The Dreadful Thought Bowed
Me Down; But As I Gazed Upon Her In Fear, Her Chest Gently Heaved, Not
With The Convulsive Throbs Of Fever, But Naturally.
She was asleep; and
when at a sudden noise she opened her eyes, they were calm and clear.
She was saved!
When not a ray of hope remained, God alone knows what
helped us. The gratitude of that moment I will not attempt to describe.
Fortunately there were many fowls in this village; we found several
nests of fresh eggs in the straw which littered the hut; these were most
acceptable after our hard fare, and produced a good supply of soup.
Having rested for two days, we again moved forward, Mrs. Baker being
carried on a litter. We now continued on elevated ground, on the north
side of a valley running from west to east, about sixteen miles broad,
and exceedingly swampy. The rocks composing the ridge upon which we
travelled due west were all gneiss and quartz, with occasional breaks,
forming narrow valleys, all of which were swamps choked with immense
papyrus rushes, that made the march very fatiguing. In one of these
muddy bottoms one of my riding oxen that was ill, stuck fast, and we
were obliged to abandon it, intending to send a number of natives to
drag it out with ropes.
On arrival at a village, our guide started about fifty men for this
purpose, while we continued our journey. That evening we reached a
village belonging to a headman, and very superior to most that we had
passed on the route from M'rooli: large sugarcanes of the blue variety
were growing in the fields, and I had seen coffee growing wild in the
forest in the vicinity. I was sitting at the door of the hut about two
hours after sunset, smoking a pipe of excellent tobacco, when I suddenly
heard a great singing in chorus advancing rapidly from a distance
towards the entrance of the courtyard. At first I imagined that the
natives intended dancing, which was an infliction that I wished to
avoid, as I was tired and feverish; but in a few minutes the boy Saat
introduced a headman, who told me that the riding ox had died in the
swamp where he had stuck fast in the morning, and that the natives had
brought his body to me. "What!" I replied, "brought his body, the entire
ox, to me?" "The entire ox as he died is delivered at your door,"
answered the headman; "I could not allow any of your property to be lost
upon the road. Had the body of the ox not been delivered to you, we
might have been suspected of having stolen it." I went to the entrance
of the courtyard, and amidst a crowd of natives I found the entire ox
exactly as he had died. They had carried him about eight miles on a
litter, which they had constructed of two immensely long posts with
cross-pieces of bamboo, upon which they had laid the body.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 223 of 343
Words from 115337 to 115846
of 178435
