CHAPTER XIX.

FROM ZANZIBAR TO UJIJI.

A.D. 1866-1869.

Dr. Livingstone goes to mouth of Rovuma—His prayer—His company—His herd of animals—Loss of his buffaloes—Good spirits when setting out—Difficulties at Rovuma—Bad conduct of Johanna men—Dismissal of his Sepoys—Fresh horrors of slave-trade—Uninhabited tract—He reaches Lake Nyassa—Letter to his son Thomas—Disappointed hopes—His double aim, to teach natives and rouse horror of slave-trade—Tenor of religious addresses—Wikatami remains behind—Livingstone finds no altogether satisfactory station for commerce and missions—Question of the watershed—Was it worth the trouble?—Overruled for good to Africa—Opinion of Sir Bartle Frere—At Marenga's—The Johanna men leave in a body—Circulate rumor of his murder—Sir Roderick disbelieves it—Mr. E.D. Young sent out with Search Expedition—Finds proof against rumor—Livingstone half-starved—Loss of his goats—Review of 1866—Reflections on Divine Providence—Letter to Thomas—His dog drowned—Loss of his medicine-chest—He feels sentence of death passed on him—First sight of Lake Tanganyika—Detained at Chitimba's—Discovery of Lake Moero—Occupations during detention of 1867—Great privations and difficulties—Illness—Rebellion among his men—Discovery of Lake Bangweolo—Its oozy banks—Detention—Sufferings—He makes for Ujiji—Very severe illness in beginning of 1869—Reaches Ujiji—Finds his goods have been wasted and stolen—Most bitter disappointment—His medicines, etc., at Unyanyembe—Letter to Sultan of Zanzibar—Letters to Dr. Moffat and his daughter.

On the 19th of March, fortified by a firman from the Sultan to all his people, and praying the Most High to prosper him, "by granting him Influence in the eyes of the heathen, and blessing his intercourse with them," Livingstone left Zanzibar in H.M.S. "Penguin" for the mouth of the Rovuma. His company consisted of thirteen Sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine Nassick boys, two Shupanga men, and two Waiyau. Musa, one of the Johanna men, had been a sailor in the "Lady Nyassa"; Susi and Amoda, the Shupanga men, had been woodcutters for the "Pioneer"; and the two Waiyau lads, Wikatani and Chuma, had been among the slaves rescued in 1861, and had lived for some time at the mission station at Chibisa's. Besides these, he carried with him a sort of menagerie in a dhow—six camels, three buffaloes and a calf, two mules, and four donkeys. What man but Dr. Livingstone would have encumbered himself with such baggage, and for what conceivable purpose except the benefit of Africa? The tame buffaloes of India were taken that he might try whether, like the wild buffaloes of Africa, they would resist the bite of the tsetse-fly; the other animals for the same purpose. There were two words of which Livingstone might have said, as Queen Mary said of Calais, that at his death they would be found engraven on his heart—fever and tsetse; the one the great scourge of man, the other of beast, in South Africa. To help to counteract two such foes to African civilization no trouble or expense would have been judged too great. Already he had lost nine of his buffaloes at Zanzibar. It was a sad pity that owing to the ill-treatment of the remaining animals by his people, who turned out a poor lot, it could never be known conclusively whether the tsetse-bite was fatal to them or not.

In spite of all he had suffered in Africa, and though he was without the company of a single European, he had, in setting out, something of the exhilarating feeling of a young traveler starting on his first tour in Switzerland, deepened by the sense of nobility which there is in every endeavor to do good to others. "The mere animal pleasure of traveling in a wild unexplored country is very great.... The sweat of one's brow is no longer a curse when one works for God; it proves a tonic to the system, and is actually a blessing." The Rovuma was found to have changed greatly since his last visit, so that he had to land his goods twenty-five miles to the north at Mikindany harbor, and find his way down to the river farther up. The toil was fitted to wear out the strongest of his men. Nothing could have been more grateful than the Sunday rest. Through his Nassick boys, he tried to teach the Makonde—a tribe that bore a very bad character, but failed; however, the people were wonderfully civil, and, contrary to all previous usage, neither inflicted fines nor made complaints, though the animals had done some damage to their corn. He set this down as an answer to his prayers for influence among the heathen.

His vexations, however, were not long of beginning. Both the Sepoy marines and the Nassick boys were extremely troublesome, and treated the animals abominably. The Johanna men were thieves. The Sepoys became so intolerable that after four months' trial he sent most of them back to the coast. It required an effort to resist the effect of such, things, owing to the tendency of the mind to brood over the ills of travel. The natives were not unkindly, but food was very scarce. As they advanced, the horrors of the slave-trade presented themselves in all their hideous aspects. Women were found dead, tied to trees, or lying in the path shot and stabbed, their fault having been inability to keep up with the party, while their amiable owners, to prevent them from becoming the property of any one else, put an end to their lives. In some instances the captives, yet in the slave-sticks, were found not quite dead. Brutality was sometimes seen in another form, as when some natives laughed at a poor boy suffering from a very awkward form of hernia, whose mother was trying to bind up the part. The slave-trade utterly demoralized the people; the Arabs bought whoever was brought to them, and the great extent of forest in the country favored kidnapping; otherwise the people were honest.

Farther on they passed through an immense uninhabited tract, that had once evidently had a vast population. Then, in the Waiyau country, west of Mataka's, came a splendid district 3400 feet above the sea, as well adapted for a settlement as Magomero, but it had taken them four months to get at it, while Magomero was reached in three weeks. The abandonment of that mission he would never cease to regret. As they neared Lake Nyassa, slave parties became more common. On the 8th August, 1866, they reached the lake, which seemed to Livingstone like an old familiar friend which he never expected to see again. He thanked God, bathed again in the delicious water, and felt quite exhilarated.

Writing to his son Thomas, 28th August, he says:

"The Sepoys were morally unfit for travel, and then we had hard lines, all of us. Food was not to be had for love or money. Our finest cloths only brought miserable morsels of the common grain. I trudged it the whole way, and having no animal food save what turtle-doves and guinea-fowls we occasionally shot, I became like one of Pharaoh's lean kine. The last tramp [to Nyassa] brought us to a land of plenty. It was over a very fine country, but quite depopulated.... The principal chief, named Mataka, lives on the watershed overhanging this, but fifty miles or more distant from this; his town contained a thousand houses—many of them square, in imitation of the Arabs. Large patches of English peas in full bearing grew in the moist hollows, or were irrigated. Cattle showed that no tsetse existed. When we arrived, Mataka was just sending back a number of cattle and captives to their own homes. They had been taken by his people without his knowledge from Nyassa. I saw them by accident: there were fifty-four women and children, about a dozen young men and boys, and about twenty-five or thirty head of cattle. As the act was spontaneous, it was the more gratifying to witness....

"I sometimes remember you with some anxiety, as not knowing what opening may be made for you in life.... Whatever you feel yourself best fitted for, 'commit thy way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass.' One ought to endeavor to devote the peculiarities of his nature to his Redeemer's service, whatever these may be."

Resting at the lake, and working up journal, lunars, and altitudes, he hears of the arrival of an Englishman at Mataka's, with cattle for him, "who had two eyes behind as well as two in front—news enough for awhile." Zoology, botany, and geology engage his attention as usual. He tries to get across the lake, but cannot, as the slavers own all the dhows, and will neither lend nor sell to him; he has therefore to creep on foot round its southern end. Marks of destruction and desolation again shock the eye—skulls and bones everywhere. At the point where the Shire leaves Nyassa, he could not but think of disappointed hopes—the death of his dear wife, and of the Bishop, the increasing vigor of the slave-trade, and the abandonment of the Universities Mission. But faith assured him of good times coming, though he might not live to see them. Would only he had seen through the vista of the next ten years! Bishop Tozer done with Africa, and Bishop Steere returning to the old neighborhood, and resuming the old work of the Universities Mission; and his own countrymen planted his name on the promontory on which he gazed so sorrowfully, training the poor natives in the arts of civilization, rearing Christian households among them, and proclaiming the blessed Gospel of the God of love!

Invariably as he goes along, Dr. Livingstone aims at two things: at teaching some of the great truths of Christianity, and rousing consciences on the atrocious guilt of the slave-trade. In connection with the former he discovers that his usual way of conducting divine service—by the reading of prayers—does not give ignorant persons any idea of an unseen Being; kneeling and praying with the eyes shut is better. At the foot of the lake he goes out of his way to remonstrate with Mukate, one of the chief marauders of the district. The tenor of his addresses is in some degree shaped by the practices he finds so prevalent:

"We mention our relationship to our Father, the guilt of selling any of his children, the consequences:—e.g. it begets war, for as they don't like to sell their own, they steal from other villagers, who retaliate. Arabs and Waiyau, invited into the country by their selling, foster feuds,—wars and depopulation ensue. We mention the Bible—future state—prayer; advise union, that they would unite as one family to expel enemies, who came first as slave-traders, and ended by leaving the country a wilderness."

