"Who is Debono?" was asked. "The same as Petric," answered Mahamed.
Mahamed soon had dinner for them, and they enjoyed a better repast than they had done for many a day. Then the greatest treat was to come-- water with which to wash their hands, and the luxury of soap. The remains of their repast was then placed before their faithful Seedees.
On retiring to their hut at night they offered up a prayer of thankfulness to the Almighty for having preserved them through so many difficulties, and at length, by His all-protecting arm, brought them in safety to the boundary of civilisation after twenty-six months of unceasing toil and anxiety. They had still, however, a considerable distance to march before they were to meet with civilised men.
Their host, Mahamed, was little better than a land pirate, who plundered and shot down the natives without compunction. Among his troops there was not a true Turk, wool predominating on their heads. They were adventurers, born from negro stock in the most southern Egyptian dominions. Numbers of such characters are found at Khartoum, ready for any employment. The merchants engage them there, and send them into the interior under the command of a chief to collect ivory and slaves. They were all married to women of the country, whom they had dressed in cloths and beads.
Mahamed, like the black chiefs, wished to detain the travellers, that they and their party might guard his camp, while he went off on an expedition on his own account. He succeeded by depriving them of their porters, and then marched out with his army--drums and fifes playing, colours flying, guns firing, officers riding, some on donkeys, others on cows. On the 31st the army returned, after having burned down and plundered three villages, laden with ivory and driving in four slave girls and thirty head of cattle.
A few days afterwards another example of Turkish barbarity came under their notice. The head man of a village arrived with a large tusk of ivory with which to ransom his daughter. Fortunately for him it had been considered by the Turks wise to keep on terms with so influential a man; and therefore, on receiving the tusk, Mahamed gave back the damsel, adding a cow to seal their friendship.
At length, weary of Mahamed's procrastination, on the 11th of January Speke ordered the march, telling Mahamed he might follow if he wished.
At first the villagers, supposing that the travellers were Turks, made their escape in every direction, carrying what stores and cattle they could; while others pulled down their huts, and marched off with the materials to a distant site, to escape from their persecutors.
The people do this because the Turks, when they arrive at a village, often pull down the huts and carry off the roofs to form a camp for themselves outside the enclosure.
They also without ceremony rob the corn-stores, and should the owner remonstrate, he is knocked down with the butt of a musket, and told he is fortunate to escape being shot.
Finding that Speke was determined to move, Mahamed broke up his camp, the whole party, including porters to carry the ivory tusks, amounting to nearly a thousand men.
The Turks, as they marched along, helped themselves from the half-filled bins of the unfortunate natives, who were starving, while the chiefs at the different villages were quarrelling among themselves.
One night a party of warriors from another place appeared in front of the village near which they were encamped, and the next morning the villagers turned out and killed two of them. The enemy, as they retired, cried out that as soon as the guns were gone the villagers must look out for themselves.
Speke and Grant, however, kept their own pots boiling by shooting antelopes and other game. The Turks ate anything they could get hold of. Greatly to the disgust of the Seedees, they devoured a crocodile which was killed; they also feasted off crocodiles' eggs.
They were now passing through the Bari country. Villages were numerous, but the inhabitants fled as soon as they appeared. Whenever the Turks halted, they sacked the villages of provisions.
At Doro, which they reached on the 13th of February, the Turks having plundered the nearest villages, the natives turned out with their arms, and war drums were beaten as a sign that they intended to attack the camp. As soon as darkness set in, they attempted to steal into the camp, but, being frightened off by the patrols, hundreds collected in front and set fire to the grass, brandishing torches in their hands, howling like demons, and swearing that they would annihilate their enemies in the morning.
On the 15th of February the travellers approached Gondokoro, and to their delight saw in the distance a white speck, which marked the position of the Austrian mission-house. Soon afterwards the masts of the Nile boats could be seen.
The Toorkees halting to fire a _feu de joie_, the party marched in together.
While making enquiries for Petherick, they caught sight of a sturdy English figure approaching them. Uttering a hearty cheer and waving their hats, they rushed forward and, greatly to their delight, found themselves shaking hands with Mr, now Sir Samuel, Baker, the elephant hunter of Ceylon, who had bravely come out in search of them.
They had had no news from England later than April, 1860, and it was now February, 1863. It was believed in England that they never would have been able to get through the savage tribes. They had reason to be grateful for the kind sympathy of their friends and countrymen.
