134 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. V. 



above water showed the long- line of those that would 

 inevitably perish. 



Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and 

 perishing. 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 disappeared. 

 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-bye all the heads disappeared ; some had turned down 

 stream towards the bank, and escaped. Dugumbe 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 women 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 esti- 

 mated 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. 



My first impulse was to pistol the murderers, but Dugumbe 

 protested against my getting into a blood-feud, and I was 

 thankful afterwards that I took his advice. Two wretched 

 Moslems asserted " that the firing was done by the people 

 of the English ; " I asked one of them why he lied so, and he 

 could utter no excuse : no other falsehood came to his aid as 

 he stood abashed before me, and so telling him not to tell 

 palpable falsehoods, I left him gaping. 



