RECEPTION AT UJIJI. 581 



jolted from side to side, under a vertical sun, which blistered 

 his skin wherever it became exposed, with only a bunch of 

 leaves to shelter his aching head and his face from the powerful 

 rays, was indescribably painful. And all this time with only 

 such medical attention as Mohamad could render, and no food 

 except a little gruel. Thus battling with a dreadful disease, 

 sometimes for days so extremely ill that he could not be moved, 

 then rallying and relapsing, it was full six weeks before he 

 reached the Tanganyika at the confluence of the Lofuko. There 

 he obtained canoes, and after two weeks sailing, landed at Ujiji 

 on the 14th of March, 1869. He had been poorly able to note 

 the incidents of the journey ; much of the time he had been 

 hardly conscious; his whole anxiety had been to reach Ujiji, 

 where, besides his letters, he expected to find a fresh supply of 

 medicines, and such other of the essentials to the comfort of an 

 Englishman as he stood most in need of. 



We can hardly imagine a more dispiriting condition than 

 that in which this great man arrived at Ujiji. Three years and 

 a half before, he had left Zanzibar, well provided with attend- 

 ants and stores ; the attendants had melted away until only a 

 little handful of men followed him. His goods had been wasted 

 and stolen. He had been subjected to indescribable perplexities 

 and sorrows in regions swarming w r ith slave-traders, and at the 

 hands of people who had learned only extortion and deception 

 from the Arabs. He had found his way hedged by the bitter- 

 ness which Arab provocations had engendered in the native 

 mind against all foreigners. He had been unavoidably associ- 

 ated with a class of men whose lives were most repulsive to him, 

 and had been sickened at heart by the barbarities of the un- 

 holiest wars. Through it all, he had suffered for food and 

 endured constant exposure, traversing on foot broad plains, 

 climbing rugged mountains, fording broad rivers and inundated 

 swamps ; his clothes and shoes were tattered ; disease had come 

 on him and found him without a single remedy, with only his 

 overtaxed energies and impaired constitution to match against 

 it, and the odds of continued exposure and necessary exertion. 

 He was in the extremity of emaciation and destitution. We have 

 followed him along the western wilds and seen him fall prostrated 

 on the bed of the generous Englishman of Loanda; we have 



