{1}
Very Curious Are The Effects Of African Fever On Certain Minds.
Cheerfulness Vanishes, And The Whole Mental Horizon Is Overcast With
Black Clouds Of Gloom And Sadness.
The liveliest joke cannot provoke
even the semblance of a smile.
The countenance is grave, the eyes
suffused, and the few utterances are made in the piping voice of a
wailing infant. An irritable temper is often the first symptom of
approaching fever. At such times a man feels very much like a fool,
if he does not act like one. Nothing is right, nothing pleases the
fever-stricken victim. He is peevish, prone to find fault and to
contradict, and think himself insulted, and is exactly what an Irish
naval surgeon before a court-martial defined a drunken man to be: "a
man unfit for society."
Finding that it was impossible to take our steamer of only ten-horse
power through Kebrabasa, and convinced that, in order to force a
passage when the river was in flood, much greater power was required,
due information was forwarded to Her Majesty's Government, and
application made for a more suitable vessel. Our attention was in
the mean time turned to the exploration of the river Shire, a
northern tributary of the Zambesi, which joins it about a hundred
miles from the sea. We could learn nothing satisfactory from the
Portuguese regarding this affluent; no one, they said, had ever been
up it, nor could they tell whence it came. Years ago a Portuguese
expedition is said, however, to have attempted the ascent, but to
have abandoned it on account of the impenetrable duckweed (Pistia
stratiotes.) We could not learn from any record that the Shire had
ever been ascended by Europeans. As far, therefore, as we were
concerned, the exploration was absolutely new. All the Portuguese
believed the Manganja to be brave but bloodthirsty savages; and on
our return we found that soon after our departure a report was widely
spread that our temerity had been followed by fatal results, Dr.
Livingstone having been shot, and Dr. Kirk mortally wounded by
poisoned arrows.
Our first trip to the Shire was in January, 1859. A considerable
quantity of weed floated down the river for the first twenty-five
miles, but not sufficient to interrupt navigation with canoes or with
any other craft. Nearly the whole of this aquatic plant proceeds
from a marsh on the west, and comes into the river a little beyond a
lofty hill called Mount Morambala. Above that there is hardly any.
As we approached the villages, the natives collected in large
numbers, armed with bows and poisoned arrows; and some, dodging
behind trees, were observed taking aim as if on the point of
shooting. All the women had been sent out of the way, and the men
were evidently prepared to resist aggression. At the village of a
chief named Tingane, at least five hundred natives collected and
ordered us to stop. Dr. Livingstone went ashore; and on his
explaining that we were English and had come neither to take slaves
nor to fight, but only to open a path by which our countrymen might
follow to purchase cotton, or whatever else they might have to sell,
except slaves, Tingane became at once quite friendly.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 32 of 263
Words from 16302 to 16846
of 136856
