How I Found Livingstone Travels, Adventures And Discoveries In Central Africa Including Four Months Residence With Dr. Livingstone By Sir Henry M. Stanley
- Page 126 of 160 - First - Home
Can You Wonder, Then, That I Like This Man, Whose Face Is The
Reflex Of His Nature, Whose Heart Is Essentially All Goodness,
Whose Aims Are So High, That I Break Out Impetuously Sometimes:
"But Your Family, Doctor, They Would Like To See You, Oh!
So much.
Let me tempt you to come home with me.
I promise to carry you
every foot of the way to the coast. You shall have the finest
donkey to ride that is in Unyanyembe. Your wants - you have but
to hint them, and they shall be satisfied. Let the sources of
the Nile go - do you come home and rest; then, after a year's rest,
and restored health, you can return and finish what you have to do."
But ever the answer was, "No, I should like to see my family
very much indeed. My children's letters affect me intensely;
but I must not go home; I must finish my task. It is only the
want of supplies that has detained me. I should have finished
the discovery of the Nile by this, by tracing it to its connection
with either Baker's Lake, or Petherick's branch of the Nile. If
I had only gone one month further, I could have said, 'the work
is done."'
Some of these men who had turned the Doctor back from his
interesting discoveries were yet in Ujiji, and had the Government
Enfield rifles in their hands, which they intended to retain until
their wages had been paid to them; but as they had received $60
advance each at Zanzibar from the English Consul, with the
understanding entered into by contract that they should follow
their master wherever he required them to go; and as they had
not only not gone where they were required to proceed with him,
but had baffled and thwarted him, it was preposterous that a few
men should triumph over the Doctor, by keeping the arms given to
him by the Bombay Government. I had listened to the Arab
sheikhs, friends of the Doctor, advising them in mild tones to give
them up; I had witnessed the mutineer's stubbornness; and it was
then, on the burzani of Sayd bin Majid's house, that I took
advantage to open my mind on the subject, not only for the
benefit of the stubborn slaves, but also for the benefit of the
Arabs; and to tell them that it was well that I had found
Livingstone alive, for if they had but injured a hair of his head,
I should have gone back to the coast, to return with a party which
would enable me to avenge him. I had been waiting to see
Livingstone's guns returned to him every day, hoping that I should
not have to use force; but when a month or more had elapsed, and
still the arms had not been returned, I applied for permission to
take them, which was granted. Susi, the gallant servant of Dr.
Livingstone, was immediately despatched with about a dozen armed
men to recover them, and in a few minutes we had possession of them
without further trouble.
The Doctor had resolved to accompany me to Unyanyembe, in order to
meet his stores, which had been forwarded from Zanzibar, November
1st, 1870. As I had charge of the escort, it was my duty to
study well the several routes to Unyanyembe from Ujiji. I was
sufficiently aware of the difficulties and the responsibilities
attached to me while escorting such a man. Besides, my own
personal feelings were involved in the case. If Livingstone
came to any harm through any indiscretion of mine while he was
with me, it would immediately be said, "Ah! had he not
accompanied Stanley, he would have been alive now."
I took out my chart - the one I had made myself - in which I had
perfect faith, and I sketched out a route which would enable us
to reach Unyanyembe without paying a single cloth as tribute,
and without encountering any worse thing than a jungle, by which
we could avoid all the Wavinza and the plundering Wahha. This
peaceable, secure route led by water, south, along the coast of
Ukaranga and Ukawendi, to Cape Tongwe. Arriving at Cape Tongwe,
I should be opposite the village of Itaga, Sultan Imrera, in the
district of Rusawa of Ukawendi; after which we should strike my
old road, which I had traversed from Unyanyembe, when bound for
Ujiji. I explained it to the Doctor, and he instantly recognised
its feasibility and security; and if I struck Imrera, as I
proposed to do, it would demonstrate whether my chart was correct
or not.
We arrived at Ujiji from our tour of discovery, north of the
Tanganika, December 13th; and from this date the Doctor commenced
writing his letters to his numerous friends, and to copy into his
mammoth Letts's Diary, from his field books, the valuable
information he had acquired during his years of travel south and
west of the Tanganika. I sketched him while sitting in his
shirt-sleeves in the veranda, with his Letts's Diary on his knee;
and the likeness on the frontispiece is an admirable portrait of
him, because the artist who has assisted me, has with an intuitive
eye, seen the defects in my own sketch; and by this I am enabled
to restore him to the reader's view exactly as I saw him - as he
pondered on what he had witnessed during his long marches.
Soon after my arrival at Ujiji, he had rushed to his paper, and
indited a letter to James Gordon Bennett, Esq., wherein he
recorded his thanks; and after he had finished it, I asked him
to add the word "Junior" to it, as it was young Mr. Bennett to
whom he was indebted. I thought the letter admirable, and
requested the Doctor not to add another word to it. The feelings
of his heart had found expression in the grateful words he had
written; and if I judged Mr. Bennett rightly, I knew he would
be satisfied with it.
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