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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How Dare You,
Sir, Get Drunk In This Way, After I Have Told You So Often Not To.
Get Up.
You won't?
Take that, and that, and that." Still Susi
slept and grunted; so the slapping continued, until even Susi's
thick hide began to feel it, and he was thoroughly awakened to the
sense of his want of devotion and sympathy for his master in the
usurping of even his master's bed. Susi looked very much
crestfallen after this exposé of his infirmity before the "little
master," as I was called.
The next day at dusk - Mukamba having come to bid us good-bye, and
requested that as soon as we reached his brother Ruhinga, whose
country was at the head of the lake, we would send our canoe back
for him, and that in the meanwhile we should leave two of our men
with him, with their guns, to help defend him in case Warumashanya
should attack him as soon as we were gone - we embarked and pulled
across. In nine hours we had arrived at the head of the lake in
Mugihewa, the country of Ruhinga; Mukamba's elder brother. In
looking back to where we had come from we perceived that we had
made a diagonal cut across from south-east to north-west, instead
of having made a direct east and west course; or, in other words,
from Mugere - which was at least ten miles from the northernmost
point of the eastern shore - we had come to Mugihewa, situated at
the northernmost point of the western shore. Had we continued
along the eastern shore, and so round the northern side of the lake,
we should have passed by Mukanigi, the country of Warumashanya,
and Usumbura of Simveh, his ally and friend. But by making a
diagonal course, as just described, we had arrived at the extreme
head of the lake without any difficulty.
The country in which we now found ourselves, Mugihewa, is situated
in the delta of the Rusizi River. It is an extremely flat
country, the highest part of which is not ten feet above the lake,
with numerous depressions in it overgrown with the rankest of
matete-grass and the tallest of papyrus, and pond-like hollows,
filled with stagnant water, which emit malaria wholesale. Large
herds of cattle are reared on it; for where the ground is not
covered with marshy plants it produces rich, sweet grass. The sheep
and goats, especially the former, are always in good condition; and
though they are not to be compared with English or American sheep,
they are the finest I have seen in Africa. Numerous villages are
seen on this land because the intervening spaces are not occupied
with the rank and luxuriant jungle common in other parts of Africa.
Were it not for the Euphorbia kolquall of Abyssinia - which some
chief has caused to be planted as a defence round the villages -
one might see from one end of Mugihewa to the other. The waters
along the head of the lake, from the western to the eastern shores,
swarm with crocodiles.
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