CHAPTER XVI. 



Starts a Third Time for Africa. — Re-ascends the Rovuma. — His Reported Murder. — 

 Expedition sent in Search of him Hears of his Safety. 



TT7HEN Dr. Livingstone arrived in England, the discoveries of Captain 

 » » Speke and Major Grant were the subject of almost universal interest 

 among the intelligent public ; and he had not been long amongst us, when 

 the enthusiasm those had excited, and the cravings for further knowledge of 

 the regions about the head waters of the Nile, were further indulged by the 

 discoveries of Sir Samuel Baker. Lakes, hill ranges, and populous native settle- 

 ments, were slowly filling up the great blank patch in the centre of the vast 

 continent of Africa, which for centuries had been assumed to be a vast sandy de- 

 sert, a second and greater Sahara. From the known regions of Southern Africa 

 Livingstone had, from his several expeditions prior to 1852, when he marched 

 across the Kalahari desert and discovered Lake Ngami, down to his leaving 

 the Zambesi, on the conclusion of his last series of explorations, laid down 

 rivers, lakes, mountain ranges, and native settlements, over a tract of country 

 vastly more extensive than was ever explored by a single individual in the 

 history of discovery and adventure. His discoveries in the south, and those 

 of his contemporary explorers farther to the north, had settled the fact beyond 

 dispute, that the centre of Africa was peopled by tribes mentally and indus- 

 trially capable of elevation, if the iniquitous slave-trade was suppressed, and 

 legitimate commerce with civilized nations introduced amongst them; and 

 that they inhabited regions rich in vegetable and animal life, and watered by 

 magnificent rivers and streams, which filled the minds of thoughtful men with 

 the hope of seeing opened, within a reasonable time, new corn, cattle, cotton, 

 coffee, sugar, indigo, coal, and iron-producing regions of so vast an extent, as 

 to render the European continent independent in the future of the exhaustion 

 of her present stores, through the demands of a population daily increasing 

 in number and in wealth. 



Between Speke and Grant's and Baker's discoveries, and Livingstone's in 

 the south, there was still a vast tract of country of which little or nothing 

 reliable was known. Further investigation, and a due consideration of the 

 character of the newly-explored regions, led thinking men to doubt and ques- 

 tion the fact that Captain Speke had traced the Nile to its head quarters, when 

 he watched it flow a noble stream from the Victoria Nyanza Lake. These 



