Children
of tender age pinned to the earth and bayoneted; men innocent or
not, shot, cut, stabbed, slashed, destroyed - a whole city given
up to the summa injuria of an infuriate, reckless, and brutal army!
Oh France! Oh Frenchmen! Such things are unknown even in the
heart of barbarous Central Africa. We spurned the newspapers with
our feet; and for relief to sickened hearts gazed on the comic side
of our world, as illustrated in the innocent pages of `Punch.'
Poor 'Punch!' good-hearted, kindly-natured `Punch!' a traveller's
benison on thee! Thy jokes were as physic; thy innocent satire
was provocative of hysteric mirth.
Our doors were crowded with curious natives, who looked with
indescribable wonder at the enormous sheets. I heard them repeat
the words, "Khabari Kisungu" - white man's news - often, and heard
them discussing the nature of such a quantity of news, and
expressing their belief that the "Wasungu" were "mbyah sana,"
and very "mkali;" by which they meant to say that the white men
were very wicked, and very smart and clever though the term
wicked is often employed to express high admiration.
On the fourth day from Ugunda, or the 18th of February, and the
fifty-third day from Ujiji, we made our appearance with flags
flying and guns firing in the valley of Kwihara, and when the
Doctor and myself passed through the portals of my old quarters
I formally welcomed him to Unyanyembe and to my house.
Since the 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!"
CHAPTER XV. HOMEWARD BOUND. - LIVINGSTONE'S LAST WORDS
THE FINAL FAREWELL
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. Our store-rooms were full of the
good things of this life, besides cloth, beads, wire, and the
thousand and one impedimenta and paraphernalia of travel with which
I had loaded over one hundred and fifty men at Bagamoyo. I had
seventy-four loads of miscellaneous things, the most valuable of
which were now to be turned over to Livingstone, for his march back
to the sources of the Nile.
It was a great day with, us when, with hammer and chisel, I broke
open the Doctor's boxes, that we might feast our famished stomachs
on the luxuries which were to redeem us from the effect of the
cacotrophic dourra and maize food we had been subjected to in the
wilderness.
