On leaving Lake Bangweolo, detention occurred again as it had occurred
before. The country was very disturbed and very miserable, and Dr.
Livingstone was in great straits and want. Yet with a grim humor he
tells how, when lying in an open shed, with all his men around him, he
dreamed of having apartments at Mivart's Hotel. It was after much delay
that he found himself at last, under the escort of a slave-party, on the
way to Ujiji. Mr. Waller has graphically described the situation. "At
last he makes a start on the 11th of December, 1868, with the Arabs, who
are bound eastward for Ujiji. It is a motley group, composed of Mohamad
and his friends, a gang of Unyamwezi hangers-on, and strings of wretched
slaves yoked together in their heavy slave-sticks. Some carry ivory,
others copper, or food for the march, while hope and fear, misery and
villainy, may be read off on the various faces that pass in line out of
this country, like a serpent dragging its accursed folds away from the
victim it has paralyzed with its fangs."
New Year's Day, 1869, found Livingstone laboring under a worse attack
of illness than any he had ever had before.
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