PREFATORY LETTER. xliii 



stone to the coast, and exchanged for the precious goods 

 of England ; and before long he brought together a brave 

 band of volunteers, who were anxious for a start down the 

 great river. In this band were some men of experience and 

 authority; and among them was Sekwebu a Chief of much 

 native prudence and discretion, long tried in danger, and 

 skilled from early life in the dialects spoken above the Delta 

 of the Zambesi. 



Sekeletu was proud of his colonel's uniform and of 

 the rich presents he had received from Loanda; and he 

 was delighted with the two donkeys which promised him a 

 new breed for domestic use, and might now and then regale 

 his ears with their sonorous music. The Makololo had 

 indeed returned with Dr Livingstone as poor as they went 

 out; but "we have not gone in vain," they said, and even 

 before they reached Liny an ti they had begun to collect 

 tusks of the hippopotamus for a second journey to Angola. 

 Such was the genuine spirit of the poor Africans. 



Meanwhile Dr Livingstone was in full professional employ- 

 ment. He had to preach to the 7000 inhabitants of Linyanti, 

 to cure their sickness, and to heal their wounds; for he 

 was at once a missionary, a surgeon and a physician. He 

 remarks that the temperature of the blood of the Natives 

 was 98° ; while the thermometer with the bulb held in his 

 own mouth rose to J 00°. But this seems only to prove 

 that he was in a fever from overwork and the effects of 

 a burning tropical sun; while his friends were in more 

 natural health. He had, however, still harder work: he 

 had to settle many nice and angry questions in debate. 

 Several of the Makololo ladies had married again during 

 the long absence of their husbands in the expedition to 

 Loanda. They preferred a good husband in hand to one 

 in the far western bush who never might come back to 

 them. When a single wife was in dispute, he compelled 

 the new husband to give her up to the man who had the 



