INCIDENTS OF PERSONAL PERIL
AND DISCOMFORT OF TRAVELLERS
AND EXPLORERS.
CHAP. XXV.--Pains and penalties of explorers and
adventurers--the reader’s selfishness--Mr. Hutchinson’s
experience of a night’s lodging at Brass, a western African
town--his bed--his bedfellows--how stupid to have blown out
the light!--the biting and scratching, and crawling within,
and the everlasting cackle without--daylight, and the mystery
solved--a night’s lodging on the banks of the Gambia--voices
of the night--assailed by mosquitoes--“I smell the blood of an
Englishman”--sleeping on ants and cockroaches--“Sitting up”
for the night--an arboreal lodging--going up to bed--making
oneself comfortable--half a cigar for supper--unpleasant
neighbours--leopards and other gentle beasts below--mosquitoes
above and around about--eleven hours’ roosting--the leafy
couch abandoned--lost and starved--found and rejoiced--Doctor
Livingstone’s savage experiences--one of many thousand
nights--the grass cutter and the tent pitcher--the “kotla”
or tent-fire--the sleepers, and the dogs who came and ate
the blankets--the dish-washers and the cooks--every man his
own washerwoman--the doctor’s strict cleanliness--“it is
questionable if a descent to barbarous ways ever elevates a
man in the eyes of the savage”--watchmen and watch-dogs--an
alarming camping out incident--the African traveller’s greatest
enemy, the little tsetse fly--its perfect harmlessness towards
mankind and wild animals--its fatal affection for draught oxen
and horses--symptoms of tsetse poison--the cattle of an entire
tribe almost destroyed by the tsetse--the traveller in the
desert of Eastern Africa--Mr. Burton’s experience--his account
of a day’s march--rousing the camp--the porters loth to stir
from the fire--“collect,” “pack,” “set out”--off at last--the
African porter a stickler for prepayment--the privileges and
perquisites of a Pagazi--his gorgeous attire and his insignia
of office--how the Pagazi keeps tally of offenders on the
road--mischievous firing of the huts--queer directions left by
the Pagazi as to where water may be found--the ivory porters and
how they carry their loads--average of the weights carried--no
finery worn on the road--a use found for “bustles”--every man
a bearer of weapons of defence--recreations on the road--signs
of a halt--bravery of the porters--a hundred and fifty of them
scared by a cow--rows on the road--broken heads no provocatives
of ill blood--rammish modes of fighting--the African’s great
objection to hurry--not used to it--daily life at home--quite
happy on plenty of sleep, “pombe,” tobacco, and gossip--the
domestic African given to gambling--“heads or tails”--high
play--my grandmother against yours--eating, the sole aim of
his life--forty winks after dinner--no admirer of the maxim of
“early to bed”--the first approach of Europeans to a cannibal
shore--three fish-hooks for a lobster--queer pockets to put
fish-hooks in--smelling the place the white man touched--the
chief’s distrust of a chair--gigantic savages--barefaced
attempt to steal a cabin-boy--bent on thieving--an attempt to
make off with a mastiff and his kennel--more successful with a
kitten--the dog recovers his spirits and makes free with the
calf of a thief’s leg--summary dismissal of the unscrupulous
guests. Pages 183–203.