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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We Crossed Many Of These Streams,
All Of Which Are Feeders Of The Rugufu.
Beautiful, bewitching Ukawendi!
By what shall I gauge the
loveliness of the wild, free, luxuriant, spontaneous nature
within its boundaries? By anything in Europe? No. By anything
in Asia? Where? India, perhaps. Yes; or say Mingrelia and
Imeritia. For there we have foaming rivers; we have picturesque
hillocks; we have bold hills, ambitious mountains, and
broad forests, with lofty solemn rows of trees, with clean
straight stems, through which you can see far, lengthy vistas,
as you see here. Only in Ukawendi you can almost behold the growth
of vegetation; the earth is so generous, nature so kind and
loving, that without entertaining any aspiration for a residence,
or a wish to breathe the baleful atmosphere longer than is
absolutely necessary, one feels insensibly drawn towards it, as
the thought creeps into his mind, that though all is foul beneath
the captivating, glamorous beauty of the land, the foulness might
be removed by civilized people, and the whole region made as
healthy as it is productive. Even while staggering under the
pressure of the awful sickness, with mind getting more and more
embittered, brain sometimes reeling with the shock of the
constantly recurring fevers - though I knew how the malaria, rising
out of that very fairness, was slowly undermining my constitution,
and insidiously sapping the powers of mind and body - I regarded
the alluring face of the land with a fatuous love, and felt a
certain sadness steal over me as each day I was withdrawing myself
from it, and felt disposed to quarrel with the fate that seemed
to eject me out of Ukawendi.
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