CHAPTER XII. — INTERCOURSE WITH LIVINGSTONE AT UJIJI

LIVINGSTONE'S OWN STORY OF HIS JOURNEYS, HIS TROUBLES, AND DISAPPOINTMENTS.

"If there is love between us, inconceivably delicious, and

profitable will our intercourse be; if not, your time is lost,

and you will only annoy me.  I shall seem to you stupid, and the

reputation I have false.  All my good is magnetic, and I educate

not by lessons, but by going about my business."—Emerson's

'Representative Men'.

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 analyzation 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 compass is that hanging on a peg there? Whose clothes, whose boots, are those? Who reads those newspapers, those 'Saturday 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 niggard 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 assured 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 assist 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 appetite," 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 shining 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 massacres; 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 Gods 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 latitude 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 assimilate.

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 passed 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 assumed 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. His dress, when first I saw him, exhibited traces of patching and repairing, but was scrupulously clean.

I was led to believe that Livingstone possessed a splenetic, misanthropic temper; some have said that he is garrulous, that he is demented; that he has utterly changed from the David Livingstone whom people knew as the reverend missionary; that he takes no notes or observations but such as those which no other person could read but himself; and it was reported, before I proceeded to Central Africa, that he was married to an African princess.

I respectfully beg to differ with all and each of the above statements. I grant he is not an angel, but he approaches to that being as near as the nature of a living man will allow. I never saw any spleen or misanthropy in him—as for being garrulous, Dr. Livingstone is quite the reverse: he is reserved, if anything; and to the man who says Dr. Livingstone is changed, all I can say is, that he never could have known him, for it is notorious that the Doctor has a fund of quiet humour, which he exhibits at all times whenever he is among friends. I must also beg leave to correct the gentleman who informed me that Livingstone takes no notes or observations. The huge Letts's Diary which I carried home to his daughter is full of notes, and there are no less than a score of sheets within it filled with observations which he took during the last trip he made to Manyuema alone; and in the middle of the book there is sheet after sheet, column after column, carefully written, of figures alone. A large letter which I received from him has been sent to Sir Thomas MacLear, and this contains nothing but observations.

During the four months I was with him, I noticed him every evening making most careful notes; and a large tin box that he has with him contains numbers of field note-books, the contents of which I dare say will see the light some time. His maps also evince great care and industry. As to the report of his African marriage, it is unnecessary to say more than that it is untrue, and it is utterly beneath a gentleman to hint at such a thing in connection with the name of David Livingstone.

There is a good-natured abandon about Livingstone which was not lost on me. Whenever he began to laugh, there was a contagion about it, that compelled me to imitate him. It was such a laugh as Herr Teufelsdrockh's—a laugh of the whole man from head to heel. If he told a story, he related it in such a way as to convince one of its truthfulness; his face was so lit up by the sly fun it contained, that I was sure the story was worth relating, and worth listening to.

The wan features which had shocked me at first meeting, the heavy step which told of age and hard travel, the grey beard and bowed shoulders, belied the man. Underneath that well-worn exterior lay an endless fund of high spirits and inexhaustible humour; that rugged frame of his enclosed a young and most exuberant soul. Every day I heard innumerable jokes and pleasant anecdotes; interesting hunting stories, in which his friends Oswell, Webb, Vardon, and Gorden Cumming were almost always the chief actors. I was not sure, at first, but this joviality, humour, and abundant animal spirits were the result of a joyous hysteria; but as I found they continued while I was with him, I am obliged to think them natural.

Another thing which specially attracted my attention was his wonderfully retentive memory. If we remember the many years he has spent in Africa, deprived of books, we may well think it an uncommon memory that can recite whole poems from Byron, Burns, Tennyson, Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell. The reason of this may be found, perhaps, in the fact, that he has lived all his life almost, we may say, within himself. Zimmerman, a great student of human nature, says on this subject "The unencumbered mind recalls all that it has read, all that pleased the eye, and delighted the ear; and reflecting on every idea which either observation, or experience, or discourse has produced, gains new information by every reflection. The intellect contemplates all the former scenes of life; views by anticipation those that are yet to come; and blends all ideas of past and future in the actual enjoyment of the present moment.

" He has lived in a world which revolved inwardly, out of which he seldom awoke except to attend to the immediate practical necessities of himself and people; then relapsed again into the same happy inner world, which he must have peopled with his own friends, relations, acquaintances, familiar readings, ideas, and associations; so that wherever he might be, or by whatsoever he was surrounded, his own world always possessed more attractions to his cultured mind than were yielded by external circumstances.

The study of Dr. Livingstone would not be complete if we did not take the religious side of his character into consideration. His religion is not of the theoretical kind, but it is a constant, earnest, sincere practice. It is neither demonstrative nor loud, but manifests itself in a quiet, practical way, and is always at work. It is not aggressive, which sometimes is troublesome, if not impertinent. In him, religion exhibits its loveliest features; it governs his conduct not only towards his servants, but towards the natives, the bigoted Mohammedans, and all who come in contact with him. Without it, Livingstone, with his ardent temperament, his enthusiasm, his high spirit and courage, must have become uncompanionable, and a hard master. Religion has tamed him, and made him a Christian gentleman: the crude and wilful have been refined and subdued; religion has made him the most companionable of men and indulgent of masters—a man whose society is pleasurable.

