“I had to give him (Dr. Livingstone) five years’ news to begin with.”—Correspondence of Herald Expedition in search of Dr. Livingstone.
“General Grant is president of the United States.”
“Since when?”
“For the last four years.”
“Indeed? And what else has transpired?”
“Half of Chicago has been burned to ashes. Loss $200,000,000. France and Prussia have had a devastating war. Prussia utterly vanquished France in an uninterrupted series of tremendous battles and brilliant victories. The Emperor Napoleon is an exile. The queen of Spain has been driven from the throne, and she and her family are in exile. An Italian prince is king of Spain. Charles Dickens has been dead two years. A negro has been numbered among the senators of the United States. Jim Fisk was shot in a vital part by a person named Stokes, and one set of doctors proved to the satisfaction of a jury that another set of doctors killed the man with a probe. And as that was entirely legitimate, nobody was hanged. A dozen official ruffians ran the city of New York in debt a hundred and twenty-five millions of dollars in four years, and stole twenty millions from the public treasury for their private use, and live to-day unwhipped of justice. Women vote now in one of the territories, and a notorious woman is candidate for President. France is a republic, and Henri Rochefort an exile. Mazzini is dead. China has sent a great embassy abroad into the world to make commercial treaties with the nations. Japan has undergone a bloodless revolution more marvelous than any ever created by the sword, and is become a free land; the great nobles have voluntarily reduced themselves to the condition of private citizens: they have disbanded their armies of retainers and yielded up their vast revenues to the government; railroads and telegraphs are being built, colleges established, and western dress and customs introduced. The tycoon is dethroned, and the mikado reigns untrameled. He has come out from his ancient seclusion, and exhibits himself to all the world in the public streets, with hardly an attendant. He is going to France. Horace Greeley is the democratic candidate for President of the United States, and all rebeldom hurrahs for him. He—”
“Hold on! You have told me stupendous things, and with a confiding simplicity born of contact with these untutored children of Africa, I was swallowing them peacefully down; but there is a limit to all things. I am a simple, guileless, Christian man, and unacquainted with intemperate language; but when you tell me that Horace Greeley is become a democrat and the ku-klux swing their hats and whoop for him, I cast the traditions of my education to the winds and say, I’ll be d—d to all eternity if I believe it. (After a pause.)—My trunk is packed to go home, but I shall remain in Africa—for these things may be true, after all; if they are, I desire to stay here and unlearn my civilization.”
UJIJIJI UNYEMBEMBE,
Interpreter to the Expedition.
July 20, 1872