ARRIVAL AT LOANDA. 147 



pleased at finding Makololo men so far from their native Zambesi, and so 

 near a market where they would discover the true value of their elephants' 

 tusks. They tried to induce them to return, by repeating the legend that the 

 white men lived in the sea, and that harm would happen to them. But 

 Livingstone's companions were now proof against such fables ; and although 

 full of wonder and doubt as to the new world they were about to enter, and 

 the treatment they might receive, they determined to stand by him to the last. 



On catching their first glimpse of the sea, the astonishment of his com- 

 panions was boundless ; speaking of their first sight of it, on their return to 

 their friends, they said: "We marched along with our father, believing that 

 what the ancients had always told us was true, that the world had no end ; 

 but all at once the world said to us, ' I am finished, there is no more of me.' " 



There was only one Englishman in Loanda — which had then a population of 

 eleven thousand souls — Mr. Gabriel, the British commissioner for the suppres- 

 sion of the slave trade, and he gave his countryman a warm welcome. He 

 had sent an invitation to meet him on the way from Cassange, whence intel- 

 ligence of the arrival of an Englishman from the interior of Africa, — a region 

 from which no European had ever before come, — had reached Loanda ; but 

 it had missed him on the way. After partaking of refreshments, and noticing 

 how ill his guest looked, he conducted him to bed. "Never shall I forget," 

 says he, " the luxuriant pleasure I enjoyed in feeling myself again on a good 

 English couch, after six months' sleeping on the ground. I was soon asleep, 

 and Mr. Gabriel coming in almost immediately, rejoiced at the soundness of 

 my repose." 



He had achieved his purpose : the mystery of South Africa was solved. 

 Instead of being a vast barren desert, he had found it to be a populous and 

 fertile region, watered by splendid streams, navigable for hundreds of miles, 

 abounding in animal lif e of all kinds, and inhabited by tribes capable of benefit- 

 ing from the civilizing and humanizing influences of honest commerce, and the 

 teaching of the Gospel. What are the triumphs of arms compared with the 

 great work this heroic man had achieved ? On these vast fertile plains, there 

 is room for millions of human beings living peaceful and industrious lives. Is 

 it too much to hope, that within a period not very remote, the tribes of South 

 and Central Africa will have become all that he believes them capable of 

 becoming, and that they will hold in reverence the name and memory of the 

 undaunted Englishman who first introduced them and their country to the 

 knowledge of the civilized world ? 



Livingstone and his party started from Linyanti on the 11th of Novem- 

 ber, 1853, and reached Loanda on the 31st of May, 1854, the journey thus 

 occupying something more than six months, during which period none of his 

 friends, either savage or civilized, heard anything of him. He had disap- 

 peared into the wilderness; and, like many more daring spirits, it was 



