394 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. xx. 



" My dear Tom, — I begin a letter, though I have no prospect of 

 being able to send it off for many months to come. It is to have 

 something in readiness when the hurry usual in preparing a mail does 

 arrive. I am in the Manyuema Country, about 150 miles west of 

 Ujiji, and at the town of Moenekoos or Moenekuss, a principal chief 

 among the reputed cannibals. His name means ' Lord of the light- 

 grey parrot with a red tail,' which abounds here, and he points away 

 still further west to the country of the real cannibals. His people 

 laugh and say ' Yes, we eat the flesh of men,' and should they see the 

 inquirer to be credulous enter into particulars. A black stuff smeared 

 on the cheeks is the sign of mourning, and they told one of my people 

 who believes all they say that it is animal charcoal made of the bones 

 of the relatives tbey have eaten. They showed him the skull of one 

 recently devoured, and he pointed it out to me in triumph. It was the 

 skull of a gorilla, here called ' soko,' and this they do eat. They put 

 a bunch of bananas in his way, and hide till he comes to take them, 

 and spear him. Many of the Arabs believe firmly in the cannibal 

 propensity of the Manyuema. Others who have lived long among 

 them, and are themselves three-fourths African blood, deny it. I 

 suspect that this idea must go into oblivion with those of people who 

 have no knowledge of fire, of the Supreme Being, or of language. 

 The country abounds in food, — goats, sheep, fowls, buffaloes, and 

 elephants : maize, holcuserghum, cassaba, sweet potatoes, and other 

 farinaceous eatables, and with ground-nuts, palm-oil, palms and other 

 fat-yielding nuts, bananas, plantains, sugar-cane in great plenty. So 

 there is little inducement to eat men, but I wait for further evidence. 



" Not knowing how your head has fared, I sometimes feel greatly 

 distressed about you, and if I could be of any use I would leave my 

 work unfinished to aid you. But you will have every medical assist- 

 ance that can be rendered, and I cease not to beg the Lord who healeth 

 His people to be gracious to your infirmity. 



" The object of my expedition is the discovery of the sources of 

 the Nile. Had I known all the hardships, toil, and time involved I 

 would have been of the mind of Saint Mungo of Glasgow, of whom the 

 song says that he let the Molendinar Burn ' rin by,' when he could get 

 something stronger. I would have let the sources ' rin by ' to Egypt, 

 and never been made ' drumly ' by my plashing through them. But 

 I shall make this country and people better known. ' This,' Professor 

 Owen said to me, ' is the first step ; the rest will in due time follow.' 

 By different agencies the Great Ruler is bringing all things into a 

 focus. Jesus is gathering all things unto Himself, and He is daily 

 becoming more and more the centre of the world's hopes and of the 

 world's fears. War brought freedom to 4,000,000 of the most hope- 

 less and helpless slaves. The world never saw such fiendishness as 

 that with which the Southern slaveocracy clung to slavery. No power 

 in this world or the next would ever make them relax their iron grasp. 

 The lie had entered into their soul. Their cotton was King. With it 



