350 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



steamer, but with this comes the idea of abandoning Africa before accomplish- 

 ing something against the slave-trade ; the thought of it makes me feel aa 

 though I could not lie in peace in my grave, with all the evils I know so well 

 going on unchecked. What makes it doubly galling is, that while the policy 

 of our Government has, to a very gratifying extent, been successful on the 

 West coast, all efforts on the East coast have been rendered ineffectual by a 

 scanty Portuguese convict population. The same measures have been in 

 operation here, the same expense and the same dangers, the same heroic 

 services have been performed by Her Majesty's cruisers, and yet all in vain. 

 The Zambesi country is to be shut up now more closely than ever, and, unless 

 we have an English settlement somewhere on the mainland, beyond the so- 

 called dominions of the Portuguese, all repressive measures will continue 

 fruitless. I would willingly have gone up some of the other rivers with my 

 steamer, instead of coming here, but I had only three white men with me — 

 a stoker, a sailor, and a carpenter — and seven natives of the Zambesi. The 

 stoker and the sailor had both severe attacks of illness on the way, and it 

 would have been imprudent to have ascended an unexplored river so short- 

 handed. Could I have entered the Juba, it would have been not so much to 

 explore the river, as to set in train operations by merchants and others which 

 should eventually work out the destruction of the slave-trade." 



Dr. Livingstone arrived in England in July, 1864, and busied himself 

 with the preparation of his narrative for the press, and thinking over further 

 efforts to be made for the amelioration of the condition of the natives of Central 

 Africa. It was quite clear to him that no help in this direction must be looked 

 for from the Portuguese government, which, in spite of the utter valuelessness 

 of its possessions on the east coast of Africa, seemed to wink at the devasta- 

 tion and depopulation of the country by slave dealers, and threw every obstacle 

 in the way of any one anxious to acquire information regarding the tribes 

 bordering on their territory, and the possible introduction of legitimate com- 

 merce amongst them. The horrors Dr. Livingstone had to make us acquainted 

 with then, and those which he was only telling us so recently, after having 

 been lost to his country and friends for years, have raised such a storm of 

 indignation throughout the civilized world, as cannot fail to hasten the end 

 of the frightful traffic in human beings, which is carried on under the pro- 

 tection of the Portuguese flag. 



