408 DA VID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. xx. 



and Awathe, had refused to come farther than Ujiji, and 

 were revelling in his goods there. Dr. Livingstone never 

 ceased to lament and deplore that the men who had been 

 sent to him were so utterly unsuitable. One of them 

 actually formed a plot for his destruction, which was only 

 frustrated through his being overheard by one whom 

 Livingstone could trust. Livingstone wrote to his friends 

 that owing to the inefficiency of the men, he lost two 

 years of time, about a thousand pounds in money, had 

 some 2000 miles of useless travelling, and was four several 

 times subjected to the risk of a violent death. 



At length, having arranged with the men, he sets out 

 on 1 6th February over a most beautiful country, but woe- 

 fully difficult to pass through. Perhaps it was hardly a 

 less bitter disappointment to be told, on the 25th, that 

 the Lualaba flowed west-south-west, so that after all it 

 might be the Congo. 



On the 29 th March Livingstone arrived at Nyangwe 

 on the banks of the Lualaba. This was the farthest point 

 westward that he reached in his last expedition. 



The slave-trade here he finds to be as horrible as in 

 any other part of Africa. He is heart-sore for human 

 blood. He is threatened, bullied, and almost attacked. 

 In some places, however, the rumour spreads that he 

 makes no slaves, and he is called " the good one." His 

 men are a ceaseless trouble, and for ever mutinying, or 

 otherwise harassing him. And yet he perseveres in his 

 old kind way, hoping by kindness to gain influence with 

 them. Mohamad's people, he finds, have passed him on 

 the west, and thus he loses a number of serviceable articles 

 he was to get from them, and all the notes made for 

 him of the rivers they had passed. The difficulties and 

 discouragements are so great that he wonders whether, 

 after all, God is smiling on his work. 



His own men circulate such calumnious reports against 

 him that he is unable to get canoes for the navigation of 