It was about this time that Wikatani, one of the two Waiyau boys who had been rescued from slavery, finding, as he believed or said, some brothers and sisters on the western shore of the lake, left Livingstone and remained with them. There had been an impression in some quarters, that, according to his wont, Livingstone had made him his slave; to show the contrary, he gave him his choice of remaining or going, and, when the boy chose to remain, he acquiesced.

Dr. Livingstone had ere now passed over the ground where, if anywhere, he might have hoped to find a station for a commercial and missionary settlement, independent of the Portuguese. In this hope he was rather disappointed. The only spot he refers to is the district west of Mataka's, which, however, was so difficult of access. Nearer the coast a mission might be established, and to this project his mind turned afterward; but it would not command the Nyassa district. On the whole he preferred the Zambesi and Shire valley, with all their difficulties. But the Rovuma was not hopeless, and indeed, within the last few years, the Universities Mission has occupied the district successfully.

The geographical question of the watershed had now to be grappled with. It is natural to ask whether this question was of sufficient importance to engage his main energies, and justify the incalculable sacrifices undergone by him during the remaining six years of his life. First of all, we must remember, it was not his own scheme—it was pressed on him by Sir Roderick Murchison and the Geographical Society; and it may perhaps be doubted whether, had he foreseen the cost of the enterprise, he would have deemed the object worthy of the price. But ever and anon, he seemed to be close on what he was searching for, and certain to secure it by just a little further effort; while as often, like the cup of Tantalus, it was snatched from his grasp. Moreover, during a life-time of splendid self-discipline, he had been training himself to keep his promises, and to complete his tasks; nor could he in any way see it his duty to break the one or leave the other unfinished. He had undertaken to the Geographical Society to solve that problem, and he would do it if it could be done. Wherever he went he had always some opportunity to make known the father-hood of God and his love in Christ, although the seed he sowed seemed seldom to take root. Then he was gathering fresh information on the state of the country and the habits of the people. He was especially gathering information on the accursed slave-trade.

This question of the watershed, too, had fascinated his mind, for he had a strong impression that the real sources of the Nile were far higher than any previous traveler had supposed—far higher than Lake Victoria Nyanza, and that it would be a service to religion as well as science to discover the fountains of the stream on whose bosom, in the dawn of Hebrew history, Moses had floated in his ark of bulrushes. A strong impression lurked in his mind that if he should only solve that old problem he would acquire such influence that new weight would be given to his pleadings for Africa; just as, at the beginning of his career, he had wished for a commanding style of composition, to be able to rouse the attention of the world to that ill-treated continent.

He was strongly disposed to think that in the account of the sources given to Herodotus by the Registrar of Minerva in the temple of Sais, that individual was not joking, as the father of history supposed. He thought that in the watershed the two conical hills, Crophi and Mophi might be found, and the fountains between them which it was impossible to fathom; and that it might be seen that from that region there was a river flowing north to Egypt, and another flowing south to a country that might have been called Ethiopia. But whatever might be his views or aims, it was ordained that in the wanderings of his last years he should bring within the sympathies of the Christian world many a poor tribe otherwise unknown; that he should witness sights, surpassing all he had ever seen before of the inhumanity and horrors of the slave-traffic—sights that harrowed his inmost soul; and that when his final appeal to his countrymen on behalf of its victims came, not from, his living voice but from his tomb, it should gather from a thousand touching associations a thrilling power that would rouse the world, and finally root out the accursed thing.

A very valuable testimony was borne by Sir Bartle Frere to the real aims of Livingstone, and the value of his work, especially in this last journey, in a speech delivered in the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, 10th November, 1876:

"The object," he said, "of Dr. Livingstone's geographical and scientific explorations was to lead his countrymen to the great work of Christianizing and civilizing the millions of Central Africa. You will recollect how, when first he came back from his wonderful journey, though we were all greatly startled by his achievements and by what he told us, people really did not lay what he said much to heart. They were stimulated to take up the cause of African discovery again, and other travelers went out and did excellent service; but the great fact which was from the very first upon Livingstone's mind, and which he used to impress upon you, did not make the impression he wished, and although a good many people took more and more interest in the Civilization of Africa and in the abolition of the slave-trade, which he pointed out was the great obstacle to all progress, still it did not come home to the people generally. It was not until his third and last journey, when he was no more to return among us, that the descriptions which he gave of the horrors of the slave-trade in the interior really took hold upon the mind of the people of this country, and made them determine that what used to be considered the crotchet of a few religious minds and humanitarian sort of persons, should be a phase of the great work which this country had undertaken, to free the African races, and to abolish, in the first place, the slave-trade by sea, and then, as we hope, the slaving by land."

In September an Arab slaver was met at Marenga's, who told Musa, one of the Johanna men, that all the country in front was full of Mazitu, a warlike tribe; that forty-four Arabs and their followers had been killed by them at Kasunga, and that he only had escaped. Musa's heart was filled with consternation. It was in vain that Marenga assured him that there were no Mazitu in the direction in which he was going, and that Livingstone protested to him that he would give them a wide berth. The Johanna men wanted an excuse for going back, but in such a way that, when they reached Zanzibar, they should get their pay. They left him in a body, and when they got to Zanzibar, circulated a circumstantial report that he had been murdered. In December, 1866, Musa appeared at Zanzibar, and told how Livingstone had crossed Lake Nyassa to its western or northwestern shore, and was pushing on west or northwest, when, between Marenga and Maklisoora, a band of savages stopped their way, and rushed on him and his small band of followers, now reduced to twenty. Livingstone fired twice, and killed two; but, in the act of reloading, three Mafite leaped upon him through the smoke, one of them felled him with an axe-cut from behind, and the blow nearly severed his head from his body. The Johanna men fled into the thick jungle, and miraculously escaped. Returning to the scene of the tragedy, they found the body of their master, and in a shallow grave dug with some stakes, they committed his remains to the ground, Many details were given regarding the Sepoys, and regarding the after fortunes of Musa and his companions. Under cross-examination Musa stood firmly to his story, which was believed both by Dr. Seward and Dr. Kirk, of Zanzibar. But when the tidings reached England, doubt was thrown on them by some of those best qualified to judge. Mr. Edward D. Young, who had had dealings with Musa, and knew him to be a liar, was suspicious of the story; so was Mr. Horace Waller. Sir Roderick Murchison, too, proclaimed himself an unbeliever, notwithstanding all the circumstantiality and apparent conclusiveness of the tale. The country was resounding with lamentations, the newspapers were full of obituary notices, but the strong-minded disbelievers were not to be moved.

Sir Roderick and his friends of the Geographical Society determined to organize a search expedition, and Mr. E. D. Young was requested to undertake the task. In May, 1867, all was ready for the departure of the Expedition; and on the 25th July, Mr. E. D. Young, who was accompanied by Mr. Faulkner, John Reid, and Patrick Buckley, cast anchor at the mouth of the Zambesi. A steel boat named "The Search," and some smaller boats, were speedily launched, and the party were moving up the river. We have no space for an account of Mr. Young's most interesting journey, not even for the detail of that wonderful achievement, the carrying of the pieces of the "Search" past the Murchison Cataracts, and their reconstruction at the top, without a single piece missing. The sum and substance of Mr. Young's story was, that first, quite unexpectedly, he came upon a man near the south end of Lake Nyassa, who had seen Livingstone there, and who described him well, showing that he had not crossed at the north end, as Musa had said, but, for some reason, had come round by the south; then, the chief Marenga not only told him of Livingstone's stay there, but also of the return of Musa, after leaving him, without any story of his murder; also, at Mapunda, they came on traces of the boy Wikatani, and learned his story, though they did not see himself. The most ample proof of the falsehood of Musa's story was thus obtained, and by the end of 1867, Mr. Young, after a most active, gallant, and successful campaign, was approaching the shores of England[68]. No enterprise could have brought more satisfactory results, and all in the incredibly short period of eight months.

[Footnote 68: See The Search for Livingstone, by E.D. Young: London, 1868.]

Meanwhile, Livingstone, little thinking of all the commotion that the knave Musa had created, was pushing on in the direction of Lake Tanganyika. Though it was not true that he had been murdered, it was true that he was half-starved. The want of other food compelled him to subsist to a large extent on African maize, the most tasteless and unsatisfying of food. It never produced the feeling of sufficiency, and it would set him to dream of dinners he had once eaten, though dreaming was not his habit, except when he was ill. Against his will, the thought of delicious feasts would come upon him, making it all the more difficult to be cheerful, with, probably, the poorest fare on which life could be in any way maintained, To complete his misery, his four goats were lost, so that the one comfort of his table—a little milk along with his maize—was taken from him when most eagerly sought and valued.

In reviewing the year 1866, he finds it less productive of results than he had hoped for: "We now end 1866. It has not been so fruitful or useful as I intended. Will try to do better in 1867, and be better—more gentle and loving; and may the Almighty, to whom I commit my way, bring my desires to pass, and prosper me! Let all the sins of '66 be blotted out, for Jesus' sake. May He who was full of grace and truth impress his character on mine: grace—eagerness to show favor; truth—truthfulness, sincerity, honor—for his mercy's sake."

