The Personal Life of David Livingstone Part 29

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--n.o.bility 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 ma.s.sacre 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 sc.u.m 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 pa.s.sed, 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 surpa.s.singly 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 princ.i.p.al 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, ca.s.saba, 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 a.s.sistance 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 hards.h.i.+ps, 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 plas.h.i.+ng 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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 Nya.s.sa, 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 circ.u.mnavigation 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 lat.i.tude, 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 sc.r.a.ps in the newspapers, moves my sympathy more than any other. By her wise foresight in providing a steamer, and pus.h.i.+ng on up the river after the severest domestic affliction--the loss by fever of her two aunts--till after she was a.s.sured 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 s.e.x.' 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 s.e.x 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 _Sat.u.r.day 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 grat.i.tude of Mr. E.D.

Young's Search Expedition up the s.h.i.+re and Nya.s.sa. 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,' 'lat.i.tudes 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 n.o.bility of his spirit s.h.i.+nes 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. .h.i.therto, 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 hards.h.i.+p, 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 n.o.ble 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 grat.i.tude to him who gave freedom to four millions of slaves. The fountain of Lufira is a.s.sociated with Sir Bartle Frere, who accomplished the grand work of abolis.h.i.+ng 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 mult.i.tudes 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 pa.s.sed away as he came near the end, and now he prayed G.o.d that when he retired it might be to his native home.

Probably no human being was ever in circ.u.mstances parallel to those in which Livingstone now stood. Years had pa.s.sed 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, publis.h.i.+ng 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 circ.u.mstances in which it is read. In Livingstone's circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d 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 cheris.h.i.+ng 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 Swinderma.n.u.s, 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 refres.h.i.+ng 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 finis.h.i.+ng my work to my own satisfaction than come merely to gratify you. That is a n.o.ble 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, s.p.a.ce 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: