In September He Started On His Return Journey, Bearing Considerable Presents
For Sekeletu From The Portuguese, Who Were Naturally Anxious To Open A Trade
With The Rich Ivory Region Of The Interior.
The Board of Public Works
sent a colonel's uniform and a horse, which unfortunately died on the way.
The merchants contributed specimens of all their articles of trade,
and a couple of donkeys, which would have a special value on account of
their immunity from the bite of the tsetse.
The men were made happy
by the acquisition of a suit of European clothes and a gun apiece,
in addition to their own purchases.
In the Bashinje country he again encountered hostile demonstrations.
One chief, who came riding into the camp upon the shoulders of an attendant,
was especially annoying in his demands for tribute. Another, who had
quarreled with one of Livingstone's attendants, waylaid and fired upon
the party. Livingstone, who was ill of a fever, staggered up to the chief,
revolver in hand. The sight of the six mouths of that convenient implement
gaping at his breast wrought an instant revolution in his martial ideas;
he fell into a fit of trembling, protesting that he had just come
to have a quiet talk, and wanted only peace.
These Bashinje have more of the low negro character and physiognomy
than any tribe encountered by Livingstone. Their color is a dirty black;
they have low foreheads and flat noses, artificially enlarged
by sticks run through the septum, and file their teeth down to a point.
A little further to the south the complexion of the natives is much lighter,
and their features are strikingly like those depicted upon
the Egyptian monuments, the resemblance being still further increased
by some of their modes of wearing the hair. Livingstone indeed affirms
that the Egyptian paintings and sculptures present the best type
of the general physiognomy of the central tribes.
The return journey was still slower than the advance had been;
and it was not till late in the summer of 1855 that they reached
the villages of the Makololo, having been absent more than eighteen months.
They were received as men risen from the dead, for the diviners had declared
that they had perished long ago. The returned adventurers
were the lions of the day. They strutted around in their gay European suits,
with their guns over their shoulders, to the abounding admiration
of the women and children, calling themselves Livingstone's "braves",
who had gone over the whole world, turning back only when
there was no more land. To be sure they returned about as poor as they went,
for their gun and their one suit of red and white cotton
were all that they had saved, every thing else having been expended
during their long journey. "But never mind," they said;
"we have not gone in vain, you have opened a path for us."
There was one serious drawback from their happiness. Some of their wives,
like those of the companions of Ulysses of old, wearied by their long absence,
had married other husbands.
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