How I Found Livingstone quotes

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Well, I think he is alive, and that he can be found, and I am going to send you to find him.

"

Of course you will act according to your own plans, and do what you think best—

BUT FIND LIVINGSTONE!

"

"

Good-night, Sir," I said, "what it is in the power of human nature to do I will do; and on such an errand as I go upon, God will be with me.

"

the African from the Banyan; the Banyan from the Hindi; the Hindi from the European, &c.

Zanzibar is the Bagdad, the Ispahan, the Stamboul, if you like, of East Africa.

It is the great mart which invites the ivory traders from the African interior. To this market come the gum-copal, the hides, the orchilla weed, the timber, and the black slaves from Africa. Bagdad had great silk bazaars, Zanzibar has her ivory bazaars;

The same mode of commerce obtains here as in all Mohammedan countries—nay, the mode was in vogue long before Moses was born.

The Arab never changes.

He brought the custom of his forefathers with him when he came to live on this island. He is as much of an Arab here as at Muscat or Bagdad;

Here were at least six tons of material! "How will it ever be possible," I thought, "to move all this inert mass across the wilderness stretching between the sea, and the great lakes of Africa?

Bah, cast all doubts away, man, and have at them! 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof,' without borrowing from the morrow.

"

but the evil-minded race ordered him to shut up, as a thing unworthy to speak to the Wagogo! When I imploringly turned to the Arabs for counsel in this strait, old Sheikh Thani, always worldly wise, said, "

Heed them not; they are dogs who bite besides barking.

" ———— * White man's land. ————

I asked Selim,

"Why did you not also run away, and leave your master to die?"

"Oh, sir," said the Arab boy, naively, "I was afraid you would whip me."

I asked Selim, "Why did you not also run away, and leave your master to die?"

"Oh, sir," said the Arab boy, naively, "I was afraid you would whip me."

It never occurred to the Arab magnates that I had cause of complaint against them, or that I had a right to feel aggrieved at their conduct, for the base desertion of an ally, who had, as a duty to friendship, taken up arms for …

Two months have been wasted here already. The Arabs take such a long time to come to a conclusion.

Advice is plentiful, and words are as numerous as the blades of grass in our valley; all that is wanting indecision.

The Arabs' hope and stay is dead—Khamis bin Abdullah is no more. Where are the other warriors of whom the Wangwana and Wanyamwezi bards sing? Where is mighty Kisesa—great Abdullah bin Nasib? Where is Sayd, the son of Majid?

Shaw is improving fast. I am unsuccessful as yet in procuring soldiers. I almost despair of ever being able to move from here.

It is such a drowsy, sleepy, slow, dreaming country.

Arabs, Wangwana, Wanyamwezi, are all alike—all careless how time flies. Their to-morrow means sometimes within a month. To me it is simply maddening.

Shaw is improving fast. I am unsuccessful as yet in procuring soldiers. I almost despair of ever being able to move from here. It is such a drowsy, sleepy, slow, dreaming country. Arabs, Wangwana, Wanyamwezi, are all alike—all careless how time flies.

Their to-morrow means sometimes within a month.

To me it is simply maddening.

I sat down by his side to-day with my palm and needle in order to encourage him, and to-day, for the first time, I told him of the real nature of my mission.

I told him that I did not care about the geography of the country half as much as I cared about FINDING LIVINGSTONE!

I told him, for the first time, "Now, my dear Shaw, you think probably that I have been sent here to find the depth of the Tanganika. Not a bit of it, man; I was told to find Livingstone.

and never to return home without the strongest possible proofs that he is alive, or that he is dead.

No living man, or living men, shall stop me, only death can prevent me.

But death—not even this; I shall not die, I will not die, I cannot die!

… forest stretching in grand waves far beyond the ken of vision—ridges, forest-clad, rising gently one above another until they receded in the dim purple-blue distance—with a warm haze floating above them, which, though clear enough in our neighbourhood, became impenetrably blue in the far distance.

Woods, woods, woods, leafy branches, foliage globes, or parachutes, green, brown, or sere in colour, forests one above another, rising, falling, and receding—a very leafy ocean.

The horizon, at all points, presents the same view, there may be an indistinct outline of a hill far away, or here and there a tall tree higher than the rest conspicuous in its outlines against the translucent sky—with this exception it is the same—the …

Though I am even now ignorant of his very existence, yet I feel a certain complacency, a certain satisfaction which would be difficult to describe.

