362 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. xvm. 



effect a lasting injury on the mind and heart. I go up to Government 

 House again three days hence, and am to deliver two lectures, — one at 

 Poonah, and one at Bombay." 



Some slight reminiscences of Livingstone at Bombay, 

 derived from admiring countrymen of his own, will not 

 be out of place, considering that the three or four months 

 spent there was the last period of his life passed in any 

 part of the dominions of Great Britain. 



The Bev. Dugald C. Boyd of Bombay (now of Portsoy, 

 Banffshire), an intimate friend of Dr. Stewart of Lovedale, 

 writing to a correspondent on 10th October 1865, says : — 



" Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of meeting Livingstone at 

 dinner in a very quiet way. ... It was an exceedingly pleasant 

 evening. Dr. Wilson was in great ' fig,' and Livingstone was, though 

 quiet, very communicative, and greatly disposed to talk about Africa. 

 ... I had known Mrs. Livingstone, and I had known Robert and 

 Agnes, his son and daughter, and I had known Stewart. He spoke 

 very kindly of Stewart, and seems to hope that he may yet join him in 

 Central Africa. ... He is much stouter, better and healthier-looking 

 than he was last year. . . . 



"\'2th October. — Livingstone was at the tamasha yesterday. He 

 was dressed very unlike a minister — more like a post-captain or 

 admiral. He wore a blue dress-coat, trimmed with lace, and bearing 

 a Government gilt button. In his hand he carried a cocked hat. At 

 the Communion on Sunday (he sat on Dr. Wilson's right hand, who 

 sat on my right) he wore a blue surtout, with Government gilt buttons, 

 and shepherd-tartan trousers ; and he had a gold band round his cap. 1 



1 Dr. Livingstone's habit of dressing as a layman, and accepting the designation 

 of David Livingstone, Esquire, as readily as that of the Rev. Dr. Livingstone, 

 probably helped to propagate the idea that he had sunk the missionary in the 

 explorer. The truth, however, is, that from the first he wished to be a lay mis- 

 sionary, not under any Society, and it was only at the instigation of his friends 

 that he accepted ordination. He had an intense dislike of what was merely pro- 

 fessional and conventional, and he thought that as a free-lance he would have more 

 influence. Whether in this he sufficiently appreciated the position and office of 

 one set aside by the Church for the service of the gospel may be a question : but 

 there can be no question that he had the same view of the matter from first to last. 

 He would have worn a blue dress and gilt buttons, if it had been suitable, as 

 readily as any other, at the most ardent period of his missionary life. His heart 

 was as truly that of a missionary under the Consul's dress as it had ever been when 

 he wore black, or whatever else he could get, in the wilds of Africa. At the time 

 of his encounter with the lion he wore a coat of tartan, and he thought that that 

 material might have had some effect in preventing the usual irritating results of 

 a lion's bite. 



