526 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
vitality we possessed in toiling through the last four 
cataracts. 
I announced, therefore, to the gallant but wearied 
Wangwana that we should abandon the river and strike 
overland for Embomma. The delight of the people 
manifested itself in loud and fervid exclamations of gra- 
titude to Allah ! Quadruple ration-money was also dis- 
tributed to each man, woman, and child ; but owing to 
the excessive poverty of the country, and the keen trading 
instincts and avaricious spirit of the aborigines, little 
benefit did the long-enduring, famine-stricken Wangwana 
derive from my liberality. 
Fancy knick-knacks, iron spears, knives, axes, copper, 
brass wire were then distributed to them, and I emptied 
the medicine out of thirty vials, and my private clothes- 
bags, blankets, waterproofs, every available article of 
property that might be dispensed with, were also given 
away, without distinction of rank or merit, to invest in 
whatever eatables they could procure. The 31st of July 
was consequently a busy day, devoted to bartering, but 
few Wangwana were able to boast at evening that they 
had obtained a tithe of the value of the articles they 
had sold, and the character of the food actually purchased 
was altogether unfit for people in such poor condition of 
body. 
At sunset we lifted the brave boat, after her adven- 
turous journey across Africa, and carried her to the 
summit of some rocks about 500 yards north of the fall, 
to be abandoned to her fate. Three years before, Mes- 
senger of Teddington had commenced her construction ; 
two years previous to this date she was coasting the 
bluffs of Uzongora on Lake Victoria ; twelve months 
later she was completing her last twenty miles of the 
circumnavigation of Lake Tan ganika, and on the 31st of 
July, 1877, after a journey of nearly 7000 miles up and 
down broad Africa, she was consigned to her resting- 
place above the Isangila Cataract, to bleach and to rot to 
dust ! 
•*«■*-* * i’r- 
A wayworn, feeble, and suffering column were we 
