What I did realise, however, was the necessity for immediate action.

Like a dream to me also is the memory of the sincere grief of my blacks and their well-meant endeavours to console me.

The women kept up a mournful howl, which nearly drove me crazy, and only strengthened my resolve to get away from that frightful place.

So dazed did I become, that the blacks concluded some strange spirit must have entered into me.
They seemed to take it for granted that I left all arrangements for the funeral to them; the sole idea that possessed me being to complete my arrangements for the great journey I had before me.

I told the natives frankly of my intention, and immediately forty of them volunteered to accompany me on my travels as far as I chose to permit them to come.