LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNEY -^>,i 



of the world." He was thinking, as ever, of the gaping wound which 

 slavery had made. 



When reflecting in his journal on missions and the necessity for 

 liberality of mind and charity, he says: "I have avoided giving 

 offence to intelligent Arabs, who having pressed me, asking if I 

 believed in Mohammed — ^by saying, 'No, I do not: I am a child of 

 Jesus bin Miriam,' avoiding anything offensive in my tone." 



At last the men whom Stanley had sent off arrived, and they 

 proved to be a very good lot. Some had been with Stanley when he 

 relieved Livingstone, and others were recruited from the Geographical 

 Society's expedition. The doctor started almost immediately — on the 

 25th of August — and reached the Tanganyika about six weeks later. 

 Following the eastern shores, he rounded the southern point of the lake, 

 and in bad health struck south, and then west for Lake Bangweolo. 



The rainy season was upon them. Day after day it rained or 

 drizzled or hailed, and the country rapidly underwent a change for 

 the worse. Streams became rivers, and rivers mighty and resistless 

 torrents. As the mountain slopes of Urungu were left behind, that 

 disagreeable feature of African geography to which Livingstone intro- 

 duced us — the ''sponge" — became frequent. Where terra Unna was 

 met with, too often it was overlaid with knee-deep water. To make 

 matters worse, the natives assumed an unfriendly attitude, and it 

 became almost impossible to obtain food. Fever and an aggravated 

 form of dysentery laid hold of the doctor's worn-out body, and reduced 

 his strength to such an extent that once again he had to be carried by 

 his men on a kitanda, a light palanquin with a wooden framework. 

 They were splashing through the endless sponges round the east end 

 of Lake Bangweolo, and pushing forward through innumerable diffi- 

 culties. All the symptoms of his illness became more acute, and he 

 suffered most excruciating pain. Several times he fainted from loss 

 of blood, and a drowsiness seemed to steal over him ever and again. 

 The entries in his journal became shorter and shorter, until at last 

 only the dates appeared ; he was too weak to write more. Yet we learn 

 from Susi and Chuma, his faithful servants, that he frequently asked 

 questions of the natives* with regard to distant hills, the rivers they 

 were crossing, whence they came and whither they flowed. 



