There was one
packet for me, which contained two or three letters for
Dr. Livingstone, to whom, of course, they were at once transferred,
with my congratulations. In the same packet there was also a
letter to me from the British Consul at Zanzibar requesting me
to take charge of Livingstone's goods and do the best I could
to forward them on to him, dated 25th September, 1871, five days
after I left Unyanyembe on my apparently hopeless task.
"Well, Doctor," said I to Livingstone, "the English Consul
requests me to do all I can to push forward your goods to you.
I am sorry that I did not get the authority sooner, for I should
have attempted it; but in the absence of these instructions I
have done the best I could by pushing you towards the goods.
The mountain has not been able to advance towards Mohammed,
but Mohammed has been compelled to advance towards the mountain."
But Dr. Livingstone was too deeply engrossed in his own letters
from home, which were just a year old.
I received good and bad news from New York, but the good news was
subsequent, and wiped out all feelings that might have been evoked
had I received the bad only. But the newspapers, nearly a hundred
of them, New York, Boston, and London journals, were full of most
wonderful news. The Paris Commune was in arms against the National
Assembly; the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the ancient city Lutetia
Parisiorum had been set in flames by the blackguards of
Saint-Antoine! French troops massacring and murdering men,
women, and children; rampant diabolism, and incarnate revenge were
at work in the most beautiful city in the world! Fair women
converted into demons, and dragged by ruffianly soldiery through
the streets to universal execration and pitiless death; children
of tender age pinned to the earth and bayoneted; men innocent or
not, shot, cut, stabbed, slashed, destroyed - a whole city given
up to the summa injuria of an infuriate, reckless, and brutal army!
Oh France! Oh Frenchmen! Such things are unknown even in the
heart of barbarous Central Africa. We spurned the newspapers with
our feet; and for relief to sickened hearts gazed on the comic side
of our world, as illustrated in the innocent pages of `Punch.'
Poor 'Punch!' good-hearted, kindly-natured `Punch!' a traveller's
benison on thee! Thy jokes were as physic; thy innocent satire
was provocative of hysteric mirth.
Our doors were crowded with curious natives, who looked with
indescribable wonder at the enormous sheets. I heard them repeat
the words, "Khabari Kisungu" - white man's news - often, and heard
them discussing the nature of such a quantity of news, and
expressing their belief that the "Wasungu" were "mbyah sana,"
and very "mkali;" by which they meant to say that the white men
were very wicked, and very smart and clever though the term
wicked is often employed to express high admiration.
On the fourth day from Ugunda, or the 18th of February, and the
fifty-third day from Ujiji, we made our appearance with flags
flying and guns firing in the valley of Kwihara, and when the
Doctor and myself passed through the portals of my old quarters
I formally welcomed him to Unyanyembe and to my house.
Since the day I had left the Arabs, sick and, weary almost with
my life, but, nevertheless, imbued with the high hope that my
mission would succeed, 131 days had elapsed - with what vicissitudes
of fortune the reader well knows - during which time I had journeyed
over 1,200 miles.
The myth after which I travelled through the wilderness proved to
be a fact; and never was the fact more apparent than when the
Living Man walked with me arm in arm to my old room, and I said
to him, "Doctor, we are at last HOME!"
CHAPTER XV. HOMEWARD BOUND. - LIVINGSTONE'S LAST WORDS
THE FINAL FAREWELL
Unyanyembe was now to me a terrestrial Paradise. Livingstone was
no less happy; he was in comfortable quarters, which were a palace
compared to his hut in Ujiji. Our store-rooms were full of the
good things of this life, besides cloth, beads, wire, and the
thousand and one impedimenta and paraphernalia of travel with which
I had loaded over one hundred and fifty men at Bagamoyo. I had
seventy-four loads of miscellaneous things, the most valuable of
which were now to be turned over to Livingstone, for his march back
to the sources of the Nile.
It was a great day with, us when, with hammer and chisel, I broke
open the Doctor's boxes, that we might feast our famished stomachs
on the luxuries which were to redeem us from the effect of the
cacotrophic dourra and maize food we had been subjected to in the
wilderness. I conscientiously believed that a diet on potted ham,
crackers, and jellies would make me as invincible as Talus, and
that I only required a stout flail to be able to drive the mighty
Wagogo into the regions of annihiliation, should they dare even to
wink in a manner I disapproved.
The first box opened contained three tins of biscuits, six tins
of potted hams - tiny things, not much larger than thimbles, which,
when opened, proved to be nothing more than a table-spoonful of
minced meat plentifully seasoned with pepper: the Doctor's stores
fell five hundred degrees below zero in my estimation. Next were
brought out five pots of jam, one of which was opened - this was also
a delusion. The stone jars weighed a pound, and in each was found
a little over a tea-spoonful of jam. Verily, we began to think our
hopes and expectations had been raised to too high a pitch.
