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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I Had Intended To Interview Him,
Report In Detail What He Said, Picture His Life And His Figure,
Then Bow Him My "Au Revoir," And March Back.
That he was specially
disagreeable and brusque in his manner, which would make me quarrel
with him immediately, was firmly fixed in my mind.
But Livingstone - true, noble Christian, generous-hearted, frank
man - acted like a hero, invited me to his house, said he was glad
to see me, and got well on purpose to prove the truth of his
statement, "You have brought new life unto me;" and when I fell
sick with the remittent fever, hovering between life and death,
he attended me like a father, and we have now been together for
more than a month.
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.
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