The long-looked-for Petherick was away on a trading expedition, and had, as yet, made no attempt to succour them.
They waited at Gondokoro till the 26th, that Speke might ascertain, by lunar observation, the longitude, which was 31 degrees 46 minutes 9 seconds east, the latitude being 4 degrees 54 minutes 5 seconds north.
The thermometer ranged between 94 degrees and 100 degrees in the shade.
The climate was considered better than that of Khartoum.
While Mr Baker, accompanied by his devoted wife, continued his journey southward, they proceeded down the Nile in his boats to Khartoum.
At Gondokoro an Austrian mission has been established for thirty years; but, owing to utter want of success, it was now about to be abandoned.
They here found three Dutch ladies--the Baroness Capellen, Madame Tinne, and her daughter--who had, in the most spirited way, come up the Nile in a steamer for the purpose of assisting them, intending to proceed overland to Fernando Po.
They had, while at Gondokoro, been shocked by seeing a number of slaves, attacked by small-pox, thrown overboard by the native traders. These noble and philanthropic ladies had rescued some of the unfortunate natives from slavery. Unhappily, overcome by the climate, Madame Tinne and most of her companions some time afterwards died, and their proposed expedition was arrested.
The voyage down the Nile to Khartoum took from the 26th of February to the 30th of March, and was performed in a _diabeah_, the usual Nile boat, the after part being covered with a deck, on which was built a comfortable poop cabin. Their Seedees followed them in two large boats.
They were hospitably welcomed by Ali Bey, and by a number of European and Turkish inhabitants.
They now felt themselves in a civilised country. Fifty years ago Khartoum was a mere military post on the Egyptian frontier; it now contains quarters for fifteen thousand troops.
At a banquet, given in their honour by an Italian hunter, Monsieur Debono, upwards of twenty gentlemen and four ladies were present. They here met also Mr Aipperly, a minister of the Pilgrim Mission from the Swiss Protestant Church. He was stationed at Gallabat, and, having learned blacksmith's work and other trades, he was able to make friends with the natives by assisting them to put up their irrigation wheels and other carpenter's work.
Among other interesting places they visited was a Coptic church. In the centre was a desk, at which a man was reading aloud to a number of other persons wearing large turbans, their shoes placed on one side, and several children, all sitting on a carpet, listening devoutly. On the walls were draperies and pictures of the Saviour, and within a doorway was a high altar, covered with a cloth marked with the figure of the cross. The service was in Arabic. A handsome old man entered, bearing a staff surmounted by a golden cross. After kneeling at the altar, he invited the strangers to his house to have coffee. Grant says that he never saw a finer face than that of this venerable Copt, Gabriel by name, who is at the head of the Coptic Church at Khartoum.
They left Khartoum on the 15th of April, and continued their journey down to Berber by water. Here they landed, and had a fatiguing camel ride across the desert to a place called Korosko, whence they continued it by water to Cairo. Here they were to part from their faithful Seedees, of whom Bombay was appointed captain. The Seedees received three years' pay, and an order for a freeman's garden to be purchased for them at Zanzibar, when each man was to receive ten dollars more as soon as he could find a wife. They ultimately, after many adventures, reached their destination.
The two travellers, whose adventures we have thus far followed, embarked for England, on the 4th of June, on board the "Pera," where they safely arrived, after an absence of eleven hundred and forty-six days.
His friends had shortly afterwards to mourn Captain Speke's untimely death, from his gun accidentally going off while at shooting. His gallant companion, now Colonel Grant, survives.
Although not, as he supposed, the discoverer of the remotest source of the Nile, Speke was undoubtedly the first European who saw the Victoria Nyanza, while the adventurous and hazardous journey he and Grant performed together deservedly places them in the first rank of African travellers. They also opened up an extensive and rich district hitherto totally unknown, into which the blessings of Christianity and commerce may, in a few years, be introduced. It is to be hoped that King Rumanika, the most intelligent ruler with whom they came in contact, still survives, as he would afford a cordial welcome both to missionaries and legitimate traders, and his beautiful and healthy country might become the centre of civilisation in that part of Eastern Africa. Were a mission sent to him by way of Zanzibar, backed by a body of disciplined, well-armed men, he would probably greatly assist in clearing the district intervening between the north of his dominions and that lately brought under subjection by Sir Samuel Baker, and a speedy end might be put to the horrible cruelties of the barbarous Mtesa, King of Uganda. It is sad to reflect, however, that while Mahommedan Turks and Arabs are allowed to range at will over the wide regions of Africa and proselytise the heathen, so few Christian merchants or missionaries have made their way into the interior with the advantages their superior civilisation and pure faith would bestow on the hapless inhabitants.
