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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The Initial
March Was From Simbo, Its Terminus At Rehenneko, At The Base Of The
Usagara Mountains, Six Marches Distant.
The valley commences with
broad undulations, covered with young forests of bamboo, which grow
thickly along the streams, the dwarf fan-palm, the stately Palmyra,
and the mgungu.
These undulations soon become broken by gullies
containing water, nourishing dense crops of cane reeds and broad-
bladed grass, and, emerging from this district, wide savannah
covered with tall grass open into view, with an isolated tree here
and there agreeably breaking the monotony of the scene. The Makata
is a wilderness containing but one village of the Waseguhha
throughout its broad expanse. Venison, consequently, abounds
within the forest clumps, and the kudu, hartebeest, antelope,
and zebra may be seen at early dawn emerging into the open
savannahs to feed. At night, the cyn-hyaena prowls about with
its hideous clamour seeking for sleeping prey, man or beast.
The slushy mire of the savannahs rendered marching a work of great
difficulty; its tenacious hold of the feet told terribly on men
and animals. A ten-mile march required ten hours, we were
therefore compelled to camp in the middle of this wilderness, and
construct a new khambi, a measure which was afterwards adopted by
half a dozen caravans.
The cart did not arrive until nearly midnight, and with it,
besides three or four broken-down pagazis, came Bombay with the
dolorous tale, that having put his load - consisting of the property
tent, one large American axe, his two uniform coats, his shirts,
beads and cloth, powder, pistol, and hatchet - on the ground, to go
and assist the cart out of a quagmire, he had returned to the place
where he had left it and could not find it, that he believed that
some thieving Washensi, who always lurk in the rear of caravans to
pick up stragglers, had decamped with it.
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