Author: Henry Morton Stanley

Publisher: Theclassics.Us

Published: 2013-09

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 9781230273808

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XV THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT IN a camp in the heart of Africa, not far from Lake Bangweolo, David Livingstone, the traveller-evangelist, lay dead. His followers, numbering about three-score negroes of Zanzibar, deliberated upon their future movements. To return to the coast ruled by their Sultan, without their great white master, would provoke grave suspicion. They resolved to prepare the remains so as to be fit for transportation across a breadth of tropical region which extended to the Indian Ocean, fifteen hundred miles. After many weary months of travel, they arrived at the sea-coast with the body. In charge of two of the faithful band, it was placed on board a homeward-bound steamer, to be finally deposited 1 in a vault in Westminster Abbey. At the same period when the steamer coasted along the shores of Eastern Africa, I was returning to England along the coast of Western Africa, from the Ashantee campaign. At St. Vincent, on February 25th, 1874, cable news of the death of Livingstone, substantiated beyond doubt, was put into my hands. 'At Lake Bangweolo the death occurred, ' said the cablegram. Just one thousand miles south of Nyangwe! The great river remains, then, a mystery still, for poor Livingstone's work is unfinished! Fatal Africa! One after another, travellers drop away. It is such a huge continent, and each of its secrets is environed by so many difficulties, -- the torrid heat, the miasma exhaled from the soil, the noisome vapours enveloping every path, the giant cane-grass suffocating the wayfarer, the rabid fury of the native guarding every entry and exit, the unspeakable misery of the life within the wild continent, the utter absence of every comfort, the bitterness which each day heaps upon the poor white..