CHAPTER XXXIV 



Livingstone on the Zambesi 



LEAVING England on the loth of March, the Zambesi Expedi- 

 tion reached the mouth of the river in May, Mrs- Livingstone, 

 who was in poor heakh, being left at Cape Town on the route, 

 to rejoin her husband later. The reception given the great traveler 

 at Cape Town was remarkably different from that which he had form- 

 erly received, and at an enthusiastic public meeting Sir George Grey, 

 the governor, presented him with eight hundred guineas in a silver 

 casket, which had been raised by public subscription as a testimonial 

 to the value of his services to Cape Colony. 



Among the members of the expedition were Charles Livingstone, 

 the missionary's brother, and Dr. John Kirk, the naturalist and physi- 

 cian of the expedition, and the party brought with them, packed in 

 sections, a small steam launch for use on the Zambesi, which was 

 named "Ma-Robert," after his wife, who had been given that name by 

 the Bakwains in accordance with their custom of naming the mother 

 (Ma) after her first born. 



The Zambesi is the great drain of the pastoral belt of South 

 Africa, and its basin has an area of some eight hundred thousand 

 square miles — or, in other words, is more than four times the size of 

 France. The importance of the river and its fertile basin is great, and 

 .the recent labors of the English and Scotch in various parts of the 

 country which lie within its drainage system have revealed with 

 emphasis the value of the discoveries and pioneering of Livingstone 

 a generation ago. 



The shores of the delta are low, closely embraced by a mangrove 

 jungle, and pierced on all sides by those stagnant lagoons which the 

 dense and spreading roots of the mangrove invariably create or foster. 

 For some twenty miles inland from the Kongone mouth, up which the 

 "Ma-Robert" steamed, the mangrove jungle was found to be very 

 dense ; and Livingstone, making every effort to reach a more healthy 



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