There
would have been no order of battle, no pomp of war, but a murderous
strife, a quick firing of breech-loaders, and volleys from
flint-lock muskets, mixed with the flying of spears and twanging
of bows, the cowardly running away at once, pursued by yelping
savages; and who knows how it all would have terminated? Forty
spears against forty guns - but how many guns would not have
decamped? Perhaps all, and I should have been left with my
boy gunbearers to have my jugular deliberately severed, or
to be decapitated, leaving my head to adorn a tall pole in
the centre of a Kigogo village, like poor Monsieur Maizan's
at Dege la Mhora, in Uzaramo. Happy end of an Expedition!
And the Doctor's Journal lost for ever - the fruits of six
years' labor!
But in this land it will not do to fight unless driven to the very
last extremity. No belligerent Mungo Park can be successful in
Ugogo unless he has a sufficient force of men with him. With five
hundred Europeans one could traverse Africa from north to south,
by tact, and the moral effect that such a force would inspire.
Very little fighting would be required.
Without rising from the bale on which I was seated, I requested the
kirangozi to demand an explanation of their furious hubbub and
threatening aspect; if they were come to rob us.
