372 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. xix. 



the river farther up. The toil was fitted to wear out the 

 strongest of his men. Nothing could have been more 

 grateful than the Sunday rest. Through his Nassick 

 boys, he tried to teach the Makonde — a tribe that bore a 

 very bad character, but failed ; however, the people were 

 wonderfully civil, and, contrary to all previous usage, 

 neither inflicted fines nor made complaints, though the 

 animals had done some damage to their corn. He set 

 this down as an answer to his prayers for influence among 

 the heathen. 



His vexations, however, were not long of beginning. 

 Both the Sepoy marines and the Nassick boys were 

 extremely troublesome, and treated the animals abomin- 

 ably. The Johanna men were thieves. The Sepoys 

 became so intolerable that after four months' trial he 

 sent most of them back to the coast. It required an 

 effort to resist the effect of such things, owing to the 

 tendency of the mind to brood over the ills of travel. 

 The natives were not unkindly, but food was very scarce. 

 As they advanced, the horrors of the slave-trade pre- 

 sented themselves in all their hideous aspects. Women 

 were found dead, tied to trees, or lying hi the path shot 

 and stabbed, their fault having been inability to keep up 

 with the party, while their amiable owners, to prevent 

 tjiem from becoming the property of any one else, put an 

 end to their lives. In some instances the captives, yet 

 in the slave-sticks, were found not quite dead. Brutality 

 was sometimes seen in another form, as when some 

 natives laughed at a poor boy suffering from a very 

 awkward form of hernia, whose mother was trying to 

 bind up the part. The slave-trade utterly demoralised 

 the people ; the Arabs bought whoever was brought to 

 them, and the great extent of forest in the country 

 favoured kidnapping ; otherwise the people were honest. 

 Farther on they passed through an immense uninhabited 

 tract, that had once evidently had a vast population. 



