viii INTRODUCTION. 



gigantic problem as that which, he attacked at the last to 

 measure his strength against : that he finally overrated and 

 overtaxed it I think all must admit. 



He had not sufficiently allowed for an old wound which 

 his constitution received whilst battling with dysentery and 

 fever, on his celebrated journey across Africa, and this 

 finally sapped his vital powers, and, through the irritation 

 of exhaustion, insidiously clouded much of his happiness. 



Many of his old friends were filled with anxiety when 

 they found that he intended to continue the investiga- 

 tion of the Nile sources, for the letters sent home by 

 Mr. Stanley raised the liveliest apprehensions, which, alas ! 

 soon proved themselves well grounded. 



The reader must be warned that, however versed in 

 books of African travel he may be, the very novelty of 

 his situation amongst these pages will render him liable 

 perhaps to a danger which a timely word may avert. 

 Truly it may be said he has an eiribarras cle richesses! 

 To follow an explorer who by his individual exertions 

 has filled up a great space in the map of Africa, who 

 has not only been the first to set foot on the shores of vast 

 inland seas, but who, with the simple appliances of his 

 bodily stature for a sounding pole and his stalwart stride for 

 a measuring tape, lays down new rivers by the hundreds, is 

 a task calculated to stagger him. It may be provoking to 

 find Livingstone busily engaged in bargaining for a canoe 

 upon the shores of Bangweolo, much as he would have 

 secured a boat on his own native Clyde ; but it was not in 

 his nature to be subject to those paroxysms in which travellers 

 too often indite their discoveries and descriptions. 



At the same time these journals will be found to contain 

 innumerable notes on the habits of animals, birds, and fishes, 

 many of them probably new species, and on phenomena in 

 every direction which the keen eye searched out as the 

 great traveller moved amongst some of the grandest scenes 

 of this beautiful world : it may be doubted if ever eye 



