How I Found Livingstone; travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone, by Henry M. Stanley eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 578 pages of information about How I Found Livingstone; travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone, by Henry M. Stanley.

How I Found Livingstone; travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone, by Henry M. Stanley eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 578 pages of information about How I Found Livingstone; travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone, by Henry M. Stanley.

I selected a house near the western outskirts of the town, where there is a large open square through which the road from Unyanyembe enters.  Had I been at Bagamoyo a month, I could not have bettered my location.  My tents were pitched fronting the tembe (house) I had chosen, enclosing a small square, where business could be transacted, bales looked over, examined, and marked, free from the intrusion of curious sightseers.  After driving the twenty-seven animals of the Expedition into the enclosure in the rear of the house, storing the bales of goods, and placing a cordon of soldiers round, I proceeded to the Jesuit Mission, to a late dinner, being tired and ravenous, leaving the newly-formed camp in charge of the white men and Capt.  Bombay.

The Mission is distant from the town a good half mile, to the north of it; it is quite a village of itself, numbering some fifteen or sixteen houses.  There are more than ten padres engaged in the establishment, and as many sisters, and all find plenty of occupation in educing from native crania the fire of intelligence.  Truth compels me to state that they are very successful, having over two hundred pupils, boys and girls, in the Mission, and, from the oldest to the youngest, they show the impress of the useful education they have received.

The dinner furnished to the padres and their guest consisted of as many plats as a first-class hotel in Paris usually supplies, and cooked with nearly as much skill, though the surroundings were by no means equal.  I feel assured also that the padres, besides being tasteful in their potages and entrees, do not stultify their ideas for lack of that element which Horace, Hafiz, and Byron have praised so much.  The champagne—­think of champagne Cliquot in East Africa!—­Lafitte, La Rose, Burgundy, and Bordeaux were of first-rate quality, and the meek and lowly eyes of the fathers were not a little brightened under the vinous influence.  Ah! those fathers understand life, and appreciate its duration.  Their festive board drives the African jungle fever from their doors, while it soothes the gloom and isolation which strike one with awe, as one emerges from the lighted room and plunges into the depths of the darkness of an African night, enlivened only by the wearying monotone of the frogs and crickets, and the distant ululation of the hyena.  It requires somewhat above human effort, unaided by the ruby liquid that cheers, to be always suave and polite amid the dismalities of native life in Africa.

After the evening meal, which replenished my failing strength, and for which I felt the intensest gratitude, the most advanced of the pupils came forward, to the number of twenty, with brass instruments, thus forming a full band of music.  It rather astonished me to hear instrumental sounds issue forth in harmony from such woolly-headed youngsters; to hear well-known French music at this isolated port, to hear negro boys, that a few months ago knew nothing beyond the traditions of their ignorant mothers, stand forth and chant Parisian songs about French valor and glory, with all the sangfroid of gamins from the purlieus of Saint-Antoine.

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How I Found Livingstone; travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone, by Henry M. Stanley from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.