With This Examination, Rather Than
With A Stay Of A Few Months On The Humid, Dripping Top Of Misty
Morambala, We Should Have Felt Much More Satisfied.
In January, 1864, the natives all confidently asserted that at next
full moon the river would have its great and permanent flood.
It had
several times risen as much as a foot, but fell again as suddenly.
It was curious that their observation coincided exactly with ours,
that the flood of inundation happens when the sun comes overhead on
his way back to the Equator. We mention this more minutely because,
from the observation of several years, we believe that in this way
the inundation of the Nile is to be explained. On the 19th the Shire
suddenly rose several feet, and we started at once; and stopping only
for a short time at Chibisa's to bid adieu to the Ajawa and Makololo,
who had been extremely useful to us of late in supplying maize and
fresh provisions, we hastened on our way to the ocean. In order to
keep a steerage way on the "Pioneer," we had to go quicker than the
stream, and unfortunately carried away her rudder in passing suddenly
round a bank. The delay required for the repairs prevented our
reaching Morambala till the 2nd of February.
The flood-water ran into a marsh some miles above the mountain, and
became as black as ink; and when it returned again to the river
emitted so strong an effluvium of sulphuretted hydrogen, that one
could not forget for an instant that the air was most offensive. The
natives said this stench did not produce disease. We spent one night
in it, and suffered no ill effects, though we fully expected an
attack of fever. Next morning every particle of white paint on both
ships was so deeply blackened, that it could not be cleaned by
scrubbing with soap and water. The brass was all turned to a bronze
colour, and even the iron and ropes had taken a new tint. This is an
additional proof that malaria and offensive effluvia are not always
companions. We did not suffer more from fever in the mangrove
swamps, where we inhaled so much of the heavy mousey smell that it
was distinguishable in the odour of our shirts and flannels, than we
did elsewhere.
We tarried in the foul and blackening emanations from the marsh
because we had agreed to receive on board about thirty poor orphan
boys and girls, and a few helpless widows whom Bishop Mackenzie had
attached to his Mission. All who were able to support themselves had
been encouraged by the Missionaries to do so by cultivating the
ground, and they now formed a little free community. But the boys
and girls who were only from seven to twelve years of age, and
orphans without any one to help them, could not be abandoned without
bringing odium on the English name. The effect of an outcry by some
persons in England, who knew nothing of the circumstances in which
Bishop Mackenzie was placed, and who certainly had not given up their
own right of appeal to the sword of the magistrate, was, that the new
head of the Mission had gone to extremes in the opposite direction
from his predecessor; not even protesting against the one monstrous
evil of the country, the slave-trade.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 256 of 263
Words from 132948 to 133512
of 136856
