From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People — Sec 17 Africa, part 2

DAVID LIVINGSTONE

In a poor but respectable workman's home in Blantyre, near Glasgow, was born a hundred years ago a little lad named David Livingstone, who was to make himself a great and famous name, not only as the discoverer of lakes and rivers, but also as one of the noblest men who ever offered their lives for the welfare of mankind.

[Illustration: LIVINGSTONE'S JOURNEYS IN AFRICA.

] In the national school of the town he quickly learned to read and write.

His parents could not afford to let him continue his studies, but sent him at ten years of age to a cotton mill, where he had to work from six o'clock in the morning till eight in the evening.

The hard work did not break his spirit, but while the machines hummed around him and the thread jumped on the bobbins, his thoughts and his desires flew far beyond the close walls of the factory to life and nature outside.

He did his work so well that his wages were raised, and he spent his gains in buying books, which kept him awake far into the night.

To add to his knowledge he attended a night-school, and on holidays he made long excursions with his brothers.

Years fled and the boy David grew up to manhood.

One day he told his parents that he wished to be a medical missionary, and go to the people in the east and south, tend the sick, and preach to any who would listen.

In order to procure means for his studies he had to save up his earnings at the factory, and when the time was come he went with his father to Glasgow, hired a room for half-a-crown a week, and read medicine.

At the end of the session he went back to the factory to obtain money for the next winter course.

Finally he passed his examination with distinction, and then came the last evening in the old home and the last morning dawned.

His father went with him to Glasgow, took a long farewell of his son, and returned home sad and lonely.

Livingstone sailed from England to the Cape, and betook himself to the northernmost mission-station, Kuruman in Bechuanaland.

Even at this time he heard of a fresh-water lake far to the north.

It was called Ngami, and he hoped to see it one day.

From Kuruman he made several journeys in different directions to gain a knowledge of the tribes and their languages, to minister to their sick and win their confidence.

Once when he was returning home from a journey and had still 150 miles to trek, a little black girl was found crouching under his waggon.

She had run away from her owner because she knew that he intended to sell her as a slave as soon as she was full-grown, and as she did not wish to be sold she determined to follow the missionary's waggon on foot to Kuruman.

The good doctor took up the frightened little creature and provided her with food and drink.

Suddenly he heard her cry out.

She had caught sight of a man with a gun who had been sent out to fetch her and who now came angrily to the waggon.

It never occurred to Livingstone to leave the defenceless child in the hands of the wretch.

He took the girl under his protection and told her that no danger would befall her henceforth.

She was a symbol of Africa, the home of the slave-trade.

And Africa's slaves needed the help of a great and strong man.

Livingstone understood the call and worked to his last hour for the liberation of the slaves, as Gordon did many years later.

He strove against the cruel and barbarous customs of the natives and their dark superstitions, and hoped in time to be able to train pupils who would be sent out to preach all over the country.

In one tribe the medicine-men were also rainmakers.

Livingstone pointed out to the people of the tribe that the rainmakers' jugglery was only a fraud and of no use, but offered, if they liked, himself to procure water for the irrigation of their fields, not by witchcraft but by conducting it along a canal from the neighbouring river.

Some rough tools were first hewn out, and he had soon the whole tribe at work, and the canal and conduits were laid out among the crops.

And there stood the witch-doctors put to shame, as they heard the water purling and filtering into the soil.

In 1843 Livingstone started off to found a new mission-station, named Mabotsa.

The chief of the place was quite willing to sell land, and he received glass beads and other choice wares in payment.

Mabotsa lay not far from the present Mafeking, but seventy years ago the whole region was a wild.

On one occasion a lion broke into the village and worried the sheep.

The natives turned out with their weapons, and Livingstone took the lead.

The disturber of the peace was badly wounded and retired to the bush.

But suddenly he rushed out again, threw himself on Livingstone, buried his teeth in his shoulder, and crushed his left arm.

The lion had his paw already on the missionary's head, when a Christian native ran up and struck and slashed at the brute.

The lion loosed his hold in order to fly at his new assailant, who was badly hurt.

Fortunately the animal was so sorely wounded that its strength was now exhausted, and it fell dead on the ground.

Livingstone felt the effects of the lion's bite for thirty years after, and could never lift his arm higher than the shoulder; and when his course was run his body was identified by the broken and reunited arm bone.

