144 



NATURE 



\_Dec. 24, 1874 



which he made day by day take their place in the various 

 sciences to which they belong. We are glad to see from 

 the preface that there still remains for future publicition 

 a valuable mass of scientific observations. " When one 

 sees," to quote the preface, " that a register of the daily 

 rainfall was kept throughout, that the temperature was 

 continually recorded, and that barometrical and hypso- 

 metrical observations were made with'unflagging thorough- 

 ness of purpose year in and year out, it is obvious that 

 an accumulated mass of information remains for the 

 meteorologist to deal with separately, which alone must 

 engross many months of labour." We hope that no time 

 will be lost in giving the world the benefit of this valuable 

 material. 



We shall briefly run over the ground traversed by 

 Livingstone. He left Zanzibar on March 19, 1866, in the 



Penguin for the mouth of the Rovuma in about 10^° S. 

 latitude. His company consisted of thirteen sepoys, ten 

 Johanna men, nine Nassick (Bombay) boys, two Shapanga 

 men, and two Wayaus (South Africans), Wekatani and 

 Chuma. He had, besides, six camels, three buffaloes and 

 a calf, two mules, and four donkeys. This seems an im- 

 posing outfit, and so it was, but it soon melted away to four 

 or five boys. Rovuma Bay was reached on March 12, and 

 a start for the interior was made on April 4. His course 

 for the first three months was mainly along the banks of 

 the river Rovuma, turning south-west after a march of 

 about 300 miles, towards the south end of his own Lake 

 Nyassa. On starting he has recorded some reflections on 

 the advantages of travelling, which, for their own value 

 and as giving an insight into the character of the man, 

 we wish we had space to quote. The first part of his 



course was through a dense jungle, and here the botanist 

 will find some observations worthy of his attention. The 

 gum-copal tree is here in great abundance, and some 

 curious geological phenomena are noted. Ere he 

 reached the Nyassa he had to send his sepoys 

 back, as they were worse than useless; a set of lazy, 

 degraded blackguards, whose brutal usage of the 

 animals and that of the Johanna men, left him in 

 the end with only his goats and a little dog. The 

 Johanna men, ere they were well round the end of the 

 lake, deserted,* and Livingstone was no doubt well rid of 

 them, though it left him with so diminished a retinue that 

 it made him dependent on native carriers, who were often 



* It will be remembered that these men screened their cowardice by 

 spreading a report of Livingstone's death. 



difficult and expensive to procure. However, this was an 

 evil that gradually lessened as he went on ; for as he con- 

 scientiously paid his way wherever he went, his baggage 

 was gradually diminished to no great bulk. In the first 

 part of the route, also, the party frequently sufiered from 

 want of food, an evil which was of but too frequent occur- 

 rence during the long and intricate journey, not so much 

 from unwillingness on the part of the natives to give or 

 sell it, but simply because the brutal half-caste Arab slave- 

 dealers, who were met with everywhere, had so desolated 

 the country that the terrified and demoralised people were 

 often themselves famishing. The horrors of this trade, 

 " the open sore of the world," as Livingstone calls it, are 

 shown on almost every page of this journal, and one of 

 the sorest trials which the humane traveller had to endure 



