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 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.
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