For ten weeks to come his
situation was as painful as can be conceived. A continual cough, night
and day, the most distressing weakness, inability to walk, yet the
necessity of moving on, or rather of being moved on, in a kind of litter
arranged by Mohamad Bogharib,--where, with his face poorly protected
from the sun, he was jolted up and down and sideways, without medicine
or food for an invalid,--made the situation sufficiently trying. His
prayer was that he might hold out to Ujiji, where he expected to find
medicines and stores, with the rest and shelter so necessary in his
circumstances. So ill was he, that he lost count of the days of the week
and the month. "I saw myself lying dead in the way to Ujiji, and all the
letters I expected there--useless. When I think of my children, the
lines ring through my head perpetually:
"'I shall look into your faces,
And listen to what you say;
And be often very near you
When you think I'm far away.'"
On the 26th February, 1869, he embarked in a canoe on Tanganyika, and on
the 14th March he reached the longed-for Ujiji, on the eastern shore of
the lake.
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