they still considered me as their master, and that
they would not leave Zanzibar until they received
a letter from me announcing my safe airival J my own country. I had, they said, taken them!
round all Africa to bring them back to their
homes, and they must know that I had reached
my own land before they would go to seek new
adventures on the continent, and— simple, generous
souls!— that if I wanted their help to reach
my country they would help me!
They were sweet and sad moments, those of
parting. What a long, long and true friendship
was here sundered! Through what strange vicissitudes
of life had they not followed me! What
wild and varied scenes had we not seen together!
What a noble fidelity these untutored souls had
exhibited! The chiefs were those who had followed
me to Ujiji in 1871; they had been wit-1
nesses of the joy of Livingstone at the sight of
me; they were the men to whom I entrusted
the safeguard of Livingstone on his last and fatal
journey, who had mourned by his corpse at
Muilala, and borne the illustrious dead to the
Indian Ocean.
And in a flood of sudden recollection, all the
stormy period here ended rushed in upon my
mind; the whole panorama of danger and tempest
through which these gallant fellows had so staunchly
stood by me— these gallant fellows now parting
from me. Rapidly, as in some apocalyptic
vision, every scene of strife with Man and
Nature through which these poor men and
women had borne me company, and solaced me
by the simple "sympathy of common suffering,
came hurrying across my memory; for each
face before me was associated with some ad-
venture or some p.eril, reminded me of some
triumph or of some loss. What a wild, weird
retrospect it was, that mind’s flash over the
troubled past! So like a troublous dream!
And for years and years to come, in many
homes in Zanzibar, there will be told the great
story of our journey, and the actors in it will
be heroes among their kith and kin. For me,
too, they are heroes, these poor ignorant children
of Africa, for, from the first deadly struggle in
savage Ituru to the last staggering rush into
Embomma, they had rallied to my voice like
veterans, and in the hour of need they had never
failed me. And thus, aided by their willing
hands and by their loyal hearts, the Expedition
had been successful, and the three great problems
of the Dark Continent’s geography had
been fairly solved.
L aus De o !