4i o DAVID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. xx. 



creek, and the men forgot their paddles in the terror that seized all. 

 The canoes were not to be got out, for the creek was too small for so 

 many ; men and women, wounded by the balls, poured into them, and 

 leaped and scrambled into the water, shrieking. A long line of heads 

 in the river showed that great numbers struck out for an island a full 

 mile off; in going towards it they had to put the left shoulder to a 

 current of about two miles an hour ; if they had struck away 

 diagonally to the opposite bank, the current would have aided them, 

 and, though nearly three miles off, some would have gained land ; as 

 it was, the heads above water showed the long line of those that 

 would inevitably perish. 



" Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and perish- 

 ing. Some of the long line of heads disappeared quietly ; whilst 

 other poor creatures threw their arms high, as if appealing to the 

 great Father above, and sank. One canoe took in as many as it could 

 hold, and all paddled with hands and arms ; three canoes, got out in 

 haste, picked up sinking friends, till all went down together, and dis- 

 appeared. One man in a long canoe, which could have held forty or 

 fifty, had clearly lost his head ; he had been out in the stream before 

 the massacre began, and now paddled up the river nowhere, and never 

 looked to the drowning. By and by all the heads disappeared ; some 

 had turned down stream towards the bank, and escaped. Dugumb6 

 put people into one of the deserted vessels to save those in the water, 

 and saved twenty-one ; but one woman refused to be taken -on board, 

 from thinking that she was to be made a slave of; she preferred the 

 chance of life by swimming, to the lot of a slave. The Bagenya 

 Avomen are expert in the water, as they are accustomed to dive for 

 oysters, and those who went down stream may have escaped, but the 

 Arabs themselves estimated the loss of life at between 330 and 400 

 souls. The shooting-party near the canoes were so reckless, they 

 killed two of their own people ; and a Banyamwezi follower, who got 

 into a deserted canoe to plunder, fell into the water, went down, then 

 came up again, and down to rise no more. 



" After the terrible affair in the water, the party of Tagamoio, who 

 was the chief perpetrator, continued to fire on the people there, and 

 fire their villages. As I write I hear the loud wails on the left bank 

 over those who are there slain, ignorant of their many friends now in 

 the depths of Lualaba. Oh, let Thy kingdom come ! No one will ever 

 know the exact loss on this bright sultry summer morning ; it gave me 

 the impression of being in Hell. All the slaves in the camp rushed at 

 the fugitives on land, and plundered them ; women were for hours col- 

 lecting and carrying loads of what had been thrown down in terror." 



The remembrance of this awful scene was never effaced 

 from Livingstone's heart. The accounts of it published 

 in the newspapers at home sent a thrill of horror through 



