How I Found Livingstone Travels, Adventures And Discoveries In Central Africa Including Four Months Residence With Dr. Livingstone By Sir Henry M. Stanley
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Sayd Bin Salim Agreed With Me, And The Men And Goods Were
At Once Brought To My Tembe.
One day Asmani, who was now chief of Livingstone's caravan, the
other having died of small-pox, two or three days before, brought
out a tent to the veranda where, I was sitting writing, and shewed
me a packet of letters, which to my surprise was marked:
"To Dr. Livingstone,
" Ujiji,
"November 1st, 1870.
" Registered letters."
From November 1st, 1870, to February 10, 1871, just one hundred
days, at Bagamoyo! A miserable small caravan of thirty-three men
halting one hundred days at Bagamoyo, only twenty-five miles by
water from Zanzibar! Poor Livingstone! Who knows but he maybe
suffering for want of these very supplies that were detained so
long near the sea. The caravan arrived in Unyanyembe some time
about the middle of May. About the latter part of May the first
disturbances took place. Had this caravan arrived here in the
middle of March, or even the middle of April, they might have
travelled on to Ujiji without trouble.
On the 7th of July, about 2 P.M., I was sitting on the burzani as
usual; I felt listless and languid, and a drowsiness came over me;
I did not fall asleep, but the power of my limbs seemed to fail
me. Yet the brain was busy; all my life seemed passing in review
before me; when these retrospective scenes became serious, I
looked serious; when they were sorrowful, I wept hysterically;
when they were joyous, I laughed loudly. Reminiscences of
yet a young life's battles and hard struggles came surging into
the mind in quick succession: events of boyhood, of youth, and
manhood; perils, travels, scenes, joys, and sorrows; loves and
hates; friendships and indifferences. My mind followed the
various and rapid transition of my life's passages; it drew the
lengthy, erratic, sinuous lines of travel my footsteps had passed
over. If I had drawn them on the sandy floor, what enigmatical
problems they had been to those around me, and what plain,
readable, intelligent histories they had been to me!
The loveliest feature of all to me was the form of a noble, and
true man, who called me son. Of my life in the great pine forests
of Arkansas, and in Missouri, I retained the most vivid impressions.
The dreaming days I passed under the sighing pines on the Ouachita's
shores; the new clearing, the block-house, our faithful black
servant, the forest deer, and the exuberant life I led, were
all well remembered. And I remembered how one day, after we had
come to live near the Mississipi, I floated down, down, hundreds of
miles, with a wild fraternity of knurly giants, the boatmen of
the Mississipi, and how a dear old man welcomed me back, as if
from the grave. I remembered also my travels on foot through
sunny Spain, and France, with numberless adventures in Asia Minor,
among Kurdish nomads. I remembered the battle-fields of America
and the stormy scenes of rampant war.
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