"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 by all the heads disappeared; some had turned down stream toward the bank, and escaped. Dugumbé put people into one of the deserted vessls 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 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 collecting 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 the country. It was recorded at great length in a despatch to the Foreign Secretary, and indeed, it became one of the chief causes of the appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the subject of the African slave-trade, and of the mission of Sir Bartle Frere to Africa to concert measures for bringing it to an end.
Dugumbé had not been the active perpetrator of the massacre, but, he was mixed up with the atrocities that had been committed, and Livingstone could have nothing to do with him. It was a great trial, for, as the Banian men were impracticable, there was nothing for it now but to go back to Ujiji, and try to get other men there with whom he would repeat the attempt to explore the river. For twenty-one months, counting from the period of their engagement, he had fed and clothed these men, all in vain, and now he had to trudge back forty-five days, a journey equal, with all its turnings and windings, to six hundred miles. Livingstone was ill, and after such an exciting time he would probably have had an attack of fever, but for another ailment to which he had become more especially subject. The intestinal canal had given way, and he was subject to attacks of severe internal hæmorrhage, one of which came on him now[71]. It appeared afterward that had he gone with Dugumbé, he would have been exposed to an assault in force by the Bakuss, as they made an attack on the party and routed them, killing two hundred. If Livingstone had been among them, he might have fallen in this engagement. So again, he saw how present disappointments work for good.