Livingstone At Last Yielded
To The Entreaties Of His Men And Gave Them An Ox, Upon The Promise
That Food Should Be Sent In Exchange.
The niggardly chief sent them only
a small bag of meal, and two or three pounds of the meat of their own ox.
From this time they were subject to frequent attempts at extortion.
The last of these was made on the banks of the River Quango,
the boundary of the Portuguese possessions. A Bashinje chief, whose portrait
is given by Mr. Livingstone, made the usual demand of a man, a gun, or an ox,
otherwise they must return the way they came. While negotiations
were in progress the opportune arrival of a Portuguese sergeant
freed the travelers from their troubles. The river was crossed,
and once on Portuguese territory their difficulties were over.
At Cassange, the frontier settlement, they sold Sekeletu's ivory.
The Makololo, who had been accustomed to give two tusks for one gun,
were delighted at the prices they obtained. For one tusk
they got two muskets, three kegs of powder, large bunches of beads,
and calico and baize enough to clothe all the party.
On the 31st of May, after more than six months' travel,
Livingstone and his companions reached the Portuguese sea-port of Loanda.
The Makololo were lost in wonder when they first caught sight of the sea.
"We marched along," they said, "believing that what the ancients had told us
was true, that the world has no end; but all at once the world said to us,
I am finished, there is no more of me." Still greater was their wonder
when they beheld the large stone houses of the town. "These are not huts,"
they said, "but mountains with caves in them." Livingstone had
in vain tried to make them comprehend a house of two stories.
They knew of no dwellings except their own conical huts, made of poles
stuck into the ground, and could not conceive how one hut could be built
on the top of another, or how people could live in the upper story,
with the pointed roof of the lower one sticking up in the middle of the floor.
The vessels in the harbor were, they said, not canoes, but towns,
into which one must climb by a rope.
At Loanda Livingstone was attacked by a fever, which reduced him
to a skeleton, and for a while rendered him unable to attend
to his companions. But they managed very well alone.
Some went to the forest, cut firewood, and brought it to town for sale;
others unloaded a coal-vessel in the harbor, at the magnificent wages
of a sixpence a day. The proceeds of their labor were shrewdly invested
in cloth and beads which they would take home with them
in confirmation of the astounding stories they would have to tell;
"for," said they, "in coming to the white man's country, we have accomplished
what no other people in the world could have done; we are the true ancients,
who can tell wonderful things."
The two years, at the close of which Livingstone had promised to rejoin
his family, had almost expired, and he was offered a passage home from Loanda.
But the great object of his expedition was only partially attained.
Though he had reached the west coast in safety, he had found that the forests,
swamps, and rivers must render a wagon-road from the interior impracticable.
He feared also that his native attendants would not be able to make
their way alone back to their own country, through the unfriendly tribes.
So he resolved, feeble as he was, to return to Sekeletu's dominions,
and thence proceed to the eastern coast.
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