DR. KIRK ON LIVINGSTONE'S ROUTE. 359 



him stripped only of his upper clothing, for the Mazitu had respected him 

 when dead. They dug with some stakes a shallow grave, and hid from the 

 starlight the stricken temple of a grand spirit — the body of an apostle of 

 freedom, whose martrydom should make sacred the shores of that sea which his 

 labours made known to us, and which, now baptized with his life's blood, men 

 should henceforth know as ' Lake Livingstone.' . . The Johanna men 

 made the best of their way back to Kampunda, not venturing near any 

 village or station ; they lost themselves in the jungle, and were fourteen days 

 on the way. 



" At Kampunda they witnessed the end of the Havildar of Sepoys. He 

 alone of all the Indians was faithful ; on the threshold of this Consulate of 

 Zanzibar, he pledged himself at the moment of starting never to forsake his 

 leader — nor did he ; to the last he struggled on, worn with dysentery, but 

 broke down hopelessly on the road to Marenga. A day or two later, and he 

 would have shared his leader's fate. Insubordinate, lazy, impracticable, and 

 useless, Livingstone had dismissed the other Sepoys at Mataka. Had they 

 been faithful like the Havildar, I should not have had to inscribe a record of 

 this sad happening. Their unfitness for African travel might have been 

 predicted. At Kampunda the Johanna men were deprived of their weapons 

 by the chief, who also kept the Havildar's. Here they joined an Arab slave- 

 caravan, recrossed the Nyassa and made for Kilwa, the great slave outlet on 

 the Zanzibar coast. 



" But here again, and where least expected, they encountered the Mazitu. 

 They had reached a place within eight days south-west of Kilwa, when the 

 appearance of a band of these savages scattered the caravan. Abandoning 

 ivory, slaves — their all — the Arab leaders thought best of saving their lives. 

 The Johanna men again made their escape, and reached Kilwa, whence by the 

 kindness of the customs people they were at once sent to Zanzibar. They 

 arrived here on the 6th December 



" I must reserve other details for a subsequent letter ; but I may state 

 that no papers, effects, or relics of Livingstone, are likely to be recovered. 



" Gr. Edwin Seward." 

 "With the same mail Sir Roderick Murchison received several letters from 

 Dr. Kirk, then Assistant Consul at Zanzibar — and as he was a prominent 

 member of Dr. Livingstone's expedition to the Zambesi and its tributaries, 

 his impressions regarding Dr. Livingstone's route and the importance to be 

 attached to the report of his murder are of interest and importance : — 



"My Deae Sib Roderick — Although the evidence is, in many points, 

 contradictory in detail, and the survivors can give no clear account of their 

 route, I find no cause to doubt their veracity in the main points of the narra- 

 tive, and allow for much from the fact that an early flight alone saved them 

 — an act of cowardice which would lead them in a measure to exaggerate 



