502 LIFE OF DA VID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



six months. He says : — " I found continual wading in mud grievous ; for the 

 first time in my life my feet failed. When torn by hard travel, instead of 

 healing kindly as heretofore, irritable eating ulcers fastened on each foot. 

 If the foot is placed on the ground, blood flows, and every night a dis- 

 charge of bloody ichor takes place, with pain that prevents sleep. The wail- 

 ing of the poor slaves with ulcers that eat through everything, even bone, 

 is one of the night sounds of a slave camp. They are probably allied tc 

 fever. The people were invariably civil, and even kind ; for curiously 

 enough, the Zanzibar slaves propagated everywhere glowing accounts of my 

 goodness, and of the English generally, because they never made slaves." 

 Once Livingstone had a narrow escape with his life, from being found in 

 company with traders who had ill used the Manyema. On his way to 

 Bambarre, he says, " We passed another camp of Ujijian traders, and they 

 begged me to allow their men to join my party. These included seventeen 

 men of Manyema, who had volunteered to carry ivory to Ujiji. These were 

 the very first of the Manyema who had in modern times gone fifty miles 

 from their birth-place. As all the Arabs have been enjoined by Seyed Majid, 

 the late Sultan, to show me all the kindness in their power, I could not decline 

 their request. My party was increased to eighty, and a long line of men 

 bearing elephants' tusks gave us all the appearance of traders. The only 

 cloth I had left some months before consisted of two red blankets, which 

 were converted into a glaring dress, unbecoming enough ; but there were no 

 Europeans to see it. ' The maltreated men' ( Manyema who had been wronged 

 by the traders), now burning for revenge, remembered the dress, and very 

 naturally tried to kill the man who had murdered their relations. They 

 would hold no parley. We had to pass through five hours of forest with 

 vegetation so dense, that by stooping down and peering towards the sun, we 

 could at times only see a shadow moving, and a slight rustle in the rank 

 vegetation was a spear thrown from the shadow of an infuriated man. Our 

 jDeople in front peered into every little opening in the dense thicket before 

 they would venture past it. This detained the rear, and two persons near to 

 me were slain. A large spear lunged past close behind ; another missed me 

 by about a foot in front. Coming to a part of the forest of about a hundred 

 yards cleared for cultivation, I observed that fire had been applied to one of 

 the gigantic trees, made still higher by growing on an ant-hill twenty or 

 more feet high. Heariug the crack that told the fire had eaten through, I 

 felt that there was no danger, it looked so far away, till it appeared coming 

 right down towards me. I ran a few paces back, and it came to the ground 

 only one yard off, broke in several lengths, and covered me with a cloud of 

 dust. My attendants ran back, exclaiming, ' Peace, peace I you will finish 

 your work in spite of all these people, and in spite of everybody ! ' I, too, 

 took it as an omen of good, that I had three narrow escapes from death in 



