four

hours’ march; then plunged into the jungle, and, about 2 P.M.

arrived at a large ziwa, or pond, situate in the middle of a

jungle; and on the next day, at 10 A.M., reached the fields of

Mapanga. We were passing the village of Mapanga to a resting-place

beyond the village, where we might breakfast and settle the honga,

when a lad rushed forward to meet us, and asked us where we were

going. Having received a reply that we were going to a

camping-place, he hastened on ahead, and presently we heard him

talking to some men in a field on our right.

 

In the meantime, we had found a comfortable shady place, and had

come to a halt; the men were reclining on the ground, or standing

up near their respective loads; Bombay was about opening a bale,

when we heard a great rush of men, and loud shouts, and,

immediately after, out rushed from the jungle near by a body of

forty or fifty armed men, who held their spears above their

heads, or were about to draw their bows, with a chief at their

head, all uttering such howls of rage as only savages can, which

sounded like a long-drawn “Hhaat-uh—Hhaat-uhh-uhh,” which meant,

unmistakably, “You will, will you? No, you will not!”—at once

determined, defiant, and menacing.

 

I had suspected that the voices I heard boded no good to us,

and I had accordingly prepared my weapons and cartridges. Verily,

what a fine chance for adventure this was! One spear flung at us,

or one shot fired into this minatory mob of savages, and the

opposing’ bands had been plunged into a fatal conflict! There

would have been no order of battle, no pomp of war, but a murderous

strife, a quick firing of breech-loaders, and volleys from

flintlock muskets, mixed with the flying of spears and twanging

of bows, the cowardly running away at once, pursued by yelping

savages; and who knows how it all would have terminated? Forty

spears against forty guns—but how many guns would not have

decamped? Perhaps all, and I should have been left with my

boy gunbearers to have my jugular deliberately severed, or

to be decapitated, leaving my head to adorn a tall pole in

the centre of a Kigogo village, like poor Monsieur Maizan’s

at Dege la Mhora, in Uzaramo. Happy end of an Expedition!

And the Doctor’s Journal lost for ever—the fruits of six

years’ labor!

 

But in this land it will not do to fight unless driven to the very

last extremity. No belligerent Mungo Park can be successful in

Ugogo unless he has a sufficient force of men with him. With five

hundred Europeans one could traverse Africa from north to south,

by tact, and the moral effect that such a force would inspire.

Very little fighting would be required.

 

Without rising from the bale on which I was seated, I requested the

kirangozi to demand an explanation of their furious hubbub and

threatening aspect; if they were come to rob us.

 

“No,” said the chief; “we do not want to stop the road, or to

rob you; but we want the tribute.”

 

“But don’t you see us halted, and the bale opened to send it to

you? We have come so far from your village that after the tribute

is settled we can proceed on our way, as the day is yet young.”

 

The chief burst into a loud laugh, and was joined by ourselves.

He evidently felt ashamed of his conduct for he voluntarily offered

the explanation, that as he and his men were cutting wood to make

a new fence for his village, a lad came up to him, and said that

a caravan of Wangwana were about passing through the country

without stopping to explain who they were. We were soon very

good friends. He begged of me to make rain for him, as his crops

were suffering, and no rain had fallen for months. I told him that

though white people were very great and clever people, much

superior to the Arabs, yet we could not make rain. Though very

much disappointed, he did not doubt my statement, and after

receiving his honga, which was very light, he permitted us to go

on our way, and even accompanied us some distance to show us the

road.

 

At 3 P.M. we entered a thorny jungle; and by 5 P.M. we had

arrived at Muhalata, a district lorded over by the chief Nyamzaga.

A Mgogo, of whom I made a friend, proved very staunch. He belonged

to Mulowa, a country to the S.S.E., and south of Kulabi; and was

active in promoting my interests by settling the tribute, with

the assistance of Bombay, for me. When, on the next day, we passed

through Kulabi on our way to Mvumi, and the Wagogo were about to

stop us for the honga, he took upon himself the task of relieving

us from further toll, by stating we were from Ugogo or Kanyenyi.

The chief simply nodded his head, and we passed on. It seems that

the Wagogo do not exact blackmail of those caravans who intend only

to trade in their own country, or have no intention of passing

beyond their own frontier.

 

Leaving Kulabi, we traversed a naked, red, loamy plain, over which

the wind from the heights of Usagara, now rising a bluish-black

jumble of mountains in our front, howled most fearfully. With

clear, keen, incisive force, the terrible blasts seemed to

penetrate through an through our bodies, as though we were but

filmy gauze. Manfully battling against this mighty “peppo “—

storm—we passed through Mukamwa’s, and crossing a broad sandy

bed of a stream, we entered the territory of Mvumi, the last

tribute-levying chief of Ugogo.

 

The 4th of April, after sending Bombay and my friendly Mgogo

with eight doti, or thirty-two yards of cloth, as a farewell

tribute to the Sultan, we struck off through the jungle, and in

five hours we were on the borders of the wilderness of “Marenga

Mkali”—the “hard,” bitter or brackish, water.

 

From our camp I despatched three men to Zanzibar with letters to

the American Consul, and telegraphic despatches for the `Herald,’

with a request to the Consul that he would send the men back with

a small case or two containing such luxuries as hungry, worn-out,

and mildewed men would appreciate. The three messengers were

charged not to halt for anything—rain or no rain, river or

inundation—as if they did not hurry up we should catch them

before they reached the coast. With a fervent “Inshallah, bana,”

they departed.

 

On the 5th, with a loud, vigorous, cheery “Hurrah!” we plunged

into the depths of the wilderness, which, with its eternal silence

and solitude, was far preferable to the jarring, inharmonious

discord of the villages of the Wagogo. For nine hours we held on

our way, starting with noisy shouts the fierce rhinoceros, the

timid quagga, and the herds of antelopes which crowd the jungles

of this broad salina. On the 7th, amid a pelting rain, we entered

Mpwapwa, where my Scotch assistant, Farquhar, died. We had

performed the extraordinary march of 338 English statute miles

from the 14th of March to the 7th of April, or within twenty-four

days, inclusive of halts, which was a little over fourteen miles

a day.

 

Leukole, the chief of Mpwapwa, with whom I left Farquhar, gave the

following account of the death of the latter:—

 

“The white man seemed to be improving after you left him, until

the, fifth day, when, while attempting to rise and walk out of his

tent, he fell back; from that minute he got worse and worse, and

in the afternoon he died, like one going to sleep. His legs and

abdomen had swollen considerably, and something, I think, broke

within him when he fell, for he cried out like a man who was very

much hurt, and his servant said, `The master says he is dying.’

 

“We had him carried out under a large tree, and after covering him

with leaves, there left him. His servant took possession of his

things, his rifle, clothes, and blanket, and moved off to the tembe

of a Mnyamwezi, near Kisokweh, where he lived for three months,

when he also died. Before he died he sold his master’s rifle to an

Arab going to Unyanyembe for ten doti (forty yards