336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



but sternly meeting and dealing with it when its existence is perceived. 

 With a fund of quiet humor and sarcasm, too, if he pleased Living- 

 stone possessed a keen sense of the ridiculous, and entered thoroughly 

 into a joke. He might often be seen talking to the Makololo he had 

 brought down from the country of Sekeletu, and their attention and 

 respect, as they listened or replied to him, plainly showed the influence 

 he had with them. Indeed, one of Livingstone's strongest points, and 

 one that has conduced, no doubt, as much to his safety as his success, 

 is his power of understanding and dealing with the natives, and of 

 winning their confidence, while he overawes their truculence. 



As regards the practical objects with which it started, this expedi- 

 tion fell short of success. Little was done beyond laying down the 

 position of the comparatively unimportant lakes of Shirwah and Nyas- 

 sa,. and a complete survey of the Shire and lower parts of the Zambesi. 

 Several circumstances combined to bring about this result. Though 

 the natives of the Shire country were found to grow very little cotton, 

 and that, moreover, of an inferior quality, there can be no doubt that 

 the soil is cotton-producing, and that, with proper attention, and the 

 introduction of the better sorts of the plant, its cultivation would be 

 remunerative. The land will grow sugar-cane, cereals on the upland 

 plateaux the wheat near Tette is exceptionally fine the tropical 

 fruits that are known, and some that are not. Indigo grows wild. 

 The forests contain valuable woods, such as ebony and lignum-vitoe, 

 and large-sized timber of different kinds. The rocks are metalliferous ; 

 plumbago and hematite abound ; gold is not far off; and the quartz 

 shows traces of amethyst and garnet. And something might be said 

 about ivory. All these advantages, however, were supposed, as ac- 

 counts one by one reached England, to be counterbalanced by the dif- 

 ficulties presented by the nature of the country, the roughness of the 

 upland tracts, the shallowness of the rivers, and the formidable bars 

 of the Zambesi mouths. 



But other things were adverse. A tribal war, which was raging on 

 the Shire, and a drought of unusual length and severity, threw insu- 

 perable obstacles in the way of the expedition, causing a famine in the 

 higher country, and a disastrous loss of time in the journeys to the 

 coast, which were rendered necessary to procure provisions. The same 

 causes compelled the mission after the death of Bishop Mackenzie 

 and one of his followers to abandon the position they had taken on 

 the hills, and find a temporary abode on the banks of the Shire. The 

 hope that it would either develop into, or, at least, promote the estab- 

 lishment of a central trading station or factory, was in this way disap- 

 pointed for the present. The subsequent death of three more of the 

 missionaries, besides two of the expedition and Mrs. Livingstone 

 added to the illness from which most in the country suffered gave to 

 it a character for malignancy of climate w r hich might apply to the val- 

 ley regions, but not to the highlands. All these things, as they were 