Why is man so feeble, and weak, that he must tramp, tramp hundreds of miles to satisfy the doubts his impatient and uncurbed mind feels?

Why cannot my form accompany the bold flights of my mind and satisfy the craving I feel to resolve the vexed question that ever rises to my lips—"Is he alive?"

… breast with my gun, which sent him reeling away a few feet from me, I faced round to Asmani, and ordered him to put his gun down, accompanying it with a nervous movement of my gun, pressing gently on the trigger at the same time.

Never was a man nearer his death than was Asmani during those few moments.

I was reluctant to shed his blood, and I was willing to try all possible means to avoid doing so; but if I did not succeed in cowing this ruffian, authority was at an end.

He is afraid of lions, and will never venture out where lions are known to be. All other animals he regards as game, and is indefatigable in their pursuit. He is seldom seen without an apologetic or a treacherous smile on his face.

He could draw a knife across a man's throat and still smile.

Chowpereh is a sturdy short man of thirty or thereabouts; very good-natured, and humorous. When Chowpereh speaks in his dry Mark Twain style, the whole camp laughs. I never quarrel with Chowpereh, never did quarrel with him.

On our way to camp we were accompanied by a large animal which persistently followed us on our left. It was too dark to see plainly, but a large form was visible, if not very clearly defined.

It must have been a lion, unless it was the ghost of the dead boar.

That night, about 11 P.M., we were startled by the roar of a lion, in close proximity to the camp. Soon it was joined by another, and another still, and the novelty of the thing kept me awake.

All answered in the affirmative, almost as much rejoiced as I was myself. But I was madly rejoiced; intensely eager to resolve the burning question, "Is it Dr. David Livingstone?"

God grant me patience, but I do wish there was a railroad, or, at least, horses in this country.

We set out at once from the banks of the Malagarazi, accompanied by two guides furnished us by Usenge, the old man of the ferry, who, now that we had crossed, showed himself more amiably disposed to us.

By this time Livingstone was becoming known to me.

I defy any one to be in his society long without thoroughly fathoming him, for in him there is no guile, and what is apparent on the surface is the thing that is in him.

I simply write down my own opinion of the man as I have seen him, not as he represents himself; as I know him to be, not as I have heard of him.

There is a good-natured abandon about Livingstone which was not lost on me.

Whenever he began to laugh, there was a contagion about it, that compelled me to imitate him.

It was such a laugh as Herr Teufelsdrockh's—a laugh of the whole man from head to heel. If he told a story, he related it in such a way as to convince one of its truthfulness;

The wan features which had shocked me at first meeting, the heavy step which told of age and hard travel, the grey beard and bowed shoulders, belied the man.

Underneath that well-worn exterior lay an endless fund of high spirits and inexhaustible humour; that rugged frame of his enclosed a young and most exuberant soul.

Every day I heard innumerable jokes and pleasant anecdotes; interesting hunting stories, in which his friends Oswell, Webb, Vardon, and Gorden Cumming were almost always the chief actors.

Without it, Livingstone, with his ardent temperament, his enthusiasm, his high spirit and courage, must have become uncompanionable, and a hard master.

Religion has tamed him, and made him a Christian gentleman: the crude and wilful have been refined and subdued

; religion has made him the most companionable of men and indulgent of masters—a man whose society is pleasurable.

To all entreaties to come home, to all the glowing temptations which home and innumerable friends offer, he returns the determined answer:—

"No; not until my work is ended."

I have often heard our servants discuss our respective merits. "Your master," say my servants to Livingstone's, "is a good man—a very good man; he does not beat you, for he has a kind heart; but ours—oh! he is sharp—hot as fire"—"mkali sana, kana moto."

It is no new fact that the Doctor has discovered when he states that a negro freeman is a hundred times more capable and trustworthy than a slave. Centuries ago Eumaeus, the herdsman, said to Ulysses:

Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day Makes man a slave, takes half his worth away.

We passed several happy days at Ujiji, and it was time we were now preparing for our cruise on the Tanganika. Livingstone was improving every day under the different diet which my cook furnished him.

The palm trees afford oil, and the plantains an abundance of delicious fruit. The ravines and deep gullies supply them with the tall shapely trees from which they cut out their canoes.

Nature has supplied them bountifully with all that a man's heart or stomach can desire.

