REPORTED MURDER OF LIVINGSTONE. 357 



stolen. No other case of theft has occurred. No dues were demanded, and 

 only one fine — a very just one — was levied." 



Here, as elsewhere in Central Africa, the Arabs had not been successful 

 in imposing the Moslem creed upon the natives. The Arabs believed it to be 

 useless to persevere in any attempt to teach them, as the Makonde had no idea 

 of a Deity. The fatal tsetse fly engages Livingstone's attention here, as in so 

 many districts of Central Africa. He had selected buffaloes and camels, think- 

 ing that they would brave the fatal effects of its bite. He says : — " The expe- 

 riment with the buffaloes has not been satisfactory ; one buffalo and two camels 

 died. Had we not been in a tsetse country, I should have ascribed this to 

 over-work and bruises received on board the dhow which brought them from 

 Zanzibar. These broke out into large ulcers. When stung by gad-flies blood 

 of the arterial colour flows from the punctures. This may be the effect of the 

 tsetse, for when an ox known to be bitten was killed, its blood was all of the 

 arterial hue. I had but four buffaloes for the experiment, and as three yet 

 remain, I am at present in doubt." 



In March, 1867, the whole civilized world was startled by the receipt 

 of intelligence that Dr. Livingstone had been slain in an encounter with a 

 party of Mafite or Mazitu on the western side of Lake Nyassa, at a place called 

 Kampunda or Mapunda. The intelligence came in the shape of a dispatch 

 from Dr. Gr. E. Seward, Acting Consul at Zanzibar to Lord Stanley (now 

 Earl Derby), then Secretary for Foreign Affairs. 



" Zanzibar, December 10th, 1866. 



" My Lord — I send you the saddest news. Dr. Livingstone, in his 

 dispatch from Ngomano, informed your lordships that he stood ' on the 

 threshold of the unexplored.' Yet, as if that which should betide him had 

 already thrown its shadow, he added, ' it is best to say little of the future.' 



" My Lord, if the report of some fugitives from his party be true, this 

 brave and good man has ' crossed the threshold of the unexplored ; ' he has 

 confronted the future, and will never return. He was slain, so it is alleged, 

 during a sudden and unprovoked encounter with those very Zulus, of whom 

 he says, in his dispatch, that they had laid waste the country round about 

 him, and had ' swept away the food from above and in the ground.' With 

 an escort reduced to twenty by desertion, death, and dismissals, he had 

 traversed, as I believe, that terra incognita between the confluence of the 

 Loanda and Rovuma rivers at Ngomano, and the eastern or north-eastern 

 littoral of Lake Nyassa ; had crossed the lake at some point, as yet unas- 

 certained ; had reached a station named Kampunda, on its western shore ; 

 and was pushing west or north-west into dangerous ground, when between 

 Marenga and Maklisoora a band of implacable savages stopped the way, a 

 mixed horde of Zulus, or Mazitu, and Nyassa folk. 



" The Nyassa folk were armed with bow and arrow, the Zulus with the 



