liv PREFATORY LETTER. 



peopled. Every available spot between the river and the 

 rugged hills was under cultivation. The gardens were pro- 

 tected by pitfalls to keep off the night-attacks of the hip- 

 popotamus ; and many of the villages were placed in the 

 deep recesses of the successive ridges, as if the poor Natives 

 had some reason for hiding themselves from a marauding 

 enemy. The cultivated soil is of rare fertility, " and all the 

 Natives" (says our Author) "are fond of trade; but they 

 have been taught none by the stranger, save that in ivory 

 and slaves ;" and when he has come among them, it had 

 too often been as a treacherous and brutal ruffian prepared 

 to murder them and carry off their children. Teeming with 

 riches and natural beauty as the country was, one horrid 

 pest — the Tsetse — had come into some portions of it, and 

 several of our traveller's oxen were bitten. It was, there- 

 fore, the more needful that they should hurry on ; as they 

 could not, after the poison of the insect, long count upon the 

 useful service of their cattle. 



The night before they reached the Zambesi they halted 

 under a baobab-tree, in the hollow of which there was a 

 lodging for twenty men : and we need not wonder at this 

 when we remember that the Author, in an early part of his 

 volume, has described one of these trees which, when mea- 

 sured three feet above the ground, proved to be eighty-five 

 feet in circumference. While approaching the great river 

 they had to make their way through a kind of jungle or 

 low woodland, in which the elephants were so tame that 

 they had, by shouts and gestures, to drive them out of the 

 way : and when they were passing through one of the more 

 open glades a drove of buffaloes came trotting down to look 

 at the oxen and their riders : nor could they be driven off 

 till one of them had been shot for his insulting familiarity. 

 Its beef was excellent. But in truth, neither Livingstone 

 nor his men were nice; and during their laborious daily 

 work, they had a craving for animal food, and ate freely, 