In Livingstone I have seen many amiable traits. His gentleness never forsakes him; his hopefulness never deserts him. No harassing anxieties, distraction of mind, long separation from home and kindred, can make him complain. He thinks "all will come out right at last;" he has such faith in the goodness of Providence. The sport of adverse circumstances, the plaything of the miserable beings sent to him from Zanzibar—he has been baffled and worried, even almost to the grave, yet he will not desert the charge imposed upon him by his friend, Sir Roderick Murchison. To the stern dictates of duty, alone, has he sacrificed his home and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized life. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon—never to relinquish his work, though his heart yearns for home; never to surrender his obligations until he can write Finis to his work.

But you may take any point in Dr. Livingstone's character, and analyse it carefully, and I would challenge any man to find a fault in it. He is sensitive, I know; but so is any man of a high mind and generous nature. He is sensitive on the point of being doubted or being criticised. An extreme love of truth is one of his strongest characteristics, which proves him to be a man of strictest principles, and conscientious scruples; being such, he is naturally sensitive, and shrinks from any attacks on the integrity of his observations, and the accuracy of his reports. He is conscious of having laboured in the course of geography and science with zeal and industry, to have been painstaking, and as exact as circumstances would allow. Ordinary critics seldom take into consideration circumstances, but, utterly regardless of the labor expended in obtaining the least amount of geographical information in a new land, environed by inconceivable dangers and difficulties, such as Central Africa presents, they seem to take delight in rending to tatters, and reducing to nil, the fruits of long years of labor, by sharply-pointed shafts of ridicule and sneers.

Livingstone no doubt may be mistaken in some of his conclusions about certain points in the geography of Central Africa, but he is not so dogmatic and positive a man as to refuse conviction. He certainly demands, when arguments in contra are used in opposition to him, higher authority than abstract theory. His whole life is a testimony against its unreliability, and his entire labor of years were in vain if theory can be taken in evidence against personal observation and patient investigation.

The reluctance he manifests to entertain suppositions, possibilities regarding the nature, form, configuration of concrete immutable matter like the earth, arises from the fact, that a man who commits himself to theories about such an untheoretical subject as Central Africa is deterred from bestirring himself to prove them by the test of exploration. His opinion of such a man is, that he unfits himself for his duty, that he is very likely to become a slave to theory—a voluptuous fancy, which would master him.

It is his firm belief, that a man who rests his sole knowledge of the geography of Africa on theory, deserves to be discredited. It has been the fear of being discredited and criticised and so made to appear before the world as a man who spent so many valuable years in Africa for the sake of burdening the geographical mind with theory that has detained him so long in Africa, doing his utmost to test the value of the main theory which clung to him, and would cling to him until he proved or disproved it.

This main theory is his belief that in the broad and mighty Lualaba he has discovered the head waters of the Nile. His grounds for believing this are of such nature and weight as to compel him to despise the warning that years are advancing on him, and his former iron constitution is failing. He believes his speculations on this point will be verified; he believes he is strong enough to pursue his explorations until he can return to his country, with the announcement that the Lualaba is none other than the Nile.

On discovering that the insignificant stream called the Chambezi, which rises between 10 degrees S. and 12 degrees S., flowed westerly, and then northerly through several lakes, now under the names of the Chambezi, then as the Luapula, and then as the Lualaba, and that it still continued its flow towards the north for over 7 degrees, Livingstone became firmly of the opinion that the river whose current he followed was the Egyptian Nile. Failing at lat. 4 degrees S. to pursue his explorations further without additional supplies, he determined to return to Ujiji to obtain them.

And now, having obtained them, he intends to return to the point where he left off work. He means to follow that great river until it is firmly established what name shall eventually be given the noble water-way whose course he has followed through so many sick toilings and difficulties. To all entreaties to come home, to all the glowing temptations which home and innumerable friends offer, he returns the determined answer:—

"No; not until my work is ended."

I have often heard our servants discuss our respective merits. "Your master," say my servants to Livingstone's, "is a good man—a very good man; he does not beat you, for he has a kind heart; but ours—oh! he is sharp—hot as fire"—"mkali sana, kana moto." From being hated and thwarted in every possible way by the Arabs and half-castes upon first arrival in Ujiji, he has, through his uniform kindness and mild, pleasant temper, won all hearts. I observed that universal respect was paid to him. Even the Mohammedans never passed his house without calling to pay their compliments, and to say, "The blessing of God rest on you." Each Sunday morning he gathers his little flock around him, and reads prayers and a chapter from the Bible, in a natural, unaffected, and sincere tone; and afterwards delivers a short address in the Kisawahili language, about the subject read to them, which is listened to with interest and attention.

There is another point in Livingstone's character about which readers of his books, and students of his travels, would like to know, and that is his ability to withstand the dreadful climate of Central Africa, and the consistent energy with which he follows up his explorations. His consistent energy is native to him and to his race. He is a very fine example of the perseverance, doggedness, and tenacity which characterise the Anglo-Saxon spirit; but his ability to withstand the climate is due not only to the happy constitution with which he was born, but to the strictly temperate life he has ever led. A drunkard and a man of vicious habits could never have withstood the climate of Central Africa.

The second day after my arrival in Ujiji I asked the Doctor if he did not feel a desire, sometimes, to visit his country, and take a little rest after his six years' explorations; and the answer he gave me fully reveals the man. Said he:

"I should like very much to go home and see my children once again, but I cannot bring my heart to abandon the task I have undertaken, when it is so nearly completed. It only requires six or seven months more to trace the true source that I have discovered with Petherick's branch of the White Nile, or with the Albert N'Yanza of Sir Samuel Baker, which is the lake called by the natives 'Chowambe.' Why should I go home before my task is ended, to have to come back again to do what I can very well do now?"