12 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. I. 



cloths, and beads were returned : Tliani said lie was afraid of 

 English letters ; he did not know what was inside. I had 

 sewed them up in a piece of canvas, that was suspicious, and 

 he would call all the great men of Ujiji and ask them if it 

 would be safe to take them ; if they assented he would call 

 for the letters, if not he would not send them. I told 

 Mohamad bin Saleh, and he said to Thani that he and I 

 were men of the Government, and orders had come from 

 Syed Majid to treat me with all respect : was this conduct 

 respectful ? Thani then sent for the packet, but whether it 

 will reach Zanzibar I am doubtful. I gave the rent to the 

 owner of the house and went into it on 31st May. They 

 are nearly all miserable Suaheli at Ujiji, and have neither 

 the manners nor the sense of Arabs. 



[We see in the next few lines how satisfied Livingstone 

 was concerning the current in the Lake : he almost wishes 

 to call Tanganyika a river. Here then is a problem left 

 for the future explorer to determine. Although the Doctor 

 proved by experiments during his lengthy stay at Ujiji that 

 the set is towards the north, his two men get over the diffi- 

 culty thus : " If you blow upon the surface of a basin of 

 water on one side, you will cause the water at last to revolve 

 round and round ; so with Tanganyika, the prevailing winds 

 produce a similar circulation." They feel certain there is 

 no outlet, because at one time or another they virtually com- 

 pleted the survey of the coast line and listened to native 

 testimony besides. How the phenomenon of sweet water is 

 to be accounted for we do not pretend to say. The reader 

 will see further on that Livingstone grapples with the diffi- 

 culty which this Lake affords, and propounds an exceedingly 

 clever theory.] 



Tanganyika has encroached on the Ujiji side upwards of a 

 mile, and the bank, which was in the memory of men now 

 living, garden ground, is covered with about two fathoms of 



