The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Dark Companions, by Henry M. Stanley

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Title: My Dark Companions
And Their Strange Stories

Author: Henry M. Stanley

Illustrator: Walter Buckley

Release Date: June 18, 2010 [EBook #32877]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

My Dark Companions, by Henry M. Stanley.

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MY DARK COMPANIONS, BY HENRY M. STANLEY.

PREFACE.

The nightly custom of gathering around the camp fire, and entertaining
one another with stories, began in 1875, after Sabadu, a page of King
Mtesa, had astonished his hearers with the legend of the "Blameless
Priest."

Our circle was free to all, and was frequently well attended; for when
it was seen that the more accomplished narrators were suitably rewarded,
and that there was a great deal of amusement to be derived, few could
resist the temptation to approach and listen, unless fatigue or illness
prevented them.

Many of the stories related were naturally of little value, having
neither novelty nor originality; and in many cases, especially where the
Zanzibaris were the narrators, the stories were mere importations from
Asia; while others, again, were mere masks of low inclinations. I
therefore had often to sit out a lengthy tale which had not a single
point in it.

But whenever a real aborigine of the interior undertook to tell a tale
of the old days, we were sure to hear something new and striking; the
language became more quaint, and in almost every tale there was a
distinct moral.

The following legends are the choicest and most curious of those that
were related to me during seventeen years, and which have not been
hitherto published in any of my books of travel. Faithfully as I have
endeavoured to follow the unsophisticated narrators it is impossible for
me to reproduce the simplicity of style with which they were given, or
to describe the action which accompanied them. I take my cue from the
African