He had to keep quiet for a long time until his wound was healed.

Then he built the new station-house with his own hands, and when all was ready he brought to it his young bride, the daughter of a missionary at Kuruman.

Another missionary lived at Mabotsa and did all he could to render Livingstone's life miserable.

The good doctor hated all quarrelling, and did not wish that white men should set a bad example to the blacks, so he gladly gave way and moved with his wife forty miles northwards.

The house in Mabotsa had been built with his own savings, and as the London Missionary Society gave him a salary of only a hundred pounds a year, there could not be much over to build a house.

When he left, the natives round Mabotsa were in despair.

Even when the oxen were yoked to the waggon, they begged him to remain and promised to build him another house.

It was in vain, however; they lost their friend and saw him drive off to the village of Chonuane, which was subject to the chief Sechele.

From the new station Livingstone made a missionary journey eastwards to the country whither the Dutch Boers had trekked from the Cape.

They had left the Cape because they were dissatisfied with the English administration of the country, for the English would not allow slavery and proclaimed the freedom of the Hottentots.

The Boers, then, founded a republic of their own, the Transvaal, so named because it lay on the other side of the Vaal, a tributary of the Orange River.

Here they thought they could compel the blacks to work as bondmen in their service without being interfered with.

They took possession of all the springs, and the natives lived on sufferance in their own country.

The Boers hated Livingstone because they knew that he was an enemy to the slave trade and a friend to the natives.

Livingstone had plenty of work at the station.

He built his house, he cultivated his garden, visited the sick, looked after his guns and waggons, made mats and shoes, preached, taught in his children's school, lectured on medicine, and instructed the natives who wished to become missionaries.

In his leisure hours he collected natural history specimens, which he sent home, studied the poisonous tsetse fly and the deadly fever, and was always searching for remedies.

He was never idle.

His new place of abode had one serious defect--it was badly situated as regarded rain and irrigation, and therefore Livingstone decided to move again forty miles farther to the north, to Kolobeng, where for the third time he built himself a house.

As before, his black friends were much disturbed at his departure, and when they could not induce him to remain, the whole tribe packed up their belongings and went with him.

Then clearing, building, and planting went on again.

At Kolobeng Livingstone had a fixed abode for quite five years, but this was his longest and last sojourn in one place, for his after-life was a continuous pilgrimage without rest and repose.

As usual, he gained the confidence and friendship of the natives.

The worst trouble was the vicinity of the Boers.

They accused him of providing Sechele's tribe with weapons and exciting them against the Boers.

They threatened to kill all black missionaries who ventured into the Transvaal, and devised plans for getting rid of Livingstone.

Under such conditions his work could not be successful, and he longed to go farther north to countries where he could labour in peace without hindrance from white men who were nominally Christians, but treated the natives like beasts.

Besides, hard times and famine now came to Kolobeng.

The crops suffered from severe drought, and even the river failed.

The natives went off to hunt, and the women gathered locusts for food.

No child came to school, and the church was empty on Sunday.

Then Livingstone resolved to move still farther northwards, and on June 1, 1849, the party set out.

An Englishman named Oswell, who was Livingstone's friend, went with them and bore all the expenses of the journey.

He was a man of means, and so several waggons, eighty oxen, twenty horses, and twenty-five servants were provided.

After two months' march they came to the shore of Lake Ngami, which was now seen for the first time by Europeans.

The king, Lechulatebe, proved less friendly than was expected.

When he heard that Livingstone intended to continue his journey northwards to the great chief Sebituane, he feared that the latter would obtain firearms from the white men and would come down slaying and pillaging to the country round the lake.

Finally the expedition was obliged to turn back to Kolobeng.

Livingstone, however, was not the man to give in, and he went twice more to the lake, taking his wife and children with him.

On one of these journeys he came to the kingdom of the great and powerful Sebituane, and was received with the most generous hospitality.

The chief gave him all the information he wished, and promised to help him in every way.

A few days later, however, Sebituane fell ill of inflammation of the lungs and died.

Livingstone then continued his journey north-eastward with Oswell to the large village of Linyanti, and shortly after discovered a river so large and mighty that it resembled one of the firths of Scotland.

The river was called the Zambesi.

Its lower course had long been known to Europeans, but no one knew whence it came.

