How I Found Livingstone Travels, Adventures And Discoveries In Central Africa Including Four Months Residence With Dr. Livingstone By Sir Henry M. Stanley
- Page 476 of 595 - First - Home
I Was Earnestly Requested To Convey To Unyanyembe "Mengi
Salaams" To Everybody, But Had I Done So, As He Evidently Desired
Me To Do, I Would Not Have Been Surprised At Being Regarded By All
As Hopelessly Imbecile.
We pushed off from the clayey bank at the foot of the market-place,
while the land party, unencumbered with luggage, under the
leadership of gigantic Asmani and Bombay, commenced their journey
southward along the shores of the lake.
We had arranged to meet them
at the mouth of every river to transport them across from bank to bank.
The Doctor being in Sayd bin Majid's boat, which was a third or so
shorter than the one under my command, took the lead, with the
British flag, held aloft by a bamboo, streaming behind like a
crimson meteor. My boat-manned by Wajiji sailors, whom we had
engaged to take the canoes back from Tongwe Cape to Ujiji Bunder -
came astern, and had a much taller flagstaff, on which was hoisted
the ever-beautiful Stars and Stripes. Its extreme height drew from
the Doctor - whose patriotism and loyalty had been excited - the remark
that he would cut down the tallest palmyra for his flagstaff, as it
was not fitting that the British flag should be so much lower than
that of the United States.
Our soldiers were not a whit behind us in lightheartedness at the
thought of going to Unyanyembe. They struck up the exhilarating
song of the Zanzibar boatmen, with the ecstatic chorus -
Kinan de re re Kitunga,
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 476 of 595
Words from 129935 to 130192
of 163520