Habitually brave and fearless though Livingstone was, it was not without frequent self-stimulation, and acts of faith in unseen truth, that the peace of his mind was maintained. In the midst of his notes of progress, such private thoughts as the following occur from time to time: "It seems to have been a mistake to imagine that the Divine Majesty on high was too exalted to take any notice of our mean affairs. The great minds among men are remarkable for the attention they bestow on minutiae. An astronomer cannot be great unless his mind can grasp an infinity of very small things, each of which, if unattended to, would throw his work out. A great general attends to the smallest details of his army. The Duke of Wellington's letters show his constant attention to minute details. And so with the Supreme Mind, of the universe, as He is revealed to us in his Son. 'The very hairs of your head are all numbered,' 'A sparrow cannot fall to the ground without your Father,' 'He who dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto' condescends to provide for the minutest of our wants, directing, guarding, and assisting in each hour and moment, with an infinitely more vigilant and excellent care than our own utmost self-love can ever attain to. With the ever-watchful, loving eye constantly upon me, I may surely follow my bent, and go among the heathen in front, bearing the message of peace and good-will. All appreciate the statement that it is offensive to our common Father to sell and kill his children. I will therefore go, and may the Almighty help me to be faithful!"

Writing to his son Thomas, 1st February, 1867, he complains again of his terrible hunger:

The people have nothing to sell but a little millet-porridge and mushrooms. "Woe is me! good enough to produce fine dreams of the roast beef of old England, but nothing else. I have become very thin, though I was so before; but now, if you weighed me, you might calculate very easily how much you might get for the bones. But—we got a cow yesterday, and I am to get milk to-morrow.... I grieve to write it, poor poodle 'Chitane' was drowned" [15th January, in the Chimbwe]; "he had to cross a marsh a mile wide, and waist-deep.... I went over first, and forgot to give directions about the dog—all were too much engaged in keeping their balance to notice that he swam among them till he died. He had more spunk than a hundred country dogs—took charge of the whole line of march, ran to see the first in the line, then back to the last, and barked to haul him up; then, when he knew what hut I occupied, would not let a country cur come in sight of it, and never stole himself. We have not had any difficulties with the people, made many friends, imparted a little knowledge sometimes, and raised a protest against slavery very widely."

The year 1867 was signalized by a great calamity, and by two important geographical feats. The calamity was the loss of his medicine-chest. It had been intrusted to one of his most careful people; but, without authority, a carrier hired for the day took it and some other things to carry for the proper bearer, then bolted, and neither carrier nor box could be found. "I felt," says Livingstone, "as if I had now received the sentence of death, like poor Bishop Mackenzie." With the medicine-chest was lost the power of treating himself in fever with the medicine that had proved so effectual. We find him not long after in a state of insensibility, trying to raise himself from the ground, falling back with all his weight, and knocking his head upon a box. The loss of the medicine-box was probably the beginning of the end; his system lost the wonderful power of recovery which it had hitherto shown; and other ailments—in the lungs, the feet, and the bowels, that might have been kept under in a more vigorous state of general health, began hereafter to prevail against him.

The two geographical feats were—his first sight of Lake Tanganyika, and his discovery of Lake Moero. In April he reached Lake Liemba, as the lower part of Tanganyika was called. The scenery was wonderfully beautiful, and the air of the whole region remarkably peaceful. The want of medicine made an illness here very severe; on recovering, he would have gone down the lake, but was dissuaded, in consequence of his hearing that a chief was killing all that came that way. He therefore returns to Chitimba's, and resolves to explore Lake Moero, believing that there the question of the watershed would be decided, At Chitimba's, he is detained upward of three months, in consequence of the disturbed state of the country. At last he gets the escort of some Arab traders, who show him much kindness, but again he is prostrated by illness, and at length he reaches Lake Moero, 8th November, 1867. He hears of another lake, called Bembo or Bangweolo, and to hear of it is to resolve to see it. But he is terribly wearied with two years' traveling without having heard from home, and he thinks he must first go to Ujiji, for letters and stores. Meanwhile, as the traders are going to Casembe's, he accompanies them thither. Casembe he finds to be a fierce chief, who rules his people with great tyranny, cutting off their ears, and even their hands, for the most trivial offenses. Persons so mutilated, seen in his village, excite a feeling of horror. This chief was not one easily got at, but Livingstone believed that he gained an influence with him, only he could not quite overcome his prejudice against him. The year 1867 ended with another severe attack of illness.

"The chief interest in Lake Moero," says Livingstone, "is that it forms one of a chain of lakes, connected by a river some 500 miles in length. First of all, the Chambeze rises in the country of Mambwe, N.E. of Molemba; it then flows southwest and west, till it reaches lat. 11 deg. S., and long. 29 deg. E., where it forms Lake Bemba or Bangweolo; emerging thence, it assumes the name of Luapula, and comes down here to fall into Moero. On going out of this lake it is known by the name of Lualaba, as it flows N.W. in Rua to form another lake with many islands, called Urenge or Ulenge. Beyond this, information is not positive as to whether it enters Lake Tanganyika, or another lake beyond that.... Since coming to Casembe's, the testimony of natives and Arabs has been so united and consistent, that I am but ten days from Lake Bemba or Bangweolo, that I cannot doubt its accuracy."

The detentions experienced in 1867 were long and wearisome, and Livingstone disliked them because he was never well when doing nothing. His light reading must have been pretty well exhausted; even Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, which accompanied him in these wanderings, and which we have no doubt he read throughout, must have got wearisome sometimes. He occupied himself in writing letters, in the hope that somehow or sometime he might find an opportunity of despatching them. He took the rainfall carefully during the year, and lunars and other observations, when the sky permitted. He had intended to make his observations more perfect on this journey than on any previous one, but alas for his difficulties and disappointments! A letter to Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann, his assistant, gives a pitiful account of these: "I came this journey with a determination to observe very carefully all your hints as to occupations and observations, east and west, north and south, but I have been so worried by lazy, deceitful Sepoys, and thievish Johanna men, and indifferent instruments, that I fear the results are very poor." He goes on to say that some of his instruments were defective, and others went out of order, and that his time-taker, one of his people, had no conscience, and could not be trusted. The records of his observations, notwithstanding, indicate much care and pains. In April, he had been very unwell, taking fits of total insensibility, but as he had not said anything of this to his people at home, it was to be kept a secret.

His Journal for 1867 ends with a statement of the poverty of his food, and the weakness to which he was reduced. He had hardly anything to eat but the coarsest grain of the country, and no tea, coffee, or sugar. An Arab trader, Mohamad Bogharib, who arrived at Casembe's about the same time, presented him with a meal of vermicelli, oil, and honey, and had some coffee and sugar; Livingstone had had none since he left Nyassa.

The Journal for 1868 begins with a prayer that if he should die that year, he might be prepared for it. The year was spent in the same region, and was signalized by the discovery of Lake Bemba, or, as it may more properly be called, Lake Bangweolo, Early in the year he heard accounts of what interested him greatly—certain underground houses in Rua, ranging along a mountain side for twenty miles. In some cases the doorways were level with the country adjacent; in others, ladders were used to climb up to them; inside they were said to be very large, and not the work of men, but of God. He became eagerly desirous to visit these mysterious dwellings.

Circumstances turning out more favorable to his going to Lake Bangweolo, Dr. Livingstone put off his journey to Ujiji, on which his men had been counting, and much against the advice of Mohamad, his trader friend and companion, determined first to see the lake of which he had heard so much. The consequence was a rebellion among his men. With the exception of five, they refused to go with him. They had been considerably demoralized by contact with the Arab trader and his slave-gang. Dr. Livingstone took this rebellion with wonderful placidity, for in his own mind he could not greatly blame them. It was no wonder they were tired of the everlasting tramping, for he was sick of it himself. He reaped the fruit of his mildness by the men coming back to him, on his return from the lake, and offering their services. It cannot be said of him that he was not disposed to make any allowance for human weakness. When recording a fault, and how he dealt with it, he often adds, "consciousness of my own defects makes me lenient." "I also have my weaknesses."

The way to the lake was marked by fresh and lamentable tokens of the sufferings of slaves. "24th June.—Six men-slaves were singing as if they did not feel the weight and degradation of the slave-sticks. I asked the cause of their mirth, and was told that they rejoiced at the idea of 'coming back after death, and haunting and killing those who had sold them,' Some of the words I had to inquire about; for instance, the meaning of the words, 'to haunt and kill by spirit power,' then it was, 'Oh, you sent me off to Manga (sea-coast), but the yoke is off when I die, and back I shall come to haunt and to kill you.' Then all joined in the chorus, which was the name of each vendor. It told not of fun, but of the bitterness and tears of such as were oppressed; and on the side of the oppressors there was power. There be higher than they!"

