404 DA VID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. xx. 



the Bible to him than ever. All his loneliness and 

 sorrow, the sickness of hope deferred, the yearnings 

 for home that could neither be repressed nor gratified, 

 threw a new light on the Word. How clearly it was 

 intended for such as him, and how sweetly it came 

 home to him ! How faithful too were its pictures 

 of human sin and sorrow ! How true its testimony 

 against man, who will not retain God in his knowledge, 

 but, leaving Him, becomes vain in his imaginations and 

 hard in his heart, till the bloom of Eden is gone, and a 

 waste howling wilderness spreads around ! How glorious 

 the out-beaming of Divine Love, drawing near to this 

 guilty race, winning and cherishing them with every 

 endearing act, and at last dying on the cross to redeem 

 them ! And how bright the closing scene of Revelation 

 — the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth 

 righteousness — yes, he can appreciate that attribute — 

 the curse gone, death abolished, and all tears wiped from 

 the mourner's eye ! 



So the lonely man in his dull hut is riveted to the 

 well-worn book ; ever finding it a greater treasure as he 

 goes along ; and fain, when he has reached its last page, 

 to turn back to the beginning, and gather up more of 

 the riches which he has left upon the road. 



To Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann he writes 

 during his detention (September 1870) on a leaf of his 

 cheque-book, his paper being done. He gives his theory 

 of the rivers, enlarges on the fertility of the country, 

 bewails his difficulty in getting men, as the Manyuema 

 never go beyond their own country, and the traders, who 

 have only begun to come there, are too busy collecting 

 ivory to be able to spare men. " The tusks were left in 

 the terrible forests, where the animals were killed ; the 

 people, if treated civilly, readily go and bring the precious 

 teeth, some half rotten, or gnawed by the teeth of a 

 rodent called dezi. I think that mad naturalists name it 



