Through the Dark Continent, Volume 1

While returning to England in April 1874 from the Ashantee War, the news reached me that Livingstone was dead—that his body was on its way to England!

Livingstone had then fallen! He was dead! He had died by the shores of Lake Bemba, on the threshold of the dark region he had wished to explore! The work he had promised me to perform was only begun when death overtook him!

The effect which this news had upon me, after the first shock had passed away, was to fire me with a resolution to complete his work, to be, if God willed it, the next martyr to geographical science, or, if my life was to be spared, to clear up not only the secrets of the Great River throughout its course, but also all that remained still problematic and incomplete of the discoveries of Burton and Speke, and Speke and Grant.

The solemn day of the burial of the body of my great friend arrived. I was one of the pall-bearers in Westminster Abbey, and when I had seen the coffin lowered into the grave, and had heard the first handful of earth thrown over it, I walked away sorrowing over the fate of David Livingstone.

I laboured night and day over my book, ‘Coomassie and Magdala,’ for I was in a fever to begin that to which I now had vowed to devote myself. Within three weeks the literary work was over, and I was free.

I had strolled over one day to the office of the Daily Telegraph, full of the subject. While I was discussing journalistic enterprise in general with one of the staff, the Editor entered. We spoke of Livingstone and the unfinished task remaining behind him. In reply to an eager remark which I made, he asked:—

“Could you, and would you, complete the work? And what is there to do?”

I answered:

“The outlet of Lake Tanganika is undiscovered. We know nothing scarcely—except what Speke has sketched out—of Lake Victoria; we do not even know whether it consists of one or many lakes, and therefore the sources of the Nile are still unknown. Moreover, the western half of the African continent is still a white blank.”

“Do you think you can settle all this, if we commission you?”

“While I live, there will be something done. If I survive the time required to perform all the work, all shall be done.”

The matter was for the moment suspended, because Mr. James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, had prior claims on my services.

A telegram was despatched to New York to him: “Would he join the Daily Telegraph in sending Stanley out to Africa, to complete the discoveries of Speke, Burton, and Livingstone?” and, within twenty-four hours, my “new mission” to Africa was determined on as a joint expedition, by the laconic answer which the cable flashed under the Atlantic: “Yes; Bennett.”

The last night at Mtiwi was a disturbed one. The “floodgates of heaven” seemed literally opened for a period. After an hour’s rainfall, 6 inches of water covered our camp, and a slow current ran southerly. Every member of the expedition was distressed, and even the Europeans, lodged in tents, were not exempted from the evils of the night. My tent walls enclosed a little pool, banked by boxes of stores and ammunition. Hearing cries outside, I lit a candle, and my astonishment was great to find that my bed was an island in a shallow river, which, if it increased in depth and current, would assuredly carry me off south towards the Rufiji. My walking boots were miniature barks, floating to and fro on a turbid tide seeking a place of exit to the dark world of waters without. My guns, lashed to the centre pole, were stock deep in water. But the most comical sight was presented by Jack and Bull, perched back to back on the top of an ammunition-box, butting each other rearward, and snarling and growling for that scant portion of comfort.

In the morning, I discovered my fatigue cap several yards outside the tent, and one of my boots sailing down south. The harmonium, a present for Mtesa, a large quantity of gunpowder, tea, rice and sugar, were destroyed. Vengeance appeared to have overtaken us. At 10 A.M. the sun appeared, astonished no doubt at a new lake formed during his absence. By noon the water had considerably decreased, and permitted us to march; and with glad hearts we surmounted the upland of Uyanzi, and from our busy camp, on the

Half an hour after the departure of the magic doctor, while many of the Wangwana were absent purchasing grain, and others were in the forest collecting faggots, we heard war-cries. Imagining that they were the muster-call to resist their neighbours of Izanjeh, or of some tribe to the east, we did not pay much attention to them. However, as these peculiar war-cries, which may be phonetically rendered “Hehu-a-hehu,” appeared to draw nearer, we mustered a small party on the highest ground of the camp, in an attitude of doubt and inquiry, and presently saw a large body of natives armed with spears, bows and arrows, and shields, appear within a hundred yards on a similar high-ground outside the camp. The sight suggested to us that they had mustered against us, yet I could divine no cause of grievance or subject of complaint to call forth a warlike demonstration.

I despatched two unarmed messengers to them to inquire what their intentions were, and to ascertain the object of this apparently hostile mob. The messengers halted midway between the camp and the crowd, and sitting down, invited two of the natives to advance to them for a “shauri.”

We soon discovered upon the return of the messengers that one of the Wangwana had stolen some milk, and that the natives had been aroused to “make war”^[7] upon us because of the theft.

At 9 A.M. we discovered a cove near the south-east end of the long island, and pulled slowly into it. Immediately the natives rushed down the slopes, shouting war-cries and uttering fierce ejaculations. When about 50 yards from the shore, I bade the men cease rowing, but Safeni and Baraka became eloquent, and said, “It is almost always the case, master, with savages. They cry out, and threaten, and look big, but you will see that all that noise will cease as soon as they hear us speak. Besides, if we leave here without food, where shall we obtain it?”

The last argument was unanswerable, and though I gave no orders to resume their oars, four of the men impelled the boat on slowly, while Safeni and Baraka prepared themselves to explain to the natives, who were now close within hearing, as they came rushing to the water’s edge. I saw some lift great stones, while others prepared their bows.

We were now about 10 yards from the beach, and Safeni and Baraka spoke, earnestly pointing to their mouths, and by gestures explaining that their bellies were empty. They smiled with insinuating faces; uttered the words “brothers,” “friends,” “good fellows,” most volubly; cunningly interpolated the words Mtesa—the Kabaka—Uganda, and Antari king of Ihangiro, to whom Bumbireh belongs. Safeni and Baraka’s pleasant volubility seemed to have produced a good effect, for the stones were dropped, the bows were unstrung, and the lifted spears lowered to assist the steady, slow-walking pace with which they now advanced.