His discovery of Lake Bangweolo is recorded as quietly as if it had been a mill-pond: "On the 18th July, I walked a little way out, and saw the shores of the lake for the first time, thankful that I had come safely hither." The lake had several inhabited islands, which Dr. Livingstone visited, to the great wonder of the natives, who crowded around him in multitudes, never having seen such a curiosity as a white man before. In the middle of the lake the canoe-men whom he had hired to carry him across refused to proceed further, under the influence of some fear, real or pretended, and he was obliged to submit. But the most interesting, though not the most pleasant, thing about the lake, was the ooze or sponge which occurred frequently on its banks. The spongy places were slightly depressed valleys, without trees or bushes, with grass a foot or fifteen inches high; they were usually from two to ten miles long, and from a quarter of a mile to a mile broad. In the course of thirty geographical miles, he crossed twenty-nine, and that, too, at the end of the fourth month of the dry season. It was necessary for him to strip the lower part of his person before fording them, and then the leeches pounced on him, and in a moment had secured such a grip, that even twisting them round the fingers failed to tear them off.

It was Dr. Livingstone's impression at this time that in discovering Lake Bangweolo, with the sponges that fed it, he had made another discovery—that these marshy places might be the real sources of the three great rivers, the Nile, the Congo, and the Zambesi. A link, however, was yet wanting to prove his theory. It had yet to be shown that the waters that flowed from Lake Bangweolo into Lake Moero, and thence northward by the river Lualaba, were connected with the Nile system. Dr. Livingstone was strongly inclined to believe that this connection existed; but toward the close of his life he had more doubts of it, although it was left to others to establish conclusively that the Lualaba was the Congo, and sent no branch to the Nile.

On leaving Lake Bangweolo, detention occurred again as it had occurred before. The country was very disturbed and very miserable, and Dr. Livingstone was in great straits and want. Yet with a grim humor he tells how, when lying in an open shed, with all his men around him, he dreamed of having apartments at Mivart's Hotel. It was after much delay that he found himself at last, under the escort of a slave-party, on the way to Ujiji. Mr. Waller has graphically described the situation. "At last he makes a start on the 11th of December, 1868, with the Arabs, who are bound eastward for Ujiji. It is a motley group, composed of Mohamad and his friends, a gang of Unyamwezi hangers-on, and strings of wretched slaves yoked together in their heavy slave-sticks. Some carry ivory, others copper, or food for the march, while hope and fear, misery and villainy, may be read off on the various faces that pass in line out of this country, like a serpent dragging its accursed folds away from the victim it has paralyzed with its fangs."

New Year's Day, 1869, found Livingstone laboring under a worse attack of illness than any he had ever had before. For ten weeks to come his situation was as painful as can be conceived. A continual cough, night and day, the most distressing weakness, inability to walk, yet the necessity of moving on, or rather of being moved on, in a kind of litter arranged by Mohamad Bogharib,—where, with his face poorly protected from the sun, he was jolted up and down and sideways, without medicine or food for an invalid,—made the situation sufficiently trying. His prayer was that he might hold out to Ujiji, where he expected to find medicines and stores, with the rest and shelter so necessary in his circumstances. So ill was he, that he lost count of the days of the week and the month. "I saw myself lying dead in the way to Ujiji, and all the letters I expected there—useless. When I think of my children, the lines ring through my head perpetually:

"'I shall look into your faces, And listen to what you say; And be often very near you When you think I'm far away.'"

On the 26th February, 1869, he embarked in a canoe on Tanganyika, and on the 14th March he reached the longed-for Ujiji, on the eastern shore of the lake. To complete his trial, he found that the goods he expected had been made away with in every direction. A few fragments were about all he could find. Medicines, wine, and cheese had been left at Unyanyembe, thirteen days distant. A war was raging on the way, so that they could not be sent for till the communications were restored.

To obviate as far as possible the recurrence of such a disaster to a new store of goods which he was now asking Dr. Kirk to send him, Livingstone wrote a letter to the Sultan of Zanzibar, 20th April, 1869, in which he frankly and cordially acknowledged the benefit he had derived from the letter of recommendation his Highness had given him, and the great kindness of the Arabs, especially Mohamad Bogharib, who had certainly saved his life. Then he complains of the robbery of his goods, chiefly by one Musa bin Salim, one of the people of the Governor of Unyanyembe, who had bought ivory with the price, and another man who had bought a wife. Livingstone does not expect his cloth and beads to be brought back, or the price of the wife and ivory returned, but he says:

"I beg the assistance of your authority to prevent a fresh stock of goods, for which I now send to Zanzibar, being plundered in the same way. Had it been the loss of ten or twelve pieces of cloth only, I should not have presumed to trouble your Highness about the loss; but 62 pieces or gorahs out of 80, besides beads, is like cutting a man's throat. If one or two guards of good character could be sent by you, no one would plunder the pagasi next time.

"I wish also to hire twelve or fifteen good freemen to act as canoe-men or porters, or in any other capacity that may be required. I shall be greatly obliged if you appoint one of your gentlemen who knows the country to select that number, and give them and their headman a charge as to their behavior. If they know that you wish them to behave well it will have great effect. I wish to go down Tanganyika, through Luanda and Chowambe, and pass the river Karagwe, which falls into Lake Chowambe. Then come back to Ujiji, visit Manyuema and Rua, and then return to Zanzibar, when I hope to see your Highness in the enjoyment of health and happiness."

Livingstone showed only his usual foresight in taking these precautions for the protection of his next cargo of goods. In stating so plainly his intended route, his purpose was doubtless to prevent carelessness in executing his orders, such as might have arisen had it been deemed uncertain where he was going, and whether or not he meant to return by Zanzibar.

Of letters during the latter part of this period very few seem to have reached their destination. A short letter to Dr. Moffat, bearing date "Near Lake Moero, March, 1868," dwells dolefully on his inability to reach Lake Bemba in consequence of the flooded state of the country, and then his detention through the strifes of the Arabs and the natives. The letter, however, is more occupied with reviewing the past than narrating the present. In writing to Dr. Moffat, he enters more minutely than he would have done with a less intimate and sympathetic friend into the difficulties of his lot—difficulties that had been increased by some from whom he might have expected other things. He had once seen a map displayed in the rooms of the Geographical Society, substantially his own, but with another name in conspicuous letters. On the Zambesi he had had difficulties, little suspected, of which in the meantime he would say nothing to the public. A letter to his daughter Agnes, after he had gone to Bangweolo, dwells also much on his past difficulties—as if he felt that the slow progress he was making at the moment needed explanation or apology. Amid such topics, almost involuntary touches of the old humor occur: "I broke my teeth tearing at maize and other hard food, and they are coming out. One front tooth is out, and I have such an awful mouth. If you expect a kiss from me, you must take it through a speaking-trumpet." In one respect, amid all his trials, his heart seems to become more tender than ever—in affection for his children, and wise and considerate advice for their guidance. In his letter to Agnes, he adverts with some regret to a chance he lost of saying a word for his family when Lord Palmerston sent Mr. Hayward, Q.C., to ask him what he could do to serve him. "It never occurred to me that he meant anything for me or my children till I was out here. I thought only of my work in Africa, and answered accordingly." It was only the fear that his family would be in want that occasioned this momentary regret at his disinterested answer to Lord Palmerston.



CHAPTER XX.

MANYUEMA.

A.D. 1869-1871.

He sets out to explore Manyuema and the river Lualaba—Loss of forty-two letters—His feebleness through illness—He arrives at Bambarre—Becomes acquainted with the soko or gorilla—Reaches the Luama River—Magnificence of the country—Repulsiveness of the people—Cannot get a canoe to explore the Lualaba—Has to return to Bambarre—Letter to Thomas, and retrospect of his life—Letter to Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann—Miss Tinne—He is worse in health than ever, yet resolves to add to his programme and go round Lake Bangweolo—Letter to Agnes—Review of the past—He sets out anew in a more northerly direction—Overpowered by constant wet—Reaches Nyangwe—Long detention—Letter to his brother John—Sense of difficulties and troubles—Nobility of his spirit—He sets off with only three attendants for the Lualaba—Suspicions of the natives—Influence of Arab traders—Frightful difficulties of the way—Lamed by foot-sores—Has to return to Bambarre—Long and wearisome detention—Occupations—Meditations and reveries—Death no terror—Unparalleled position and trials—He reads his Bible from beginning to end four times—Letter to Sir Thomas Maclear—To Agnes—His delight at her sentiments about his coming home—Account of the soko—Grief to hear of death of Lady Murchison—Wretched character of men sent from Zanzibar—At last sets out with Mohamad—Difficulties—Slave-trade most horrible—Cannot get canoes for Lualaba—Long waiting—New plan—Frustrated by horrible massacre on banks of Lualaba—Frightful scene—He must return to Ujiji—New illness—Perils of journey to Ujiji—Life three times endangered in one day—Reaches Ujiji—Shereef has sold off his goods—He is almost in despair—Meets Henry M. Stanley and is relieved—His contributions to Natural Science during last journeys—Professor Owen in the Quarterly Review.

