1854-56.] FROM LOANDA TO QUILIAfANE. 183 



The mention of the two longitudinal ridges, and of the 

 refusal of the people to give more than two canoes, side 

 by side with the most solemn appeals, would have been 

 incongruous, or even irreverent, if Livingstone had not 

 felt that he was dealing with the living God, by whom 

 every step of his own career and every movement of his 

 enemies were absolutely controlled. 



A single text often gave him all the help he needed : 



" It is singular," he says, " that the very same text which recurred 

 to my mind at every turn of my course in life in this country and 

 even in England, should be the same as Captain Maclure, the dis- 

 coverer of the North-west Passage, mentions in a letter to his sister 

 as familiar in his experience : ' Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, 

 and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknow- 

 ledge Him and He shall direct thy steps. Commit thy way unto the 

 Lord ; trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass.' Many more, 

 I have no doubt, of our gallant seamen feel that it is graceful to 

 acknowledge the gracious Lord in whom we live and move and have 

 our being. It is an advance surely in humanity from that devilry 

 which gloried in fearing neither God, nor man, nor devil, and made 

 our wooden walls floating hells." 



His being enabled to reach the sanctuary of perfect 

 peace in the presence of his enemies was all the more 

 striking if we consider — what he felt keenly — that to 

 live among the heathen is in itself very far from favour- 

 able to the vigour or the prosperity of the spiritual life. 

 " Travelling from day to day among barbarians," he says 

 in his Journal, " exerts a most benumbing effect on the 

 religious feelings of the soul." 



Among the subjects that occupied a large share of his 

 thoughts in these long and laborious journeys, two appear 

 to have been especially prominent : first, the configuration 

 of the country ; and second, the best way of conducting 

 missions, and bringing the people of Africa to Christ. 



The configuration of intertropical South Africa had long 

 been with him a subject of earnest study, and now he had 

 come clearly to the conclusion that the middle part was 

 a table-land, depressed however in the centre, and flanked 