The climate was unhealthy, and was not suitable for the new mission-station that Livingstone intended to establish.

The Makololo people, the tribe of the deceased chief, promised to give him land, huts, and oxen if he would stay with them, but his mind was now occupied with great schemes and he gave up all thoughts of a station.

Honest, legitimate trade must first be made to flourish.

The Makololo had begun to sell slaves simply to be able to buy firearms and other coveted wares from Europe.

If they could be induced to sell ivory and ostrich feathers instead, they would be able to procure by barter all they wanted from European traders and need not sell any more human beings.

But to start such a trade a convenient route must first be found to the coast of either the Atlantic or Indian Ocean.

A country in which the black tribes were in continual war with one another simply for the purpose of obtaining slaves was not ripe for Christianity.

Accordingly Livingstone's plan was clear: first to find a way to the coast, and then to foster an honest trade which would make the slave-trade unnecessary.

Having sent his wife and children to England, Livingstone made his preparations, and in the year 1853 he was at Linyanti, in the country of the Makololo.

Here began his remarkable journey to Loanda on the west coast, not far south of the mouth of the Congo.

No European had ever travelled this way.

His companions were twenty-seven Makololos, and his baggage was as light as possible, chiefly cloth and glass beads, which serve as currency in Africa.

He took no provisions, as he thought he could live on what the country afforded.

The journey was difficult and troublesome, through a multitude of savage tribes.

First the Zambesi was followed upwards, and then the route ran along other rivers.

In consequence of heavy rain, swollen watercourses and treacherous swamps had to be crossed continually.

Livingstone rode an ox which carried him through the water after a small portable boat had been wrecked and abandoned.

Swarms of mosquitoes buzzed over the moist ground, and Livingstone repeatedly caught fever from the damp, close exhalations, and was often so ill that he could not even sit on his ox.

But amidst all these difficulties and hardships he never omitted to observe the natural objects around him and to work at his map of the route.

His diary was a big volume in stout boards with lock and key, and he wrote as small and as neatly as print.

Step by step he came nearer the sea.

Most opportunely they met a Portuguese, and in his company the small troop entered the Portuguese territory on the west coast.

The Portuguese received Livingstone with great hospitality, supplied him with everything he wanted, and rigged him out from top to toe.

Some English cruisers were lying off Loanda, having come to try to put down the slave-trade, and Livingstone enjoyed a delightful rest with his countrymen and slept in a proper bed after having lain for half a year on wet ground.

It would have been pleasant to have had a thorough holiday on a comfortable vessel on the voyage to England after so many years' wanderings in Africa, but Livingstone resisted the temptation.

He could not send his faithful Makololos adrift; besides, he had found that the route to the west coast was not suitable for trade, and was now wondering whether the Zambesi might serve as a channel of communication between the interior and the east coast.

So he decided to turn back in spite of fever and danger, bade good-bye to the English and Portuguese, and again entered the great solitude.

Before Livingstone left Loanda he put together a large mass of correspondence, notes, maps, and descriptions of the newly discovered countries, but the English vessel which carried his letters sank at Madeira with all on board, and only one passenger was saved.

News of the misfortune reached Livingstone when he was still near the coast, and he had to write and draw all his work again, a task that took him months.

If he had left the Makololo men to their fate he would have travelled in the unfortunate vessel.

Rain and sickness often delayed him, but on the whole his return journey was easier.

He took with him from Loanda a large stock of presents for the chiefs, and they were no longer strangers.

And when he came among the villages of the Makololo, the whole tribe turned out to welcome him, and the good missionary held a thanksgiving service in the presence of all the people.

Oxen were killed round the fires at night, drums were beaten, and with dance and song the people filled the air far above the crowns of the bread-fruit trees with sounds of gladness.

Sekeletu was still friendly, and was given a discarded colonel's uniform from Loanda.

In this he appeared at church on Sunday, and attracted more attention than the preacher and the service.

His gratitude was so great that when Livingstone set out to the east coast he presented his white friend with ten slaughter oxen, three of his best riding oxen, and provisions for the way.

And more than that, he ordered a hundred and twenty warriors to escort him, and gave directions that, as far as his power extended over the forests and fields, all hunters and tillers of the ground should provide the white man and his retinue with everything they wanted.

