How I Found Livingstone Part 26

I woke up early next morning with a sudden start. The room was strange! It was a house, and not my tent! Ah, yes! I recollected I had discovered Livingstone, and I was in his house. I listened, that the knowledge dawning on me might be confirmed by the sound of his voice. I heard nothing but the sullen roar of the surf.

I lay quietly in bed. Bed! Yes, it was a primitive four-poster, with the leaves of the palm-tree spread upon it instead of down, and horsehair and my bearskin spread over this serving me in place of linen. I began to put myself under rigid mental cross-examination, and to an a.n.a.lyzation of my position.

"What was I sent for?"

"To find Livingstone."

"Have you found him?"

"Yes, of course; am I not in his house? Whose compa.s.s is that hanging on a peg there? Whose clothes, whose boots, are those? Who reads those newspapers, those 'Sat.u.r.day Reviews' and numbers of 'Punch' lying on the floor?"

"Well, what are you going to do now?"

"I shall tell him this morning who sent me, and what brought me here.

I will then ask him to write a letter to Mr. Bennett, and to give what news he can spare. I did not come here to rob him of his news.

Sufficient for me is it that I have found him. It is a complete success so far. But it will be a greater one if he gives me letters for Mr.

Bennett, and an acknowledgment that he has seen me."

"Do you think he will do so?"

"Why not? I have come here to do him a service. He has no goods. I have.

He has no men with him. I have. If I do a friendly part by him, will he not do a friendly part by me? What says the poet?--

Nor hope to find A friend, but who has found a friend in thee.

All like the purchase; few the price will pay And this makes friends such wonders here below.

I have paid the purchase, by coming so far to do him a service. But I think, from what I have seen of him last night, that he is not such a n.i.g.g.ard and misanthrope as I was led to believe. He exhibited considerable emotion, despite the monosyllabic greeting, when he shook my hand. If he were a man to feel annoyance at any person coming after him, he would not have received me as he did, nor would he ask me to live with him, but he would have surlily refused to see me, and told me to mind my own business. Neither does he mind my nationality; for 'here,' said he, 'Americans and Englishmen are the same people. We speak the same language and have the same ideas.' Just so, Doctor; I agree with you. Here at least, Americans and Englishmen shall be brothers, and, whatever I can do for you, you may command me freely."

I dressed myself quietly, intending to take a stroll along the Tanganika before the Doctor should rise; opened the door, which creaked horribly on its hinges, and walked out to the veranda.

"Halloa, Doctor!--you up already? I hope you have slept well?"

"Good-morning, Mr. Stanley! I am glad to see you. I hope you rested well. I sat up late reading my letters. You have brought me good and bad news. But sit down." He made a place for me by his side. "Yes, many of my friends are dead. My eldest son has met with a sad accident--that is, my boy Tom; my second son, Oswell, is at college studying medicine, and is doing well I am told. Agnes, my eldest daughter, has been enjoying herself in a yacht, with 'Sir Paraffine' Young and his family. Sir Roderick, also, is well, and expresses a hope that he will soon see me.

You have brought me quite a budget."

The man was not an apparition, then, and yesterday's scenes were not the result of a dream! and I gazed on him intently, for thus I was a.s.sured he had not run away, which was the great fear that constantly haunted me as I was journeying to Ujiji.

"Now, Doctor," said I, "you are, probably, wondering why I came here?"

"It is true," said he; "I have been wondering. I thought you, at first, an emissary of the French Government, in the place of Lieutenant Le Saint, who died a few miles above Gondokoro. I heard you had boats, plenty of men, and stores, and I really believed you were some French officer, until I saw the American flag; and, to tell you the truth, I was rather glad it was so, because I could not have talked to him in French; and if he did not know English, we had been a pretty pair of white men in Ujiji! I did not like to ask you yesterday, because I thought it was none of my business."

"Well," said I, laughing, "for your sake I am glad that I am an American, and not a Frenchman, and that we can understand each other perfectly without an interpreter. I see that the Arabs are wondering that you, an Englishman, and I, an American, understand each other. We must take care not to tell them that the English and Americans have fought, and that there are 'Alabama' claims left unsettled, and that we have such people as Fenians in America, who hate you. But, seriously, Doctor--now don't be frightened when I tell you that I have come after--YOU!"