After resting for a few weeks at Ujiji, Dr. Livingstone set out, 12th July, 1869, to explore the Manyuema country. Ujiji was not a place favorable for making arrangements; it was the resort of the worst scum of Arab traders. Even to send his letters to the coast was a difficult undertaking, for the bearers were afraid he would expose their doings. On one day he despatched no fewer than forty-two—enough, no doubt, to form a large volume; none of these even arrived at Zanzibar, so that they must have been purposely destroyed. The slave-traders of Urungu and Itawa, where he had been, were gentlemen compared with those of Ujiji, who resembled the Kilwa and Portuguese, and with whom trading was simply a system of murder. Here lay the cause of Livingstone's unexampled difficulties at this period of his life; he was dependent on men who were not only knaves of the first magnitude, but who had a special animosity against him, and a special motive to deceive, rob, and obstruct him in every possible way.

After considerable deliberation he decided to go to Manyuema, in order to examine the river Lualaba, and determine the direction of its flow. This would settle the question of the watershed, and in four or five months, if he should get guides and canoes, his work would be done. On setting out from Ujiji he first crossed the lake, and then proceeded inland on foot. He was still weak from illness, and his lungs were so feeble that to walk up-hill made him pant. He became stronger, however, as he went on, refreshed doubtless by the interesting country through which he passed, and the aspect of the people, who were very different from the tribes on the coast.

On the 21st September he arrived at Bambarre, in Manyuema, the village of the Chief Moenekuss. He found the people in a state of great isolation from the rest of the world, with nothing to trust to but charms and idols,—both being bits of wood. He made the acquaintance of the soko or gorilla, not a very social animal, for it always tries to bite off the ends of its captor's fingers and toes. Neither is it particularly intellectual, for its nest shows no more contrivance than that of a cushat dove. The curiosity of the people was very great, and sometimes it took an interesting direction. "Do people die with you?" asked two intelligent young men. "Have you no charm against death? Where do people go after death?" Livingstone spoke to them of the great Father, and of their prayers to Him who hears the cry of his children; and they thought this to be natural.

He rested at Bambarre till the 1st of November, and then went westward till he reached the Luamo River, and was within ten miles of its confluence with the Lualaba. He found the country surpassingly beautiful: "Palms crown the highest heights of the mountains, and their gracefully-bent fronds wave beautifully in the wind. Climbers of cable size in great numbers are hung among the gigantic trees; many unknown wild fruits abound, some the size of a child's head, and strange birds and monkeys are everywhere. The soil is excessively rich, and the people, though isolated by old feuds that are never settled, cultivate largely."

The country was very populous, and Livingstone so excited the curiosity of the people that he could hardly get quit of the crowds. It was not so uninteresting to be stared at by the women, but he was wearied with the ugliness of the men. Palm-toddy did not inspire them with any social qualities, but made them low and disagreeable. They had no friendly feeling for him, and could not be inspired with any. They thought that he and his people were like the Arab traders, and they would not do anything for them. It was impossible to procure a canoe for navigating the Lualaba, so that there was nothing for it but to return to Bambarre, which was reached on the 19th December, 1869.

A long letter to his son Thomas (Town of Moenekuss, Manyuema Country, 24th September, 1869) gives a retrospect of this period, and indeed, in a sense, of his life:

"My dear Tom,—I begin a letter, though I have no prospect of being able to send it off for many months to come. It is to have something in readiness when the hurry usual in preparing a mail does arrive. I am in the Manyuema Country, about 150 miles west of Ujiji, and at the town of Moenekoos or Moenekuss, a principal chief among the reputed cannibals. His name means 'Lord of the light-gray parrot with a red tail,' which abounds here, and he points away still further west to the country of the real cannibals. His people laugh, and say, 'Yes, we eat the flesh of men,' and should they see the inquirer to be credulous, enter into particulars. A black stuff smeared on the cheeks is the sign of mourning, and they told one of my people who believes all they say that it is animal charcoal made of the bones of the relatives they have eaten. They showed him the skull of one recently devoured, and he pointed it out to me in triumph. It was the skull of a gorilla, here called 'soko,' and this they do eat. They put a bunch of bananas in his way, and hide till he comes to take them, and spear him. Many of the Arabs believe firmly in the cannibal propensity of the Manyuema. Others who have lived long among them, and are themselves three-fourths African blood, deny it. I suspect that this idea must go into oblivion with those of people who have no knowledge of fire, of the Supreme Being, or of language. The country abounds in food,—goats, sheep, fowls, buffaloes, and elephants: maize, holcuserghum, cassaba, sweet potatoes, and other farinaceous eatables, and with ground-nuts, palm-oil, palms, and other fat-yielding nuts, bananas, plantains, sugar-cane in great plenty. So there is little inducement to eat men, but I wait for further evidence.

"Not knowing how your head has fared, I sometimes feel greatly distressed about you, and if I could be of any use I would leave my work unfinished to aid you. But you will have every medical assistance that can be rendered, and I cease not to beg the Lord who healeth his people to be gracious to your infirmity.

"The object of my Expedition is the discovery of the sources of the Nile. Had I known all the hardships, toil, and time involved, I would of been of the mind of St. Mungo, of Glasgow, of whom the song says that he let the Molendinar Burn 'rin by,' when he could get something stronger. I would have let the sources 'rin by' to Egypt, and never been made 'drumly' by my plashing through them. But I shall make this country and people better known. 'This,' Professor Owen said to me, 'is the first step; the rest will in due time follow.' By different agencies the Great Ruler is bringing all things into a focus. Jesus is gathering all things unto Himself, and He is daily becoming more and more the centre of the world's hopes and of the world's fears. War brought freedom to 4,000,000 of the most hopeless and helpless slaves. The world never saw such fiendishness as that with which the Southern slaveocracy clung to slavery. No power in this world or the next would ever make them relax their iron grasp. The lie had entered into their soul. Their cotton was King. With it they would force England and France to make them independent, because without it the English and French must starve. Instead of being made a nation, they made a nation of the North. War has elevated and purified the Yankees, and now they have the gigantic task laid at their doors to elevate and purify 4,000,000 of slaves. I earnestly hope that the Northerners may not be found wanting in their portion of the superhuman work. The day for Africa is yet to come. Possibly the freed men may be an agency in elevating their fatherland.

"England is in the rear. This affair in Jamaica brought out the fact of a large infusion of bogiephobia in the English. Frightened in early years by their mothers with 'Bogie Blackman,' they were terrified out of their wits by a riot, and the sensation writers, who act the part of the 'dreadful boys' who frightened aunts, yelled out that emancipation was a mistake. 'The Jamaica negroes were as savage as when they left Africa.' They might have put it much stronger by saying, as the rabble that attended Tom Sayers's funeral, or that collects at every execution at Newgate. But our golden age is not in the past. It is in the future—in the good time coming yet for Africa and for the world.

"The task I undertook was to examine the watershed of South Central Africa. This was the way Sir Roderick put it, and though he mentioned it as the wish of the Geographical Council, I suspect it was his own idea; for two members of the Society wrote out 'instructions' for me, and the watershed was not mentioned. But scientific words were used which the writers evidently did not understand.

"The examination of the watershed contained the true scientific mode of procedure, and Sir Roderick said to me: 'You will be the discoverer of the sources of the Nile,' I shaped my course for a path across the north end of Lake Nyassa, but to avoid the certainty of seeing all my attendants bolting at the first sight of, the wild tribes there, the Nindi, I changed off to go round the south end, and if not, cross the middle. What I feared for the north took place in the south when the Johanna men heard of the Mazitu, though we were 150 miles from the marauders, and I offered to go due west till past their beat. They were terrified, and ran away as soon as they saw my face turned west. I got carriers from village to village, and got on nicely with people who had never engaged in the slave-trade; but it was slow work. I came very near to the Mazitu three times, but obtained information in time to avoid them. Once we were taken for Mazitu ourselves, and surrounded by a crowd of excited savages. They produced a state of confusion and terror, and men fled hither and thither with the fear of death on them. Casembe would not let me go into his southern district till he had sent men to see that the Mazitu, or, as they are called in Lunda, the Watuta, had left. Where they had been all the food was swept off, and we suffered cruel hunger. We had goods to buy with, but the people had nothing to sell, and were living on herbs and mushrooms. I had to feel every step of the way, and generally was groping in the dark. No one knew anything beyond his own district, and who cared where the rivers ran? Casembe said, when I was going to Lake Bangweolo: 'One piece of water was just like another (it is the Bangweolo water), but as your chief desired you to visit that one, go to it. If you see a traveling party going north, join it. If not, come back to me and I will send you safely along my path by Moero;' and gave me a man's load of a fish like whitebait. I gradually gained more light on the country, and slowly and surely saw the problem of the fountains of the Nile developing before my eyes. The vast volume of water draining away to the north made me conjecture that I had been working at the sources of the Congo too. My present trip to Manyuema proves that all goes to the river of Egypt. In fact, the head-waters of the Nile are gathered into two or three arms, very much as was depicted by Ptolemy in the second century of our era. What we moderns can claim is rediscovery of what had fallen into oblivion, like the circumnavigation of Africa by the Phoenican admiral of one of the Pharaohs, B.C. 600. He was not believed, because 'he had the sun on his right hand in going round from east to west.' Though to us this stamps his tale as genuine, Ptolemy was not believed, because his sources were between 10 and 12 north latitude, and collected into two or three great head branches. In my opinion, his informant must have visited them.

