xvi PREFATORY LETTER. 



and pass into, the physical structure of Northern Africa, are 

 questions to be, we trust, hereafter settled. Its greatest height 

 above the sea, along the track taken by Dr Livingstone, is 

 about 5,000 feet. Its height at the swampy lake Dilolo, 

 which is precisely on one part of the summit-level, is not 

 more than 4,000 feet. 



In their progress up the Zambesi, the land was almost 

 featureless. Great damp plains — flooded after the fall of the 

 tropical rains — skirt the river-banks. Ant-hills (as large, how- 

 ever, as hay-stacks) are the pigmy mountains of the neigh- 

 bouring lands ; and they rise, during the floods, like oases 

 out of the deserts of water. Hence these ant-hills are often 

 the special seats of human life and cultivation. Up the Leeba, 

 and almost to the water-shed, the country improves in feature. 

 Ridges of high land were seen towards the east, which might 

 deserve the name of hills: and among the valleys that de- 

 scended from these hills, nature seemed to revel, here and there, 

 in her most gorgeous forms of tropical vegetation. Still there 

 were the same prevailing characters. Hank grasses, often rising 

 above the heads of those who were on ox-back — a dull swampy 

 surface — streams as clear as crystal emerging from the upper 

 swamps — and a dismal rising vapour, bearing with it a 

 malaria most oppressive to the strength and senses. 



Spite of all difficulties, and spite of attacks of fever, which 

 almost bent him to the ground, Dr Livingstone moved on- 

 wards — kept alive by a spirit of enterprise — by hope and good 

 courage which never left him — and above all by a trust in 

 Providence, and a firm belief that he was engaged in a task 

 of solemn duty, which, under God's blessing, might bring good 

 to his fellow-men. His loyal crew partook of a portion of 

 their leader's spirit, and were hardly heard to utter a murmur 

 during the long months of their daily toils; and they never 

 flinched from their duty. 



But if there was much, along the Zambesi, to weigh down 

 the spirits, there was, also, much to raise them up. Elephants 



