148 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



supposed that he had fallen a victim to the climate or the cruelty of some 

 savage chief. Not the least remarkable fact connected with his journey was, 

 that he had not lost a man in the long and toilsome journey; and, as we shall 

 see, he was equally fortunate in returning. 



Instead of burning and parched plains, he had found, as he had shrewdly 

 suspected he would, that, with the exception of a portion of the Bechuana 

 country and the Kalahari desert, the vast districts between the confines of 

 civilization at Kuruman and St. Paul de Loanda on the west coast — and from 

 all he could see and learn of the northern watersheds, equally vast districts 

 to the north of his line of march, — -were seamed with rivercourses which 

 poured their waters into magnificent streams which found their way to the 

 Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and were for many hundred miles of their course 

 navigable for flat-bottomed vessels. The long rainy season gave to the earth 

 a fertility which the abundant animal life of these districts could not master ; 

 and the tall grass lay rotting on the ground in the flooded districts, a tangled 

 mass impeding the progress of the traveller, the dense swathes of which were 

 used by the various species of antelopes for hiding their young from their 

 numerous enemies. 



Save in the immediate neighbourhood of the rivers and swamps the 

 natives are subject to fewer diseases than Europeans. In return for the 

 comforts and industrial appliances of civilized life they could give cotton, 

 indigo, skins, ivory, etc. ; and a legitimate and mutually helpful trade of this 

 kind with the civilized centres of the world would do more in ten years towards 

 the suppression of the traffic in human flesh than all the money Great Britain 

 has spent for this object since the abolition of slavery in her dependencies. 



This great district he found as thickly populated as the Bechuana country 

 by tribes ranking high among savages in intelligence, who, in the main, led 

 peaceable and blameless lives, — cultivating their gardens, feeding their cattle, 

 catching the fish in the rivers, and hunting the game of the plains, and 

 cherishing traditions of wise and distinguished forefathers of their tribes. To 

 the west, through their connection with the slave traders of the coast, and the 

 evil passions which invariably follow this inhuman traffic, he found a people 

 who had lost the peaceful and patriarchal simplicity of their brethren of the 

 interior ; but amongst them he found wise and intelligent chiefs and head- 

 men, with whom it appeared to him easy, given the opportunity of bringing 

 the proper teaching and experience before them through missionary and com- 

 mercial effort, to introduce a purer and nobler life. 



