Into the ground, and could not conceive how one hut could be built
on the top of another, or how people could live in the upper story,
with the pointed roof of the lower one sticking up in the middle of the floor.
The vessels in the harbor were, they said, not canoes, but towns,
into which one must climb by a rope.
At Loanda Livingstone was attacked by a fever, which reduced him
to a skeleton, and for a while rendered him unable to attend
to his companions. But they managed very well alone.
Some went to the forest, cut firewood, and brought it to town for sale;
others unloaded a coal-vessel in the harbor, at the magnificent wages
of a sixpence a day. The proceeds of their labor were shrewdly invested
in cloth and beads which they would take home with them
in confirmation of the astounding stories they would have to tell;
"for," said they, "in coming to the white man's country, we have accomplished
what no other people in the world could have done; we are the true ancients,
who can tell wonderful things."
The two years, at the close of which Livingstone had promised to rejoin
his family, had almost expired, and he was offered a passage home from Loanda.
But the great object of his expedition was only partially attained.
Though he had reached the west coast in safety, he had found that the forests,
swamps, and rivers must render a wagon-road from the interior impracticable.
He feared also that his native attendants would not be able to make
their way alone back to their own country, through the unfriendly tribes.
So he resolved, feeble as he was, to return to Sekeletu's dominions,
and thence proceed to the eastern coast.
In September he started on his return journey, bearing considerable presents
for Sekeletu from the Portuguese, who were naturally anxious to open a trade
with the rich ivory region of the interior. The Board of Public Works
sent a colonel's uniform and a horse, which unfortunately died on the way.
The merchants contributed specimens of all their articles of trade,
and a couple of donkeys, which would have a special value on account of
their immunity from the bite of the tsetse. The men were made happy
by the acquisition of a suit of European clothes and a gun apiece,
in addition to their own purchases.
In the Bashinje country he again encountered hostile demonstrations.
One chief, who came riding into the camp upon the shoulders of an attendant,
was especially annoying in his demands for tribute. Another, who had
quarreled with one of Livingstone's attendants, waylaid and fired upon
the party. Livingstone, who was ill of a fever, staggered up to the chief,
revolver in hand. The sight of the six mouths of that convenient implement
gaping at his breast wrought an instant revolution in his martial ideas;
he fell into a fit of trembling, protesting that he had just come
to have a quiet talk, and wanted only peace.
These Bashinje have more of the low negro character and physiognomy
than any tribe encountered by Livingstone. Their color is a dirty black;
they have low foreheads and flat noses, artificially enlarged
by sticks run through the septum, and file their teeth down to a point.
A little further to the south the complexion of the natives is much lighter,
and their features are strikingly like those depicted upon
the Egyptian monuments, the resemblance being still further increased
by some of their modes of wearing the hair. Livingstone indeed affirms
that the Egyptian paintings and sculptures present the best type
of the general physiognomy of the central tribes.
The return journey was still slower than the advance had been;
and it was not till late in the summer of 1855 that they reached
the villages of the Makololo, having been absent more than eighteen months.
They were received as men risen from the dead, for the diviners had declared
that they had perished long ago. The returned adventurers
were the lions of the day. They strutted around in their gay European suits,
with their guns over their shoulders, to the abounding admiration
of the women and children, calling themselves Livingstone's "braves",
who had gone over the whole world, turning back only when
there was no more land. To be sure they returned about as poor as they went,
for their gun and their one suit of red and white cotton
were all that they had saved, every thing else having been expended
during their long journey. "But never mind," they said;
"we have not gone in vain, you have opened a path for us."
There was one serious drawback from their happiness. Some of their wives,
like those of the companions of Ulysses of old, wearied by their long absence,
had married other husbands. They took this misfortune much to heart.
"Wives," said one of the bereaved husbands, "are as plenty as grass -
I can get another; but," he added bitterly, "if I had that fellow
I would slit his ears for him." Livingstone did the best he could for them.
He induced the chiefs to compel the men who had taken the only wife of any one
to give her up to her former husband. Those - and they were the majority -
who had still a number left, he consoled by telling them that they had
quite as many as was good for them - more than he himself had.
So, undeterred by this single untoward result of their experiment,
the adventurers one and all set about gathering ivory for another adventure
to the west.
Livingstone had satisfied himself that the great River Leeambye,
up which he had paddled so many miles on his way to the west,
was identical with the Zambesi, which he had discovered four years previously.
The two names are indeed the same, both meaning simply "The River",
in different dialects spoken on its banks.
