596 LIFE OF DA VI D LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



whether and in what manner the waters of the Nile are connected with that 

 system of lakes which Livingstone explored. A passage in Herodotus is 

 believed to have exerted an undue influence upon his mind, sending him in 

 search of a mountain from which flowed four streams, when mere myth and 

 legend had suggested the existence of such a scene. But that his life was well 

 and gloriously spent — that a rich harvest has been the result of his exertions 

 — admits of no question. The civilised and Christian world knows now, as it 

 never did before, what manner of land the great African continent is, with 

 its broad plateaus of wood and swamp, its entangled rivers, its systems of 

 lakes, its singing birds, its musical frogs, its fevers, its leprosies, its eaten 

 ulcers, its insects, whose mysterious nature prompts them to bury themselves 

 in horse, camel, ox, or ass, and to kill the thing they fix on, its animal races 

 which seem to border on humanity, going about erect in companies of ten, 

 male and female accurately matched, and its human races, strangely near the 

 brute, living on roots and bulbs. There are, indeed, African races which 

 stand high in the scale among savages, stalwart men and comely women, who 

 would not, said Dr. Livingstone, be physically unworthy of England ; but 

 one of the most remarkable facts connected with those mysterious regions is 

 that the human and the animal tribes approach so near each other. The 

 native African modestly pronounces the Soko — something between a gorilla 

 and a chimpanzee — a man without the badness that is in man." 



One on occasion, Dr. Livingstone received the present of a very inte- 

 resting young Soko, which he describes as follows: — " Katambo presented me 

 with a young Soko or gorilla that had been caught while its mother was 

 killed ; she sits eighteen inches high, has fine long black hair all over, which 

 was pretty so long as it was kept in order by her dam. She is the least mis- 

 chievous of all the monkey tribe I have seen, and seems to know that in me 

 she has a friend, and sits quietly on the mat beside me. In walking, the first 

 thing observed is that she does not tread on the palms of her hands, but on 

 the backs of the second line of bones of the hands ; in doing this the nails 

 do not touch the ground, nor do the knuckles ; she uses the arms thus sup- 

 ported crutch fashion, and hitches herself along between them ; occasionally 

 one hand is put down before the other, and alternates with the feet, or she 

 walks upright and holds up a hand to any one to carry her. If refused, she 

 turns her face down, and makes grimaces of the most bitter human weeping, 

 wringing her hands, and sometimes adding a fourth hand or foot to make the 

 appeal more touching. Grass or leaves she draws round her to make a nest, 

 and resents any one meddling with her property. She is a most friendly little 

 beast, and came up to me at once, making her chirrup of welcome, smelled my 

 clothes, and held out her hand to be shaken. I slapped her palm without 

 offence, though she winced. She began to untie the cord with which she was 

 afttiiwards bound, with fingers and thumbs, in quite a systematic way, and on 



