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 Think
It Would Act Quicker Than Chloroform, Be As Fatal As Prussic
Acid.
Horrors upon horrors are in it.
Boas above our heads,
snakes and scorpions under our feet. Land-crabs, terrapins,
and iguanas move about in our vicinity. Malaria is in the air
we breathe; the road is infested with "hotwater" ants, which
bite our legs until we dance and squirm about like madmen.
Yet, somehow, we are fortunate enough to escape annihilation,
and many another traveller might also. Yet here, in verity,
are the ten plagues of Egypt, through which a traveller in
these regions must run the gauntlet:
1. Plague of boas. | 7. Suffocation from the
2. Red ants, or "hot-water." | density of the jungle.
3 Scorpions. | 8. Stench.
4. Thorns and spear cacti. | 9. Thorns in the road.
5. Numerous impediments. | 10. Miasma.
6 Black mud knee-deep. |
May 1st. Kingaru Hera. - We heard news of a great storm having
raged at Zanzibar, which has destroyed every house and every
ship, - so the story runs; - and the same destruction has visited
Bagamoyo and Whinde, they say. But I am by this time pretty
well acquainted with the exaggerative tendency of the African.
It is possible that serious loss has been sustained, from the
evidences of the effects of the storm in the interior. I hear,
also, that there are white men at Bagamoyo, who are about starting
into the country to look after me (?). Who would look after me,
I cannot imagine. I think they must have some confused idea of
my Expedition; though, how they came to know that I was looking
for any man I cannot conceive, because I never told a soul until
I reached Unyanyembe.
May 2nd. Rosako. - I had barely arrived at the village before the
three men I despatched from Mvumi, Ugogo, entered, bringing with
them from the generous American Consul a few bottles of champagne,
a few pots of jam, and two boxes of Boston crackers. These were
most welcome after my terrible experiences in the Makata Valley.
Inside one of these boxes, carefully put up by the Consul,
were four numbers of the 'Herald'; one of which contained my
correspondence from Unyanyembe, wherein were some curious
typographical errors, especially in figures and African names.
I suppose my writing was wretched, owing to my weakness. In
another are several extracts from various newspapers, in which
I learn that many editors regard the Expedition into Africa as
a myth. Alas! it has been a terrible, earnest fact with me;
nothing but hard, conscientious work, privation, sickness,
and almost death. Eighteen men have paid the forfeit of their
lives in the undertaking. It certainly is not a myth - the death
of my two white assistants; they, poor fellows, found their fate
in the inhospitable regions of the interior.
One of my letters received from Zanzibar by my messengers states
that there is an expedition at Bagamoyo called the "Livingstone
Search and Relief Expedition." What will the leaders of it do now?
Livingstone is found and relieved already.
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