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Updated: May 2, 2025
This incident took place at the time we were at the Ruo and during the rains, and proved very trying to the health of the missionaries; they were frequently wetted, and had hardly any food but roasted maize. Mr. Scudamore was never well afterwards. Directly on their return to Magomero, the Bishop and Mr.
Their guides seem to have led them away to the east, instead of south; to the upper waters of the Ruo in the Shirwa valley, instead of to its mouth. Entering an Anguru slave-trading village, they soon began to suspect that the people meant mischief, and just before sunset a woman told some of their men that if they slept there they would all be killed.
After paddling till near sunset, they decided to stop and sleep on shore; but the mosquitoes were so numerous that they insisted on going on again; the Bishop, being a week behind the time he had engaged to be at the Ruo, reluctantly consented, and in the darkness the canoe was upset in one of the strong eddies or whirlpools, which suddenly boil up in flood time near the outgoing branches of the river; clothing, medicines, tea, coffee, and sugar were all lost.
But there was the appointment to be kept with Livingstone and the ladies at the Ruo, and, unfit as he was, he persevered, setting off with Burrup, sadly enough, for Scudamore was lying in a dangerous state; but no one guessed that they would never meet again upon earth.
He had set off in the hopes of rescuing some of his flock who had been kidnapped, and, undergoing fatigue and exposure to rain far greater than his constitution could stand, having been upset in a canoe and sleeping afterwards in his wet clothes, had succumbed to fever when returning with his companion, Mr Burrup, to Ruo.
And in this sad way ended the earthly career of one, of whom it can safely be said that for unselfish goodness of heart, and earnest devotion to the noble work he had undertaken, none of the commendations of his friends can exceed the reality. The grave in which his body rests is about a hundred yards from the confluence of the Ruo, on the left bank of the Shire, and opposite the island of Malo.
They could hear nothing of the Bishop from the chief of the island, Malo, at the mouth of the Ruo. "No white man had ever come to his village," he said. They proceeded on to Chibisa's, suffering terribly from mosquitoes at night. Their toil in stemming the rapid current made them estimate the distance, by the windings, as nearer 300 than 200 miles.
As we passed the Ruo, on the 7th, and saw nothing of the Bishop, we concluded that he had heard from his surgeon of our detention, and had deferred his journey. He arrived there five days after, on the 12th. After paying our Senna men, as they wished to go home, we landed them here. All were keen traders, and had invested largely in native iron- hoes, axes, and ornaments.
These delays kept us six months in the delta, instead of, as we anticipated, only six days; for, finding it impossible to carry the sections up to the Ruo without great loss of time, it was thought best to land them at Shupanga, and, putting the hull of the "Lady Nyassa" together there, to tow her up to the foot of the Murchison Cataracts.
There were a few wretched survivors in a village above the Ruo; but the majority of the population was dead. The sight and smell of dead bodies was everywhere. Many skeletons lay beside the path, where in their weakness they had fallen and expired. Ghastly living forms of boys and girls, with dull dead eyes, were crouching beside some of the huts.
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