"After me?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"Well. You have heard of the 'New York Herald?'"

"Oh--who has not heard of that newspaper?"

"Without his father's knowledge or consent, Mr. James Gordon Bennett, son of Mr. James Gordon Bennett, the proprietor of the 'Herald,' has commissioned me to find you--to get whatever news of your discoveries you like to give--and to a.s.sist you, if I can, with means."

"Young Mr. Bennett told you to come after me, to find me out, and help me! It is no wonder, then, you praised Mr. Bennett so much last night."

"I know him--I am proud to say--to be just what I say he is. He is an ardent, generous, and true man."

"Well, indeed! I am very much obliged to him; and it makes me feel proud to think that you Americans think so much of me. You have just come in the proper time; for I was beginning to think that I should have to beg from the Arabs. Even they are in want of cloth, and there are but few beads in Ujiji. That fellow Sherif has robbed me of all. I wish I could embody my thanks to Mr. Bennett in suitable words; but if I fail to do so, do not, I beg of you, believe me the less grateful."

"And now, Doctor, having disposed of this little affair, Ferajji shall bring breakfast; if you have no objection."

"You have given me an appet.i.te," he said.

"Halimah is my cook, but she never can tell the difference between tea and coffee."

Ferajji, the cook, was ready as usual with excellent tea, and a dish of smoking cakes; "dampers," as the Doctor called them. I never did care much for this kind of a cake fried in a pan, but they were necessary to the Doctor, who had nearly lost all his teeth from the hard fare of Lunda. He had been compelled to subsist on green ears of Indian corn; there was no meat in that district; and the effort to gnaw at the corn ears had loosened all his teeth. I preferred the corn scones of Virginia, which, to my mind, were the nearest approach to palatable bread obtainable in Central Africa.

The Doctor said he had thought me a most luxurious and rich man, when he saw my great bath-tub carried on the shoulders of one of my men; but he thought me still more luxurious this morning, when my knives and forks, and plates, and cups, saucers, silver spoons, and silver teapot were brought forth s.h.i.+ning and bright, spread on a rich Persian carpet, and observed that I was well attended to by my yellow and ebon Mercuries.

This was the beginning of our life at Ujiji. I knew him not as a friend before my arrival. He was only an object to me--a great item for a daily newspaper, as much as other subjects in which the voracious news-loving public delight in. I had gone over battlefields, witnessed revolutions, civil wars, rebellions, emeutes and ma.s.sacres; stood close to the condemned murderer to record his last struggles and last sighs; but never had I been called to record anything that moved me so much as this man's woes and sufferings, his privations and disappointments, which now were poured into my ear. Verily did I begin to perceive that "the G.o.ds above do with just eyes survey the affairs of men." I began to recognize the hand of an overruling and kindly Providence.

The following are singular facts worthy for reflection. I was, commissioned for the duty of discovering Livingstone sometime in October, 1869. Mr. Bennett was ready with the money, and I was ready for the journey. But, observe, reader, that I did not proceed directly upon the search mission. I had many tasks to fulfil before proceeding with it, and many thousand miles to travel over. Supposing that I had gone direct to Zanzibar from Paris, seven or eight months afterwards, perhaps, I should have found myself at Ujiji, but Livingstone would not have been found there then; he was on the Lualaba; and I should have had to follow him on his devious tracks through the primeval forests of Manyuema, and up along the crooked course of the Lualaba for hundreds of miles. The time taken by me in travelling up the Nile, back to Jerusalem, then to Constantinople, Southern Russia, the Caucasus, and Persia, was employed by Livingstone in fruitful discoveries west of the Tanganika. Again, consider that I arrived at Unyanyembe in the latter part of June, and that owing to a war I was delayed three months at Unyanyembe, leading a fretful, peevish and impatient life. But while I was thus fretting myself, and being delayed by a series of accidents, Livingstone was being forced back to Ujiji in the same month. It took him from June to October to march to Ujiji. Now, in September, I broke loose from the thraldom which accident had imposed on me, and hurried southward to Ukonongo, then westward to Kawendi, then northward to Uvinza, then westward to Ujiji, only about three weeks after the Doctor's arrival, to find him resting under the veranda of his house with his face turned eastward, the direction from which I was coming.

