1S64.] BOMBAY TO ENGLAND. 337 



visited it at another part of the year. At Alexandria, 

 when he went on board the " Ripon," he found the 

 Maharaja Dhuleep Singh and his young Princess — the 

 girl he had fancied and married from an English Egyp- 

 tian school. Paris is reached on the 21st July; a day 

 is spent in resting ; and on the evening of the 23d he 

 reaches Charing Cross, and is regaled with what, after 

 nearly eight years' absence, must have been true music — 

 the roar of the mighty Babylon. 



The desponding views of his work which we find in 

 such entries in his Journal as that of 20th May must not 

 be held to express his deliberate mind. It must not be 

 thought that he had thrown aside the motto which had 

 helped him as much as it had helped his royal country- 

 man, Robert Bruce — " Try again." He had still some 

 arrows in his quiver. And his short visit to Bombay was 

 a source of considerable encouragement. The merchants 

 there, who had the East African trade in their hands, 

 encouraged him to hope that a settlement for honest 

 traffic might be established to the north of the region 

 over which the Portuguese claimed authority. As 

 Livingstone moved homewards he was revolving two 

 projects. The first was to expose the atrocious slave- 

 trading of the Portuguese, which had not only made all 

 his labour fruitless, but had used his very discoveries as 

 channels for spreading fresh misery over Africa. The 

 thought warmed his blood, and he felt like a Highlander 

 with his hand on his claymore. The second project was 

 to find means for a new settlement at the head of the 

 Rovuma, or somewhere else beyond the Portuguese lines, 

 which he would return in the end of the year to establish. 

 Writing a short book might help to accomplish both 

 these projects. As yet, the idea of finding the sources of 

 the Nile was not in his mind. It was at the earnest 

 request of others that he undertook the work that cost 

 him so many years of suffering, and at last his life. 



Y 