Not the least remarkable circumstance connected with Livingstone's travels was that he was able to carry them out without any material help from home.

He was the friend of the natives, and travelled for long distances as their guest.

Now his route ran along the bank of the Zambesi, an unknown road.

During his earlier visit to Linyanti he had heard of a mighty waterfall on the river, and now he discovered this African Niagara, which he named the Victoria Falls.

Above the falls the river is 1800 yards broad, and the huge volumes of water dash down foaming and roaring over a barrier of basalt 390 feet high to the depth beneath.

The water boils and bubbles as in a kettle, and is confined in a rocky chasm in some places barely 50 yards broad.

Clouds of spray and vapour hover constantly above the fall, and the natives call it "the smoking water."

Among the general public in Europe, Livingstone's description of the Victoria Falls made a deeper impression than any of his other discoveries, so thoroughly unexpected was the discovery in Africa of a waterfall which could match, nay in many respects surpass, Niagara in wild beauty and imposing power.

Now a railway passes over the Falls, and a place has grown up which bears the name of Livingstone.

The deafening roar of the water died away in the distance, and the party followed the forest paths from the territory of one tribe to that of the next.

Steadfast as always, Livingstone met all danger and treachery with courage and contempt of death, a Titan among geographical explorers as well as among Christian missionaries.

He drew the main outlines of this southern part of Darkest Africa and laid down the course of the Zambesi on his map.

For a year he had been an explorer rather than a missionary.

But the dominating thought in his dream of the future was always that the end of geographical exploration was only the beginning of missionary enterprise.

At the first Portuguese station he left his Makololo men, promising to return and lead them back to their own villages.

Then he travelled down the Zambesi to Quilimane on the sea.

He had, therefore, crossed Africa from coast to coast, and was the first scientifically educated European to do so.

After fifteen years in Africa he had earned a right to go home.

An English ship carried him to Mauritius, and at the end of 1856 he reached England.

He was received everywhere with boundless enthusiasm, and never was an explorer fêted as he was.

He travelled from town to town, always welcomed as a hero.

He always spoke of the slave-trade and the responsibility that rested on the white men to rescue the blacks.

Africa, lying forgotten and misty beneath its moving rain-belts, became at once the object of attention of all the educated world.

Detraction was not silent at the home-coming of the victor.

The Missionary Society gave him to understand that he had not laboured sufficiently for the spread of the Gospel, and that he had been too much of an explorer and too little of a missionary.

He therefore left the Society; and when, after a sojourn of more than a year at home, he returned to Africa, it was in the capacity of English Consul in Quilimane, and leader of an expedition for the exploration of the interior of Africa.

We have no time to accompany Livingstone on his six years' journeys in East Africa.

Among the most important discoveries he made was that of the great Lake Nyassa, from the neighbourhood of which 19,000 slaves were carried annually to Zanzibar, to say nothing of the far greater numbers who died on the way to the coast.

One day Livingstone went down to the mouth of the Zambesi to meet an English ship.

On board were his wife and a small specially built steamer called the _Lady Nyassa_, designed for voyages on rivers and lakes.

Shortly afterwards his wife fell ill and died, and was buried under the leafy branches of a bread-fruit tree.

In spite of his grief he went on with his work as diligently as before, and when the time came for him to sail home, he thought of selling the _Lady Nyassa_ to the Portuguese.

But when he heard that the boat was to be used to transport slaves, he kept it, steered a course for Zanzibar, and then resolved to cross the Indian Ocean in the small open boat by the use of both sails and steam.

This was one of Livingstone's most daring exploits, for the distance to Bombay was 2500 miles across the open sea, and in the beginning of January the south-west monsoon might be expected with its rough, stormy seas.

He hoped, however, to reach Bombay before the monsoon broke, so with three white sailors and nine Africans, and only fourteen tons of coal, he steamed out of the harbour of Zanzibar, saw the coast of Africa fade away and the dreary waste of water close round him on all sides.

Two of the white sailors fell ill and were unfit for work, and the bold missionary had to depend almost entirely on himself.

Ocean currents hindered the progress of the _Lady Nyassa_, and for twenty-five days she was becalmed, for the coal had to be used sparingly, and when the sails hung limp from the mast there was nothing to be done but to exercise patience.

Fortunately there was sufficient food and drinking water, and Livingstone was accustomed to opposition and useless waiting.

