1872-73.] FROM UNYANYEMBE TO BANGWEOLO. 441 



of difficult expeditions, would have been scattered to the 

 four winds. Livingstone's own sufferings were beyond 

 all previous example. 



About this time he began an undated letter — his last 

 — to his old friends Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann. It 

 was never finished, and never despatched ; but as one of 

 the latest things he ever wrote, it is deeply interesting, 

 as showing how clear, vigorous, and independent his mind 

 was to the very last : — 



" Lake Bangweolo, South Central Africa. 



'•My dear Friends Maclear and Mann, — . . . My work 

 at present is mainly retracing my steps to take up the thread of 

 my exploration. It counts in my lost time, but I try to make 

 the most of it by going round outside this lake and all the sources, 

 so that no one may come afterwards and cut me out. I have a 

 party of good men, selected by H. M. Stanley, who, at the instance 

 of James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, acted the part of a 

 good Samaritan truly, and relieved my sore necessities. A dutiful son 

 could not have done more than be generously did. I bless him. The 

 men, fifty-six in number, have behaved as well as Makololo. I 

 cannot award them higher praise, though they have not the courage of 

 that brave kind-hearted people. From Unyanyembe we went due 

 south to avoid an Arab war which had been going on for eighteen 

 months. It is like one of our CafFre wars, with this difference — no 

 one is enriched thereby, for all trade is stopped, and the Home 

 Government pays nothing. We then went westward to Tanganyika, 

 and along its eastern excessively mountainous bank to the end. The 

 heat was really broiling among the rocks. No rain had fallen, and 

 the grass being generally burned off, the heat rose off the black ashes 

 as if out of an oven, yet the flowers persisted in coming out of the 

 burning soil, and generally without leaves, as if it had been a custom 

 that they must observe by a law of the Medes and Persians. This 

 part detained us long ; the men's limbs were affected with a sort of 

 subcutaneous inflammation — black rose or erysipelas, — and when I 

 proposed mildly and medically to relieve the tension it was too 

 horrible to be thought of, but they willingly carried the helpless. 

 Then we mounted up at once into the high, cold region Urungu, south 

 of Tanganyika, and into the middle of the rainy season, with well- 

 grown grass and everything oppressively green ; rain so often that no 

 observations could be made, except at wide intervals. I could 

 form no opinion as to our longitude, and but little of our latitudes. 

 Three of the Baurungu chiefs, one a great friend of mine, Nasonso, 

 had died, and the population all turned topsy-turvy, so I could 

 make no use of previous observations. They elect sisters' or brothers' 