"I cared nothing for money, and contemplated spending my life as a hard-working, poor missionary. By going into the country beyond Kuruman we pleased the Directors, but the praises they bestowed excited envy. Mamma and you all had hard times. The missionaries at Kuruman, and south of it, had comfortable houses and gardens. They could raise wheat, pumpkins, maize, at very small expense, and their gardens yielded besides apples, pears, apricots, peaches, quinces, oranges, grapes, almonds, walnuts, and all vegetables, for little more than the trouble of watering. A series or droughts compelled us to send for nearly all our food 270 miles off. Instead of help we had to pay the uttermost farthing for everything, and got bitter envy besides. Many have thought that I was inflated by the praises I had lavished upon me, but I made it a rule never to read anything of praise. I am thankful that a kind Providence has enabled me to do what will reflect honor on my children, and show myself a stout-hearted servant of Him from whom comes every gift. None of you must become mean, craven-hearted, untruthful, or dishonest, for if you do, you don't inherit it from me. I hope that you have selected a profession that suits your taste. It will make you hold up your head among men, and is your most serious duty. I shall not live long, And it would not be well to rely on my influence. I could help you a little while living, but have little else but what people call a great name to bequeath afterward. I am nearly toothless, and in my second childhood. The green maize was in one part the only food we could get with any taste. I ate the hard fare, and was once horrified by finding most of my teeth loose. They never fastened again, and generally became so loose as to cause pain. I had to extract them, and did so by putting on a strong thread with what sailors call a clove-hitch, tie the other end to a stump above or below, as the tooth was upper or lower, strike the thread with a heavy pistol or stick, and the tooth dangled at the stump, and no pain was felt. Two upper front teeth are thus out, and so many more, I shall need a whole set of artificials. I may here add that the Manyuema stole the bodies of slaves which were buried, till a threat was used. They said the hyenas had exhumed the dead, but a slave was cast out by Banyamwezi, and neither hyenas nor men touched it for seven days. The threat was effectual. I think that they are cannibals, but not ostentatiously so. The disgust expressed by native traders has made them ashamed. Women never partook of human flesh. Eating sokos or gorillas must have been a step in the process of teaching them to eat men. The sight of a soko nauseates me. He is so hideously ugly, I can conceive no other use for him than sitting for a portrait of Satan. I have lost many months by rains, refusal of my attendants to go into a canoe, and irritable eating ulcers on my feet from wading in mud instead of sailing. They are frightfully common, and often kill slaves. I am recovering, and hope to go down Lualaba, which I would call Webb River or Lake; touch then another Lualaba, which I will name Young's River or Lake; and then by the good hand of our Father above turn homeward through Karagwe. As ivory-trading is here like gold-digging, I felt constrained to offer a handsome sum of money and goods to my friend Mohamad Bogharib for men. It was better to do this than go back to Ujiji, and then come over the whole 260 miles. I would have waited there for men from Zanzibar, but the authority at Ujiji behaved so oddly about my letters, I fear they never went to the coast. The worthless slaves I have saw that I was at their mercy, for no Manyuema will go into the next district, and they behaved as low savages who have been made free alone can. Their eagerness to enslave and kill their own countrymen is distressing....

"Give my love to Oswell and Anna Mary and the Aunties. I have received no letter from any of you since I left home. The good Lord bless you all, and be gracious to you.—Affectionately yours,

"DAVID LIVINGSTONE."

Another letter is addressed to Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann, September, 1869. He enters at considerable length into his reasons for the supposition that he had discovered, on the watershed, the true sources of the Nile. He refers in a generous spirit to the discoveries of other travelers, mistaken though he regarded their views on the sources, and is particularly complimentary to Miss Tinne:

"A Dutch lady whom I never saw, and of whom I know nothing save from scraps in the newspapers, moves my sympathy more than any other. By her wise foresight in providing a steamer, and pushing on up the river after the severest domestic affliction—the loss by fever of her two aunts—till after she was assured by Speke and Grant that they had already discovered in Victoria Nyanza the sources she sought, she proved herself a genuine explorer, and then by trying to go S.W. on land. Had they not, honestly enough of course, given her their mistaken views, she must inevitably, by boat or on land, have reached the head-waters of the Nile. I cannot conceive of her stopping short of Bangweolo. She showed such indomitable pluck she must be a descendant of Van Tromp, who swept the English Channel till killed by our Blake, and whose tomb every Englishman who goes to Holland is sure to visit.

"We great he-beasts say, 'Exploration was not becoming her sex.' Well, considering that at least 1600 years have elapsed since Ptolemy's informants reached this region, and kings, emperors, and all the great men of antiquity longed in vain to know the fountains, exploration does not seem to have become the other sex either. She came much further up than the two centurions sent by Nero Caesar.

"I have to go down and see where the two arms unite,—the lost city Meroe ought to be there,—then get back to Ujiji to get a supply of goods which I have ordered from Zanzibar, turn bankrupt after I secure them, and let my creditors catch me if they can, as I finish up by going round outside and south of all the sources, so that I may be sure no one will cut me out and say he found other sources south of mine. This is one reason for my concluding trip; another is to visit the underground houses in stone, and the copper mines of Katanga which have been worked for ages (Malachite). I have still a seriously long task before me. My letters have been delayed inexplicably, so I don't know my affairs. If I have a salary I don't know it, though the Daily Telegraph abused me for receiving it when I had none. Of this alone I am sure—my friends will all wish me to make a complete work of it before I leave, and in their wish I join. And it is better to go in now than to do it in vain afterward."

"I have still a seriously long task before me." Yet he had lately been worse in health and weaker than he had ever been; he was much poorer than he expected to be, and the difficulties had proved far beyond any he had hitherto experienced. But so far from thinking of taking things more easily than before, he actually enlarges his programme, and resolves to "finish up by going round outside and south of all the sources." His spirit seems only to rise as difficulties are multiplied.

He writes to his daughter Agnes at the same time: "You remark that you think you could have traveled as well as Mrs. Baker, and I think so too. Your mamma was famous for roughing it in the bush, and was never a trouble." The allusion carries him to old days—their travels to Lake 'Ngami, Mrs. Livingstone's death, the Helmores, the Bishop, Thornton. Then he speaks of recent troubles and difficulties, his attack of pneumonia, from which he had not expected to recover, his annoyances with his men, so unlike the old Makololo, the loss of his letters and boxes, with the exception of two from an unknown donor that contained the Saturday Review and his old friend Punch for 1868. Then he goes over African travelers and their achievements, real and supposed. He returns again to the achievements of ladies, and praises Miss Tinne and other women. "The death-knell of American slavery was rung by a woman's hand. We great he-beasts say Mrs. Stowe exaggerated. From what I have seen of slavery I say exaggeration is a simple impossibility. I go with the sailor who, on seeing slave-traders, said: 'If the devil don't catch these fellows, we might as well have no devil at all.'"

The year 1870 was begun with the prayer that in the course of it he might be able to complete his enterprise, and retire through the Basango before the end of it. In February he hears with gratitude of Mr. E.D. Young's Search Expedition up the Shire and Nyassa. In setting out anew he takes a more northerly course, proceeding through paths blocked with very rank vegetation, and suffering from choleraic illness caused by constant wettings. In the course of a month the effects of the wet became overpowering, and on 7th February Dr. Livingstone had to go into winter quarters. He remained quiet till 26th June.

In April, 1870, from "Manyuema or Cannibal Country, say 150 miles N.W. of Ujiji," he began a letter to Sir Roderick Murchison, but changed its destination to his brother John in Canada. He notices his Immediate object—to ascertain where the Lualaba joined the eastern branch of the Nile, and contrasts the lucid reasonable problem set him by Sir Roderick with the absurd instructions he had received from some members of the Geographical Society. "I was to furnish 'a survey on successive pages of my journal,' 'latitudes every night,' 'hydrography of Central Africa,' and because they voted one-fifth or perhaps one-sixth part of my expenses, give them 'all my notes, copies if not the originals!' For mere board and no lodgings I was to work for years and hand over the results to them." Contrasted with such absurdities, Sir Roderick's proposal had quite fascinated him. He had ascertained that the watershed extended 800 miles from west to east, and had traversed it in every direction, but at a cost which had been wearing out both to mind and body. He drops a tear over the Universities Mission, but becomes merry over Bishop Tozer strutting about with his crosier at Zanzibar, and in a fine clear day getting a distant view of the continent of which he claimed to be Bishop. He denounces the vile policy of the Portuguese, and laments the indecision of some influential persons who virtually upheld it. He is tickled with the generous offer of a small salary, when he should settle somewhere, that had been made to him by the Government, while men who had risked nothing were getting handsome salaries of far greater amount; but rather than sacrifice the good of Africa, HE WOULD SPEND EVERY PENNY OF HIS PRIVATE MEANS. He seems surrounded by a whole sea of difficulties, but through all, the nobility of his spirit shines undimmed. To persevere in the line of duty is his only conceivable course. He holds as firmly as ever by the old anchor—"All will turn out right at last."