He had to ride out two violent storms, and the _Lady Nyassa_ was within a hair's breadth of turning broadside to the high seas.

In view of the immense watery waste that still lay before him he meditated making for the Arabian coast, but as a favourable wind got up and the sailing was good he kept on his course.

At length the coast of India rose up out of the sea, and after a voyage of six weeks the _Lady Nyassa_ glided into the grand harbour of Bombay.

The air was hazy and no one noticed the small boat, but when it was known that Livingstone was in the city, every one made haste to pay him homage.

In the year 1866 Livingstone was again in Africa.

We find him at the mouth of the Rovuma, a river which enters the sea to the east of Lake Nyassa.

He had thirty-seven servants, many of them from India, and one of his men, Musa, had been with him before.

He crossed the country to Lake Nyassa, but when he wished to pass over to the eastern shore in native boats, he was stopped by the Arabs, who knew that he was the most formidable opponent of the slave-trade.

He had no choice but to go round the lake on foot, and little by little he made contributions to human knowledge, drew maps, and made notes and collections.

He came to districts he already knew, where black women were carried off by crocodiles on the bank of the Shiré River, where he had lost his wife, and where all the missionaries sent out on his recommendation had died of fever.

His staff of servants soon proved to be a worthless lot.

The Indians were dismissed, and few of the others could be depended on.

The best were Susi and Chuma, who by their faithfulness gained a great reputation both in Africa and Europe.

Musa, on the contrary, was a scoundrel.

He heard from an Arab slave-dealer that all the country through which Livingstone was about to travel was inhabited by a war-like tribe, who had lately fallen upon a party of forty-four Arabs and killed all but the narrator himself.

Musa and most of his comrades were so frightened that they ran away.

On his arrival at Zanzibar, Musa informed the British Consul that Livingstone had been attacked and murdered and all his goods plundered.

The false account was so cleverly concocted and so thoroughly rehearsed that Musa could not be convicted of deceit.

Every one believed him, and the English newspapers contained whole columns of reminiscences of the deceased.

Only one friend of Livingstone, who had accompanied him on one of his journeys and knew Musa, had any doubts.

He went himself to Africa, followed Livingstone's trail, and learned from the natives that the missionary had never been attacked as reported, but that he was on his way to Lake Tanganyika.

The road thither was long and troublesome, and the great explorer suffered severe losses.

Provisions ran short, and a hired porter ran away with the medicine chest.

From this time Livingstone had no drugs to allay fever, and his health broke down.

But he came to the southern extremity of Tanganyika, and the following year discovered Lake Bangweolo.

He rowed out to the islands in the lake, and very much astonished the natives, who had never seen a white man before.

Extensive swamps lay round the lake, and Livingstone believed that the southernmost sources of the Nile must be looked for in this region.

This problem of the watershed of the Nile so fascinated him that he tarried year after year in Africa; but he never succeeded in solving it, and never knew that the river running out of Bangweolo is a tributary of the Lualaba or Upper Congo.

Most of his men mutinied on the shore of Bangweolo.

They complained of the hardships they endured and were tired of munching ears of maize, and demanded that their master should lead them to country where they could get sufficient food.

Mild and gentle as always, Livingstone spoke to them kindly.

He admitted that they were right, and confessed that he was himself tired of struggling on in want and hardship.

They were so astonished at his gentleness that they begged to remain with him.

Livingstone was dangerously ill on this journey and had to be carried on a litter.

There he lay unconscious and delirious with fever, and lost entirely his count of time.

The troop moved again towards Tanganyika, and was to cross the lake in canoes to the Ujiji country on the eastern shore.

If he could only get so far, he could rest there, and receive new supplies and letters from home.

Worn out and exhausted he at length reached Ujiji, a rendezvous for the Arab slave-dealers.

But his fresh supplies had disappeared entirely.

He wrote for more from the coast, and urged the Sultan of Zanzibar to see that nothing went astray.

He wrote heaps of letters which never reached their destination.

A packet of forty-two were sent off at one time, not one of which arrived, for at that time the tribes to the east of the lake were at war with one another.

Livingstone did not allow his courage to fail.

No difficulties were great enough to crush this man.

With Susi and Chuma and a party of newly enlisted porters, he set out westwards across the lake, his aim being to visit the Manyuema country, through the outskirts of which flows the Lualaba.

