MEMOIR. xxix 
made any sort of stay, he appeared to have been 
scarcely less fortunate in this respect. 
Soon after his return from America in 1872 he 
began to make arrangements for a more extended 
journey — the one of which this volume treats, and 
on which he started in March 1873. His plan on 
this occasion was to reach the Zambesi from Natal, 
and if possible visit some of the unexplored country 
to the north of that river. In the latter hope he 
was destined to disappointment, and the number of 
obstacles he met with in realizing the former serve 
to illustrate some of the ordinary difficulties which 
may be encountered in African travel. Of the 
results, however, such as they were, of this journey, 
in which he lost his life, the reader must be left to 
form his own judgment from the perusal of the 
ensuing pages. He had at least acquired much of 
that needful experience of rough travel and adven- 
ture, without which little can be accomplished in the 
way of exploration or research. It is almost certain 
that, had he lived, his next journey would have been 
of a more ambitious kind, remarkable as he was for 
that love of enterprise which characterizes the true 
explorer ; of this he spoke merely as a " little trip." 
His experiences, moreover, in this two years' travel, 
must still further have convinced him, if in a 
different manner, of those evil effects of attempt- 
ing too many things, which his Oxford career had 