When ready, they set out on 26th June. Most of his people failed him; but nothing daunted, he set off then with only three attendants, Susi, Chuma, and Gardner, to the northwest for the Lualaba. Whenever he comes among Arab traders he finds himself suspected and hated because he is known to condemn their evil deeds.

The difficulties by the way were terrible. Fallen trees and flooded rivers made marching a perpetual struggle. For the first time, Livingstone's feet failed him. Instead of healing as hitherto, when torn by hard travel, irritating sores fastened upon them, and as he had but three attendants, he had to limp back to Bambarre, which he reached in the middle of July.

And here he remained in his hut for eighty days, till 10th October, exercising patience, harrowed by the wickedness he could not stop, extracting information from the natives, thinking about the fountains of the Nile, trying to do some good among the people, listening to accounts of soko-hunting, and last, not least, reading his Bible. He did not leave Bambarre till 16th February, 1871. From what he had seen and what he had heard he was more and more persuaded that he was among the true fountains of the Nile. His reverence for the Bible gave that river a sacred character, and to throw light on its origin seemed a kind of religious act. He admits, however, that he is not quite certain about it, though he does not see how he can be mistaken. He dreams that in his early life Moses may have been in these parts, and if he should only discover any confirmation of sacred history or sacred chronology he would not grudge all the toil and hardship, the pain and hunger, he had undergone. The very spot where the fountains are to be found becomes defined in his mind. He even drafts a despatch which he hopes to write, saying that the fountains are within a quarter of a mile of each other!

Then he bethinks him of his friends who have done noble battle with slavery, and half in fancy, half in earnest, attaches their names to the various waters. The fountain of the Liambai or Upper Zambesi he names Palmerston Fountain, in fond remembrance of that good man's long and unwearied labor for the abolition of the slave-trade. The lake formed by the Lufira is to be Lincoln Lake, in gratitude to him who gave freedom to four millions of slaves. The fountain of Lufira is associated with Sir Bartle Frere, who accomplished the grand work of abolishing slavery in Sindia, in Upper India. The central Lualaba is called the River Webb, after the warm-hearted friend under whose roof he wrote The Zambesi and its Tributaries; while the western branch is named the Young River, to commemorate his early instructor in chemistry and life-long friend, James Young. "He has shed pure white light in many lowly cottages and in some rich palaces. I, too, have shed light of another kind, and am fain to believe that I have performed a small part in the grand revolution which our Maker has been for ages carrying on, by multitudes of conscious and many unconscious agents, all over the world[69]."

[Footnote 69: See Last Journals. vol. ii. pp 65, 66.]

He is by no means unaware that death may be in the cup. But, fortified as he was by an unalterable conviction that he was in the line of duty, the thought of death had no influence to turn him either to the right hand or to the left. For the first three years he had a strong presentiment that he would fall. But it had passed away as he came near the end, and now he prayed God that when he retired it might be to his native home.

Probably no human being was ever in circumstances parallel to those in which Livingstone now stood. Years had passed since he had heard from home. The sound of his mother-tongue came to him only in the broken sentences of Chuma or Susi or his other attendants, or in the echoes of his own voice as he poured it out in prayer, or in some cry of home-sickness that could not be kept in. In long pain and sickness there had been neither wife nor child nor brother to cheer him with sympathy, or lighten his dull hut with a smile. He had been baffled and tantalized beyond description in his efforts to complete the little bit of exploration which was yet necessary to finish his task. His soul was vexed for the frightful exhibitions of wickedness around him, where "man to man," instead of brothers, were worse than wolves and tigers to each other. During all his past life he had been sowing his seed weeping, but so far was he from bringing back his sheaves rejoicing, that the longer he lived the more cause there seemed for his tears. He had not yet seen of the travail of his soul. In opening Africa he had seemed to open it for brutal slave-traders, and in the only instance in which he had yet brought to it the feet of men "beautiful upon the mountains, publishing peace," disaster had befallen, and an incompetent leader had broken up the enterprise. Yet, apart from his sense of duty, there was no necessity for his remaining there. He was offering himself a freewill-offering, a living sacrifice. What could have sustained his heart and kept him firm to his purpose in such a wilderness of desolation?

"I read the whole Bible through four times whilst I was in Manyuema."

So he wrote in his Diary, not at the time, but the year after, on the 3d October, 1871[70]. The Bible gathers wonderful interest from the circumstances in which it is read. In Livingstone's circumstances it was more the Bible to him than ever. All his loneliness and sorrow, the sickness of hope deferred, the yearnings for home that could neither be repressed nor gratified, threw a new light on the Word. How clearly it was intended for such as him, and how sweetly it came home to him! How faithful, too, were its pictures of human sin and sorrow! How true its testimony against man, who will not retain God in his knowledge, but, leaving Him, becomes vain in his imaginations and hard in his heart, till the bloom of Eden is gone, and a waste, howling wilderness spreads around! How glorious the out-beaming of Divine Love, drawing near to this guilty race, winning and cherishing them with every endearing act, and at last dying on the cross to redeem them! And how bright the closing scene of Revelation—the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness—yes, he can appreciate that attribute—the curse gone, death abolished, and all tears wiped from the mourner's eye!

[Footnote 70: See Last Journals, vol. ii. p. 154.]

So the lonely man in his dull hut is riveted to the well-worn book; ever finding it a greater treasure as he goes along; and fain, when he has reached its last page, to turn back to the beginning, and gather up more of the riches which he has left upon the road.

To Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann he writes during his detention (September, 1870) on a leaf of his cheque-book, his paper being done. He gives his theory of the rivers, enlarges on the fertility of the country, bewails his difficulty in getting men, as the Manyuema never go beyond their own country, and the traders, who have only begun to come there, are too busy collecting ivory to be able to spare men. "The tusks were left in the terrible forests, where the animals were killed; the people, if treated civilly, readily go and bring the precious teeth, some half rotten, or gnawed by the teeth of a rodent called dezi. I think that mad naturalists name it Aulocaudatus Swindermanus, or some equally wise agglutination of syllables.... My chronometers are all dead; I hope my old watch was sent to Zanzibar; but I have got no letters for years, save some, three years old, at Ujiji. I have an intense and sore longing to finish and retire, and trust that the Almighty may permit me to go home."

In one of his letters to Agnes from Manyuema he quotes some words from a letter of hers that he ever after cherished as a most refreshing cordial:

"I commit myself to the Almighty Disposer of events, and if I fall, will do so doing my duty, like one of his stout-hearted servants. I am delighted to hear you say that, much as you wish me home, you would rather hear of my finishing my work to my own satisfaction than come merely to gratify you. That is a noble sentence, and I felt all along sure that all my friends would wish me to make a complete work of it, and in that wish, in spite of every difficulty, I cordially joined. I hope to present to my young countrymen an example of manly perseverance. I shall not hide from you that I am made by it very old and shaky, my cheeks fallen in, space round the eyes ditto; mouth almost toothless,—a few teeth that remain, out of their line, so that a smile is that of a he-hippopotamus,—a dreadful old fogie, and you must tell Sir Roderick that it is an utter impossibility for me to appear in public till I get new teeth, and even then the less I am seen the better."

Another letter to Agnes from Manyuema gives a curious account of the young soko or gorilla a chief had lately presented to him:

"She sits crouching eighteen inches high, and is the most intelligent and least mischievous of all the monkeys I have seen. She holds out her hand to be lifted and carried, and if refused makes her face as in a bitter human weeping, and wrings her hands quite humanly, sometimes adding a foot or third hand to make the appeal more touching.... She knew me at once as a friend, and when plagued by any one always placed her back to me for safety, came and sat down on my mat, decently made a nest of grass and leaves, and covered herself with the mat to sleep. I cannot take her with me, though I fear that she will die before I return, from people plaguing her. Her fine long black hair was beautiful when tended by her mother, who was killed. I am mobbed enough alone; two sokos—she and I—would not have got breath.

"I have to submit to be a gazing-stock. I don't altogether relish it, here or elsewhere, but try to get over it good-naturedly, get into the most shady spot of the village, and leisurely look at all my admirers. When the first crowd begins to go away, I go into my lodgings to take what food may be prepared, as coffee, when I have it, or roasted maize infusion when I have none. The door is shut, all save a space to admit light. It is made of the inner bark of a gigantic tree, not a quarter of an inch thick, and slides in a groove behind a post on each side of the doorway. When partially open it is supported by only one of the posts. Eager heads sometimes crowd the open space, and crash goes the thin door, landing a Manyuema beauty on the floor. 'It was not I,' she gasps out, 'it was Bessie Bell and Jeanie Gray that shoved me in, and—' as she scrambles out of the lion's den, 'see they're laughing'; and; fairly out, she joins in the merry giggle too. To avoid darkness or being half-smothered, I often eat in public, draw a line on the ground, then 'toe the line,' and keep them out of the circle. To see me eating with knife, fork, and spoon is wonderful. 'See!—they don't touch their food!—what oddities, to be sure.'...