If Livingstone could prove in which direction this mighty river ran, whether to the Mediterranean or the Atlantic, he could then return home with a good conscience.

He had determined in his own mind that he would not leave the Dark Continent until he had solved the problem, and for this he sacrificed his life without result.

The canoes sped over the lake, and on the western shore he continued his journey on foot to the land of the Manyuemas.

He marched on westwards.

When the rainy season came on he lost several months, and when he set out again on his next march he had only three companions, two of them being the faithful Susi and Chuma.

In the dark thickets of the tropical forests he wounded his feet, dragged himself over fallen trunks and decaying rubbish, and waded across swollen rivers; and among the crowns of the lofty trees and in the dense undergrowth lurked malaria, an invisible miasma.

He fell ill again and had to rest a long time in his miserable hut, where he lay on his bed of grass reading his tattered Bible, or listening to the native's tales of combats with men and apes, for gorillas lived in the forests.

Thus year after year passed by, and not the faintest whisper from the noisy world reached his ears.

The only thing that retained him was the Lualaba.

Did its waters run in an inexhaustible stream to the western ocean, or did they flow gently through forests, swamps, and deserts to Egypt?

If he could only answer that question, he would go by the nearest way to Zanzibar and thence home.

He had heard nothing of his children and friends for years.

The soil of Africa held him prisoner in a network of forests and lianas.

In February 1871 he left Manyuema and came to Nyangwé on the bank of the Lualaba, one of the principal resorts of slave-dealers.

The natives were hostile, believing that he was a slave-trader; and the slave-traders who knew him by sight hated him.

He tried in vain to procure canoes for a voyage down the great river.

He offered a chief, Dugumbé, a liberal reward if he would help him to prepare for this expedition.

While Dugumbé was considering the offer, Livingstone witnessed an episode which surpassed in horror all that he had previously met with in Africa.

It was a fine day in July on the bank of the Lualaba, and 1500 natives, mostly women, had flocked to market at a village on the bank.

Livingstone was out for a stroll, when he saw two small cannon pointed at the crowd and fired.

Many of the unfortunate people, doomed to death or the fetters of slavery, rushed to their canoes, but were met by a band of slave-hunters and surprised by a shower of arrows.

Fifty canoes lay at the bank, but they were so closely packed that they could not be put out.

The wounded shrieked and threw themselves on one another in wild despair.

A number of black heads on the surface of the water showed that many swimmers were trying to reach an island about a mile away.

The current was against them and their case was hopeless.

Shot after shot was fired at them.

Some sank quietly without a struggle, while others uttered cries of terror and raised their arms to heaven before they went down to the dark crystal halls of the crocodiles.

Fugitives who succeeded in getting their canoes afloat forgot their paddles and had to paddle with their hands.

Three canoes, the crews of which tried to rescue their unfortunate friends, filled and sank, and all on board were drowned.

The heads in the water became gradually fewer, and only a few men were still struggling for life when Dugumbé took pity on them and allowed twenty-one to be saved.

One brave woman refused to receive help, preferring the mercy of the crocodiles to that of the slave-king.

The Arabs themselves estimated the dead at 400. This spectacle made Livingstone ill and depressed.

The description of the scene which afterwards appeared in all the English journals awakened such a feeling of horror that a commission was appointed and sent out to Zanzibar to inquire into the slave-trade on the spot, and with the Sultan's help devise means of suppressing it.

But we know that in Gordon's time the slave-trade still flourished in the Sudan, and several decades more passed before the power of the slave-dealers was broken.

As for Livingstone, it was fortunate that he did not accompany Dugumbé, for the natives combined for defence, attacked the chiefs party and slew 200 of the slave-dealing rabble.

Thus the question of the Lualaba remained unsolved, but Livingstone began to suspect that his theory of the Nile sources was wrong.

He heard a doubtful tale of the Lualaba bending off to the west, but he still hoped that it flowed northwards, and that therefore the ultimate source of the Nile was to be found among the feeders of Lake Bangweolo.

When difficulties sprang up around him, his determination not to give in was only strengthened.

But he could do nothing without a large and well-ordered caravan, and therefore he had to return to Ujiji, whither fresh supplies ought to have arrived from the coast.

