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.

The second fly, which sang the tenor notes more nearly resembled in size and description the tsetse.  It was exceedingly nimble, and it occupied three soldiers nearly an hour to capture a specimen; and, when it was finally caught, it stung most ravenously the hand, and never ceased its efforts to attack until it was pinned through.  It had three or four white marks across the after-part of its body; but the biting parts of this fly consisted of two black antennae and an opal coloured style, which folded away under the neck.  When about to bite, this style was shot out straight, and the antennae embraced it closely.  After death the fly lost its distinctive white marks.  Only one of this species did we see at this camp.  The third fly, called “chufwa,” pitched a weak alto-crescendo note, was a third larger than the house fly, and had long wings.  If this insect sang the feeblest note, it certainly did the most work, and inflicted the most injury.  Horses and donkeys streamed with blood, and reared and kicked through the pain.  So determined was it not to be driven before it obtained its fill, that it was easily despatched; but this dreadful enemy to cattle constantly increased in numbers.  The three species above named are, according to natives, fatal to cattle; and this may perhaps be the reason why such a vast expanse of first-class pasture is without domestic cattle of any kind, a few goats only being kept by the villagers.  This fly I subsequently found to be the “tsetse.”

On the second morning, instead of proceeding, I deemed it more prudent to await the fourth caravan.  Burton experimented sufficiently for me on the promised word of the Banyans of Kaole and Zanzibar, and waited eleven months before he received the promised articles.  As I did not expect to be much over that time on my errand altogether, it would be ruin, absolute and irremediable, should I be detained at Unyanyembe so long a time by my caravan.  Pending its arrival, I sought the pleasures of the chase.  I was but a tyro in hunting, I confess, though I had shot a little on the plains of America and Persia; yet I considered myself a fair shot, and on game ground, and within a reasonable proximity to game, I doubted not but I could bring some to camp.

After a march of a mile through the tall grass of the open, we gained the glades between the jungles.  Unsuccessful here, after ever so much prying into fine hiding-places and lurking corners, I struck a trail well traversed by small antelope and hartebeest, which we followed.  It led me into a jungle, and down a watercourse bisecting it; but, after following it for an hour, I lost it, and, in endeavouring to retrace it, lost my way.  However, my pocket-compass stood me in good stead; and by it I steered for the open plain, in the centre of which stood the camp.  But it was terribly hard work—­this of plunging through an African jungle, ruinous to clothes, and trying to the cuticle.  In order to travel

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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.