It is while looking at what seems both externally and internally complete and perfect happiness that the thought occurs—how must these people sigh, when driven across the dreary wilderness that intervenes between the lake country and the sea-coast, for such homes as these!—those unfortunates who, …

especially when he states that the imprint of the muzzle of his rifle was on the elephant's trunk. African travellers—especially those with a taste for the chase—are too fond of relating that which borders on the incredible for ordinary men to believe them.

Such stories must be taken with a large grain of salt, for the sake of the amusement they afford to readers at home.

In future, whenever I hear a man state how he broke the back of an antelope at 600 yards, I shall incline to believe a cipher had been added by a slip of the pen, or attribute it to a typographical error, for this is …

… worn-out state, and he had so cut and slashed them with a knife to ease his blistered feet, that any man of our force would have refused them as a gift, no matter how ambitious he might be to encase his feet a la Wasungu.

Asmani, the guide, was very much taken aback when he discovered that the tiny compass knew the way better than he did, and he declared it as his solemn opinion that it could not lie.

He suffered much in reputation from having contested the palm with the "little thing," and ever afterwards his boasted knowledge of the country was considerably doubted.

I was rather saddened than otherwise at seeing the noble animal stretched before me. If I could have given him his life back I think I should have done so.

I thought it a great pity that such splendid animals, so well adapted for the service of man in Africa, could not be converted to some other use than that of food.

Horses, mules, and donkeys died in these sickly regions; but what a blessing for Africa would it be if we could tame the giraffes and zebras for the use of explorers and traders!

we had ugali made by Halimah herself; we had sweet potatoes, tea, coffee, dampers, or slap jacks; but I was tired of them. My enfeebled stomach, harrowed and irritated with medicinal compounds, with ipecac, colocynth, tartar-emetic, quinine, and such things, protested against the coarse food.

"Oh, for a wheaten loaf!" my soul cried in agony. "Five hundred dollars for one loaf of bread!"

The Doctor, somehow or another, despite the incessant rain, the dew, fog, and drizzle, the marching, and sore feet, ate like a hero, and I manfully, sternly, resolved to imitate the persevering attention he paid to the welfare of his gastric powers;

… day I had left the Arabs, sick and, weary almost with my life, but, nevertheless, imbued with the high hope that my mission would succeed, 131 days had elapsed—with what vicissitudes of fortune the reader well knows—during which time I had journeyed over 1,200 miles.

The myth after which I travelled through the wilderness proved to be a fact; and never was the fact more apparent than when the Living Man walked with me arm in arm to my old room, and I said to him, "Doctor, we are at last HOME!"

Unyanyembe was now to me a terrestrial Paradise. Livingstone was no less happy; he was in comfortable quarters, which were a palace compared to his hut in Ujiji.

But though I may live half a century longer, I shall never forget that parting scene in Central Africa.

I shall never cease to think of the sad tones of that sorrowful word Farewell, how they permeated through every core of my heart, how they clouded my eyes, and made me wish unutterable things which could never be.

An audacious desire to steal one embrace from the dear old man came over me, and almost unmanned me.

Such thoughts spurred me to the resolution to march so quickly for the coast, that Arabs in after time should marvel at the speed with which the white man's caravan travelled from Unyanyembe to Zanzibar.

I took one more look at him; he was standing near the gate of Kwikuru with his servants near him.

I waved a handkerchief to him, as a final token of farewell, and he responded to it by lifting his cap.

It was the last opportunity, for we soon surmounted the crest of a land-wave, and began the descent into the depression on the other side, and I NEVER saw him more.

God grant, dear reader, that if ever you take to travelling in Central Africa, you find as good and true a man, for your companion, as I found in noble David Livingstone.

For four months and four days he and I occupied the same house, or, the same tent, and I never had one feeling of resentment against him, nor did he show any against me, and the longer I lived with him the more did my …

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.

The kirangozi blows his horn, and gives forth blasts potential as Astolpho's, as the natives and Arabs throng around us.

And that bright flag, whose stars have waved over the waters of the great lake in Central Africa, which promised relief to the harassed Livingstone when in distress at Ujiji, returns to the sea once again—torn, it is true, but not dishonoured—tattered, but not disgraced.

As we reached the middle of the town, I saw on the steps of a large white house a white man, in flannels and helmet similar to that I wore.