And amidst a thousand dangers and lurking treachery he effected his return through the disturbed country.

Half dead of fever and in great destitution he arrived at Ujiji in October.

There a fresh disappointment awaited him.

His supplies had indeed come, but the Arabian scoundrel to whose care the goods had been consigned had sold them, including 2000 yards of cloth and several sacks of glass beads, the only current medium of exchange.

The Arab coolly said that he thought the missionary was dead.

We read in Livingstone's journal that in his helplessness he felt like the man who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves.

Five days after his arrival at Ujiji he writes as follows: "But when my spirits were at their lowest ebb, the good Samaritan was close at hand, for one morning Susi came running at the top of his speed and gasped out 'An Englishman!

I see him!'

and off he darted to meet him.

The American flag at the head of a caravan told of the nationality of the stranger.

Bales of goods, baths of tin, huge kettles, cooking pots, tents, etc. , made me think 'This must be a luxurious traveller, and not one at his wits' end like me!'

" HOW STANLEY FOUND LIVINGSTONE

Now we must go back a little and turn to another story.

Henry Stanley was a young journalist, who in October happened to be in Madrid.

He was on the staff of the great newspaper, the _New York Herald_, which was owned by the wealthy Gordon Bennett.

One morning Stanley was awakened by his servant with a telegram containing only the words: "Come to Paris on important business."

Stanley travelled to Paris by the first train, and at once went to Bennett's hotel.

Bennett asked him, "Where do you think Livingstone is?"

"I really do not know, sir."

"Do you think he is alive?"

"He may be, and he may not be."

"Well, I think he is alive," said Bennett, "and I am going to send you to find him."

"What!"

cried Stanley.

"Do you mean me to go to Central Africa?"

"Yes; I mean that you shall go and find him.

The old man may be in want;

take enough with you to help him, should he require it.

Do what you think best--_but find Livingstone_."

In great surprise Stanley suggested that such a journey would be very expensive, but Bennett answered, "Draw a thousand pounds now; and when you have gone through that, draw another thousand, and when that is spent, draw another thousand, and when you have finished that, draw another thousand, and so on; _but find Livingstone_."

"Well," thought Stanley, "I will do my best, God helping me."

And so he went off to Africa.

He had, however, been charged by his employer to fulfil other missions on the way.

He made a journey up the Nile, visited Jerusalem, travelled to Trebizond and Teheran and right through Persia to Bushire, and consequently did not arrive at Zanzibar until the beginning of January, 1871. Here he made thorough preparations.

He had never been before in the Africa of the Blacks, but he was a clever, energetic man, with a genius for organisation.

He bought cloth enough for a hundred men for two years, glass beads, brass wire and other goods in request among the natives.

He bought saddles and tents, guns and cartridges, boats, medicine, tools, provisions and asses.

Two English sailors volunteered for the expedition, and he took them into his service, but both died in the fever country.

Black porters were engaged, and twenty men he called his soldiers carried guns.

After he had crossed over from Zanzibar to the African mainland, the equipment of the expedition was completed at Bagamoyo, and Stanley made haste to get away before the rainy season commenced.

The great and well-found caravan of 192 men in all trooped westwards in five detachments.

Stanley himself led the last detachment, and before them lay the wilderness, the interior of Africa with its dark recesses.

At the first camping-ground tall maize was growing and manioc plants were cultivated in extensive fields.

The latter is a plant with large root bulbs chiefly composed of starch, but also containing a poisonous milky juice which is deadly if the roots be eaten without preparation.

When the sap has been removed by proper treatment, however, the roots are crushed into flour, from which a kind of bread is made.

Round a swamp in the neighbourhood grew low fan-palms and acacias among luxuriant grass and reeds.

Next day they marched under ebony and calabash trees, from the shells of which the natives make vessels of various shapes, for while they are growing the fruits can be forced by outward pressure into almost any desired form.

Pheasants and quails, water-hens and pigeons flew up screaming when the black porters tramped along the path, winding in single file through the grass as high as a man.

Hippopotami lay snorting unconcernedly in a stream that was crossed.

Then came the forerunners of the rainy season, splashing and pelting over the country, and pouring showers pattered on the grass.

Both the horses of the caravan succumbed, one or two fellows who found Bagamoyo more comfortable ran away, and a dozen porters fell ill of fever.