We may yet hope with Captain Burton that, "as the remote is gradually drawn nigh, and the difficult becomes accessible, the intercourse of man--strongest instrument of civilisation in the hands of Providence-- will raise Africa to that place in the great republic of nations, from which she has hitherto been unhappily excluded."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
TRAVELS OF DR. LIVINGSTONE--FIRST EXPEDITION.
HIS PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE--SETS OUT FOR AFRICA AS A MISSIONARY FROM THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY--ARRIVES AT CAPE TOWN--LEPELOLE--MABOTSA-- SECHELE--DR. LIVINGSTONE FINDS HIM AT KOLOBENG--A MISSIONARY'S NECESSARY ACCOMPLISHMENTS--THE KALAHARA DESERT DESCRIBED--STARTING--THE BANKS OF THE ZOUGA--LAKE NGAMI--RETURN TO KOLOBENG--RETURN TO LAKE NGAMI--FEVER-- SET OUT AGAIN AND REACH THE CHOBE--SEBITUANE--BANKS OF THE ZAMBESI-- RETURNS TO KOLOBENG--ARRIVES AT CAPE TOWN, WHERE HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN EMBARK FOR ENGLAND--REACHES KURUMAN--THE DUTCH BOERS--LINYANTI--RECEIVED BY THE MAKOLOLO--FEVER.
David Livingstone comes of a race whose chief pride was that they were honest men. His great grandfather fell at the battle of Culloden. His grandfather was a small farmer in Ulva, one of the western islands of Scotland. Here his father was born, but his grandfather after that event migrated to a large cotton factory at the Blantyre Works, situated on the Clyde, above Glasgow. His uncles all entered His Majesty's service either as soldiers or sailors, but his father remained at home, and his mother, being a thrifty housewife, in order to make the two ends meet, sent her son David, at the age of ten, to the factory as a piecer.
He was fond of study, and with part of his first week's wages he purchased "Ruddiman's Rudiments of Latin," and for many years afterwards studied that language at an evening school after his work was done. He also, when promoted at the age of nineteen to cotton-spinning, took his books to the factory, and read by placing one of them on a portion of the spinning-jenny, so that he could catch sentence after sentence as he passed at his work. He was well paid, however, and having determined to prepare himself for becoming a medical missionary in China, was enabled, by working with his hands in summer, to support himself while attending medical and Greek classes in Glasgow in winter, as also the divinity lectures of Dr Wardlow. He was thus able to pass the required examinations, and was at length admitted a licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons.
The war in China preventing him from proceeding thither, he offered himself as a missionary to the London Missionary Society, and embarked for Africa in 1840.
After reaching Cape Town, he went round to Algoa Bay, whence he proceeded about eight hundred miles into the interior to Kuruman, the missionary station of the Reverend R. Moffat, whose daughter he afterwards married.
Thence he went to Lepelole, where, to gain a knowledge of the language and habits of the inhabitants, the Bakwains, he cut himself off from European society for six months. The Bakwains, however, being driven by another tribe from their country, he was unable, as he had intended, to form a station at that place.
He was more successful at Mabotsa, also inhabited by the Bakwains, to which place he removed in 1843. It was here, while in chase of a lion, that he nearly lost his life. He had fired both the barrels of his gun, and was re-loading, when the lion, though desperately wounded, sprang upon him, catching his shoulder, both man and beast coming to the ground together. Growling horribly, the fierce brute shook the doctor as a terrier dog does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of a cat. The gun of his companion, a native schoolmaster, who came to his assistance, missed fire, when the lion, leaving Dr Livingstone, attacked him.
Another native came up with a spear, when the lion flew at him also, but the bullets at that moment taking effect, the fierce brute fell down dead.
The chief of the Bakwains, Sechele, became a Christian, and exerted himself for the conversion of his people, restoring his wives to their fathers, and living in every respect a thoroughly consistent life.
The Dutch Boers, who had pushed forward to the confines of the country, proved, however, most adverse to the success of the mission, by carrying off the natives and compelling them to labour as slaves.
By the advice of Dr Laidley, Sechele and his people moved to Kolobeng, a stream about two hundred miles to the north of Kuruman, where Dr Livingstone formed a station.