"Many of the Manyuema women are very pretty; their hands, feet, limbs, and form are perfect. The men are handsome. Compared with them the Zanzibar slaves are like London door-knockers, which some atrocious iron-founder thought were like lions' faces. The way in which these same Zanzibar Mohammedans murder the men and seize the women and children makes me sick at heart. It is not slave-trade. It is murdering free people to make slaves. It is perfectly indescribable. Kirk has been working hard to get this murdersome system put a stop to. Heaven prosper his noble efforts! He says in one of his letters to me, 'It is monstrous injustice to compare the free people in the interior, living under their own chiefs and laws, with what slaves at Zanzibar afterward become by the abominable system which robs them of their manhood. I think it is like comparing the anthropologists with their ancestral sokos.'...

"I am grieved to hear of the departure of good Lady Murchison. Had I known that she kindly remembered me in her prayers, it would have been great encouragement....

"The men sent by Dr. Kirk are Mohammedans, that is, unmitigated liars. Musa and his companions are fair specimens of the lower class of Moslems. The two head-men remained at Ujiji, to feast on my goods, and get pay without work. Seven came to Bambarre, and in true Moslem style swore that they were sent by Dr. Kirk to bring me back, not to go with me, if the country were bad or dangerous. Forward they would not go. I read Dr. Kirk's words to them to follow wheresoever I led. 'No, by the old liar Mohamed, they were to force me back to Zanzibar.' After a superabundance of falsehood, it turned out that it all meant only an advance of pay, though they had double the Zanzibar wages. I gave it, but had to threaten on the word of an Englishman to shoot the ringleaders before I got them to go. They all speak of English as men who do not lie.... I have traveled more than most people, and with all sorts of followers. The Christians of Kuruman and Kolobeng were out of sight the best I ever had. The Makololo, who were very partially Christianized, were next best—honest, truthful, and brave. Heathen Africans are much superior to the Mohammedans, who are the most worthless one can have."

Toward the end of 1870, before the date of this letter, he had so far recovered that, though feeling the want of medicine as much as of men, he thought of setting out, in order to reach and explore the Lualaba, having made a bargain with Mohamad, for L270, to bring him to his destination. But now he heard that Syde bin Habib, Dugumbe, and others were on the way from Ujiji, perhaps bringing letters and medicines for him. He cannot move till they arrive; another weary time. "Sorely am I perplexed, and grieve and mourn."

The New Year 1871 passes while he is at Bambarre, with its prayer that he might be permitted to finish his task. At last, on 4th February, ten of the men despatched to him from the coast arrive, but only to bring a fresh disappointment. They were slaves, the property of Banians, who were British subjects! and they brought only one letter! Forty had been lost. There had been cholera at Zanzibar, and many of the porters sent by Dr. Kirk had died of it. The ten men came with a lie in their mouth; they would not help him, swearing that the Consul told them not to go forward, but to force Livingstone back. On the 10th they mutinied, and had to receive an advance of pay. It was apparent that they had been instructed by their Banian masters to baffle him in every way, so that their slave-trading should not be injured by his disclosures. Their two head-men, Shereef and Awathe, had refused to come farther than Ujiji, and were reveling in his goods there. Dr. Livingstone never ceased to lament and deplore that the men who had been sent to him were so utterly unsuitable. One of them actually formed a plot for his destruction, which was only frustrated through his being overheard by one whom Livingstone could trust. Livingstone wrote to his friends that owing to the inefficiency of the men, he lost two years of time, about a thousand pounds in money, had some 2000 miles of useless traveling, and was four several times subjected to the risk of a violent death.

At length, having arranged with the men, he sets out on 16th February over a most beautiful country, but woefully difficult to pass through. Perhaps it was hardly a less bitter disappointment to be told, on the 25th, that the Lualaba flowed west-southwest, so that after all it might be the Congo.

On the 29th March Livingstone arrived at Nyangwe, on the banks of the Lualaba. This was the farthest point westward that he reached in his last Expedition.

The slave-trade here he finds to be as horrible as in any other part of Africa. He is heart-sore for human blood He is threatened, bullied, and almost attacked. In some places, however, the rumor spreads that he makes no slaves, and he is called "the good one." His men are a ceaseless trouble, and for ever mutinying, or otherwise harassing him. And yet he perseveres in his old kind way, hoping by kindness to gain influence with them. Mohamad's people, he finds, have passed him on the west, and thus he loses a number of serviceable articles he was to get from them, and all the notes made for him of the rivers they had passed. The difficulties and discouragements are so great that he wonders whether, after all, God is smiling on his work.

His own men circulate such calumnious reports against him that he is unable to get canoes for the navigation of the Lualaba. This leads to weeks and months of weary waiting, and yet all in vain; but afterward he finds some consolation on discovering that the navigation was perilous, that a canoe had been lost from the inexperience of her crew in the rapids, so that had he been there, he should very likely have perished, as his canoe would probably have been foremost.

A change of plan was necessary. On 5th July he offered to Dugumbe L400, with all the goods he had at Ujiji besides, for men to replace the Banian slaves, and for the other means of going up the Lomame to Katanga, then returning and going up Tanganyika to Ujiji. Dugumbe took a little time to consult his friends before replying to the offer.

Meanwhile an event occurred of unprecedented horror, that showed Livingstone that he could not go to Lomame in the company of Dugumbe. Between Dugumbe's people and another chief a frightful system of pillage, murder, and burning of villages was going on with horrible activity. One bright summer morning, 15th July, when fifteen hundred people, chiefly women, were engaged peacefully in marketing in a village on the banks of the Lualaba, and while Dr. Livingstone was sauntering about, a murderous fire was opened on the people, and a massacre ensued of such measureless atrocity that he could describe it only by saying that it gave him the impression of being in hell. The event was so superlatively horrible, and had such an overwhelming influence on Livingstone, that we copy at full length the description of it given in the Last Journals:

"Before I had got thirty yards out, the discharge of two guns in the middle of the crowd told me that slaughter had begun; crowds dashed off from the place, and threw down their wares in confusion, and ran. At the same time that the three opened fire on the mass of people near the upper end of the market-place, volleys were discharged from a party down near the creek on the panic-stricken women, who dashed at the canoes. These, some fifty or more, were jammed in the creek, and the men forgot their paddles in the terror that seized all. The canoes were not to be got out, for the creek was too small for so many; men and women, wounded by the balls, poured into them, and leaped and scrambled into the water, shrieking A long line of heads in the river showed that great numbers struck out for an island a full mile off; in going toward it they had to put the left shoulder to a current of about two miles an hour; if they had struck away diagonally to the opposite bank, the current would have aided them, and, though nearly three miles off, some would have gained land; as it was, the heads above water showed the long line of those that would inevitably perish.

"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. Dugumbe 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.

Dugumbe 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 haemorrhage, one of which came on him now[71]. It appeared afterward that had he gone with Dugumbe, 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.

[Footnote 71: His friends say that for a considerable time before he had been subject to the most grievous pain from haemorrhoids. His sufferings were often excruciating.]

The journey back to Ujiji, begun 20th July, 1871, was a very wretched one. Amid the universal desolation caused by the very wantonness of the marauders, it was impossible for Livingstone to persuade the natives that he did not belong to the same-set. Ambushes were set for him and his company in the forest. On the 8th August they came to an ambushment all prepared, but it had been abandoned for some unknown reason. By and by, on the same day, a large spear flew past Livingstone, grazing his neck; the native who flung it was but ten yards off; the hand of God alone saved his life[72]. Farther on, another spear was thrown, which missed him by a foot. On the same day a large tree, to which fire had been applied to fell it, came down within a yard of him. Thus on one day he was delivered three times from impending death. He went on through the forest, expecting every minute to be attacked, having no fear, but perfectly indifferent whether he should be killed or not. He lost all his remaining calico that day, a telescope, umbrella, and five spears. By and Thy he was prostrated with grievous illness. As soon as he could move he went onward, but he felt as if dying on his feet. And he was ill-rigged for the road, for the light French shoes to which he was reduced, and which had been cut to ease his feet till they would hardly hang together, failed to protect him from the sharp fragments of quartz with which the road was strewed. He was getting near to Ujiji, however, where abundant of goods and comforts were no doubt safely stowed away for him, and the hope of relief sustained him under all his trials.

[Footnote 72: The head of this spear is among the Livingstone relics at Newstead Abbey.]

At last, on the 23d October, reduced to a living skeleton, he reached Ujiji. What was his misery, instead of finding the abundance of goods he had expected, to learn that the wretch Shereef, to whom they had been consigned, had sold off the whole, not leaving one yard of calico out of 3000, or one string of beads out of 700 pounds! The scoundrel had divined on the Koran, found that Livingstone was dead, and would need the goods no more. Livingstone had intended, if he could not get men at Ujiji to go with him to the Lualaba, to wait there till suitable men should be sent up from the coast; but he had never thought of having to wait in beggary. If anything could have aggravated the annoyance, it was to see Shereef come, without shame, to salute him, and tell him on leaving, that he was going to pray; or to see his slaves passing from the market with all the good things his property had bought! Livingstone applied a term to him which he reserved for men—black or white—whose wickedness made them alike shameless and stupid—he was a "moral idiot."