Had I gone direct from Paris on the search I might have lost him; had I been enabled to have gone direct to Ujiji from Unyanyembe I might have lost him.

The days came and went peacefully and happily, under the palms of Ujiji.

My companion was improving in health and spirits. Life had been brought back to him; his fading vitality was restored, his enthusiasm for his work was growing up again into a height that was compelling him to desire to be up and doing. But what could he do, with five men and fifteen or twenty cloths?

"Have you seen the northern head of the Tangannka, Doctor?" I asked one day.

"No; I did try to go there, but the Wajiji were doing their best to fleece me, as they did both Burton and Speke, and I had not a great deal of cloth. If I had gone to the head of the Tanganika, I could not have gone, to Manyuema. The central line of drainage was the most important, and that is the Lualaba. Before this line the question whether there is a connection between the Tanganika and the Albert N'Yanza sinks into insignificance. The great line of drainage is the river flowing from lat.i.tude 11 degrees south, which I followed for over seven degrees northward. The Chambezi, the name given to its most southern extremity, drains a large tract of country south of the southernmost source of the Tanganika; it must, therefore, be the most important. I have not the least doubt, myself, but that this lake is the Upper Tanganika, and the Albert N'Yanza of Baker is the Lower Tanganika, which are connected by a river flowing from the upper to the lower. This is my belief, based upon reports of the Arabs, and a test I made of the flow with water-plants.

But I really never gave it much thought."

"Well, if I were you, Doctor, before leaving Ujiji, I should explore it, and resolve the doubts upon the subject; lest, after you leave here, you should not return by this way. The Royal Geographical Society attach much importance to this supposed connection, and declare you are the only man who can settle it. If I can be of any service to you, you may command me. Though I did not come to Africa as an explorer, I have a good deal of curiosity upon the subject, and should be willing to accompany you. I have with me about twenty men who understand rowing we have plenty of guns, cloth, and beads; and if we can get a canoe from the Arabs we can manage the thing easily."

"Oh, we can get a canoe from Sayd bin Majid. This man has been very kind to me, and if ever there was an Arab gentleman, he is one."

"Then it is settled, is it, that we go?"

"I am ready, whenever you are."

"I am at your command. Don't you hear my men call you the 'Great Master,' and me the 'Little Master?' It would never do for the 'Little Master' to command."

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. I lived with him from the 10th November, 1871, to the 14th March, 1872; witnessed his conduct in the camp, and on the march, and my feelings for him are those of unqualified admiration. The camp is the best place to discover a man's weaknesses, where, if he is flighty or wrong-headed, he is sure to develop his hobbies and weak side. I think it possible, however, that Livingstone, with an unsuitable companion, might feel annoyance. I know I should do so very readily, if a man's character was of that oblique nature that it was an impossibility to travel in his company. I have seen men, in whose company I felt nothing but a thraldom, which it was a duty to my own self-respect to cast off as soon as possible; a feeling of utter incompatibility, with whose nature mine could never a.s.similate. But Livingstone was a character that I venerated, that called forth all my enthusiasm, that evoked nothing but sincerest admiration.

Dr. Livingstone is about sixty years old, though after he was restored to health he appeared more like a man who had not pa.s.sed his fiftieth year. His hair has a brownish colour yet, but is here and there streaked with grey lines over the temples; his whiskers and moustache are very grey. He shaves his chin daily. His eyes, which are hazel, are remarkably bright; he has a sight keen as a hawk's. His teeth alone indicate the weakness of age; the hard fare of Lunda has made havoc in their lines. His form, which soon a.s.sumed a stoutish appearance, is a little over the ordinary height with the slightest possible bow in the shoulders. When walking he has a firm but heavy tread, like that of an overworked or fatigued man. He is accustomed to wear a naval cap with a semicircular peak, by which he has been identified throughout Africa.