1 869-71.] MANYUEMA. 403 



Probably no human being was ever in circumstances 

 parallel to those in which Livingstone now stood. Years 

 had passed since he had heard from home. The sound of 

 his mother tongue came to him only in the broken sen- 

 tences of Chum a or Susi or his other attendants, or in the 

 echoes of his own voice as he poured it out in prayer, or 

 in some cry of home-sickness that could not be kept in. 

 In long pain and sickness there had been neither wife nor 

 child nor brother to cheer him with sympathy, or lighten 

 his dull hut with a smile. He had been baffled and 

 tantalised beyond description in his efforts to complete 

 the little bit of exploration which was yet necessary to 

 finish his task. His soul was vexed for the frightful 

 exhibitions of wickedness around him, where "man to 

 man," instead of brothers, were worse than wolves and 

 tigers to each other. During all his past life he had 

 been sowing his seed weeping, but so far was he from 

 bringing back his sheaves rejoicing, that the longer he 

 lived the more cause there seemed for his tears. He had 

 not yet seen of the travail of his soul. In opening Africa 

 he had seemed to open it for brutal slave-traders, and in 

 the only instance in which he had yet brought to it the 

 feet of men " beautiful upon the mountains, publishing 

 peace," disaster had befallen, and an incompetent leader 

 had broken up the enterprise. Yet, apart from his sense of 

 duty, there was no necessity for his remaining there. He 

 was offering himself a freewill- offering, a living sacrifice. 

 What could have sustained his heart and kept him firm 

 to his purpose in such a wilderness of desolation ? 



" I read the whole Bible through four times whilst I 

 was in Manyuema." 



So he wrote in his Diary, not at the time, but the 

 year after, on 3d October 1871. 1 The Bible gathers 

 wonderful interest from the circumstances in which it 

 is read. In Livingstone's circumstances it was more 



1 See Last Journals, vol. ii. p. 154. 



