158 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. vm. 



The people all seemed to recognise a Supreme Being ; 

 but it was only occasionally, in times of distress, that they 

 paid Him homage. They had no love for Him like that 

 of Christians for Jesus — only terror. Some of them, who 

 were true negroes, had images, simple but grotesque. 

 Their strongest belief was in the power of medicines 

 acting as charms. They fully recognised the existence of 

 the soul after death. Some of them believed in the meta- 

 morphosis of certain persons into alligators or hippopota- 

 muses, or into lions. This belief could not be shaken by 

 any arguments — at least on the part of man. The 

 negroes proper interested him greatly ; they were 

 numerous, prolific, and could not be extirpated. He 

 almost regretted that Mr. Moffat had translated the 

 Bible into Sichuana. That language might die out; but 

 the negro might sing, " Men may come and men may go, 

 but I go on for ever." 



The incessant attacks of fever from which Livingstone 

 suffered in this journey, the continual rain occurring at 

 that season of the year, the return of the affection of the 

 throat for which he had got his uvula excised, and the 

 difficulty of speaking to tribes using different dialects, 

 prevented him from holding his Sunday services as 

 regularly as before. Such entries in his Journal as the 

 following are but too frequent : — 



"Sunday, 19th. — Sick all Sunday and unable to move. Several of 

 the people were ill too, so that I could do nothing but roll from side 

 to side in my miserable little tent, in which, with all the shade we 

 could give it, the thermometer stood upwards of 90°." 



But though little able to preach, Livingstone made 

 the most of an apparatus which in some degree compen- 

 sated his lack of speech — a magic-lantern which his friend, 

 a former fellow-traveller, Mr. Murray, had given him. 

 The pictures of Abraham offering up Isaac, and other 

 Bible scenes, enabled him to convey important truths in a 

 way that attracted the people. It was, he says, the only 



