I have been waiting up here like Simeon Stylites on his pillar,
and counting every day, and conjecturing each step taken by our
friend towards the coast, wishing and praying that no sickness
might lay him up, no accident befall him, and no unlooked-for
combinations of circumstances render his kind intentions vain
or fruitless. Mr. Stanley had got over the tendency to the
continued form of fever which is the most dangerous, and was
troubled only with the intermittent form, which is comparatively
safe, or I would not have allowed him, but would have accompanied
him to Zanzibar. I did not tell himself so; nor did I say what I
thought, that he really did a very plucky thing in going through
the Mirambo war in spite of the remonstrances of all the Arabs,
and from Ujiji guiding me back to Unyanyembe. The war, as it
is called, is still going on. The danger lay not so much in
the actual fighting as in the universal lawlessness the war
engendered.
I am not going to inflict on the reader a repetition of our march back, except to record certain incidents which occurred to us as we journeyed to the coast.
March 17th.—We came to the Kwalah River. The first rain of the Masika season fell on this day; I shall be mildewed before I reach the coast. Last year's Masika began at Bagamoyo, March 23rd, and ended 30th April.
The next day I halted the Expedition at Western Tura, on the Unyamwezi frontier, and on the 20th arrived at Eastern Tura; when, soon after, we heard a loud report of a gun, and Susi and Hamoydah, the Doctor's servants, with Uredi, and another of my men, appeared with a letter for "Sir Thomas MacLear, Observatory, Cape of Good Hope," and one for myself, which read as follows:
Kwihara, March 15, 1872.
Dear Stanley,
If you can telegraph on your arrival in London, be particular, please, to say how Sir Roderick is. You put the matter exactly yesterday, when you said that I was "not yet satisfied about the Sources; but as soon as I shall be satisfied, I shall return and give satisfactory reasons fit for other people." This is just as it stands.
I wish I could give you a better word than the Scotch one to "put a stout heart to a stey brae"—(a steep ascent)—for you will do that; and I am thankful that, before going away, the fever had changed into the intermittent, or safe form. I would not have let you go, but with great concern, had you still been troubled with the continued type. I feel comfortable in commending you to the guardianship of the good Lord and Father of all.
I am gratefully yours,
David Livingstone.