768 LIFE OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



owing to the loss of our oars, we could not keep the boat before the wind. 

 As we were swept past the island we made frantic attempts to get to leeward, 

 but it was to no purpose ; we therefore resigned ourselves to the waves, the 

 furious rain, and the horror of the tempest. Many of your readers, no doubt, 

 have experienced a storm at sea ; few, however, can have witnessed it in a 

 small boat. But our situation was more dangerous even than the latter. We 

 had rocks and unknown islands in our neighbourhood, and a few miles fur- 

 ther a mainland peopled by savages, who would have no scruple in putting 

 us all to death, or enslaving us. If our boat capsized, the crocodiles of the 

 lake would make short work of us ; if we were driven on an uninhabited 

 island, death by starvation awaited us there. Yet despite these terrors we 

 were so worn out with hunger, fatigue, and anxiety, that excepting the watch- 

 man, we all fell asleep, though awakened now and then by his voice calling 

 upon the men to bale the boat out. 



At daybreak the tempest and high waves subsided, and we perceived 

 we had drifted eight miles westward of Sosua, and to within six of the large 

 island of Mysomeh. We had not a morsel of food in the boat ; I possessed 

 but a little ground coffee, and we had tasted nothing else for forty-eight 

 hours, yet the crew, when called to resume their rough paddles, cheerfully 

 responded to the cry, and did their duty manfully. A gentle breeze now set 

 in from the westward, which bore us quickly east of Sosua, and carried us 

 by two p.m. to an island which I have distinguished by the name of Refuge 

 Island. On exploring this place, we saw it to be about two miles in circum- 

 ference, to have been formerly inhabited and cultivated, and, to our great 

 joy, we found an abundance of green bananas, and of a small ripe fruit re- 

 sembling cherries in appearance and size, but having the taste of dates. To 

 add to this bounty, I succeeded in shooting two brace of large fat ducks, and 

 when darkness closed in on us, in our snug and secure camp close by a strip 

 of sandy beach, few people that night blessed God more fervently than we 

 did. We rested a day on Refuge Island, during which time we made amends 

 for the scarcity we had suffered ; then, feeling on the second day somewhat 

 recovered, we set sail for Singo Island. We imagined that we were near 

 enough to Usukuma to venture to visit Ito Island, situated a mile south of 

 Singo, the slopes of which were verdant with the frondage of plantain, but, 

 on attempting to land, we were met by a force of natives, who rudely re- 

 pulsed us with stones shot from slings. Our cartridges being all spoiled by 

 the late rainy weather, we were unable to do more than hoist sail and speed 

 away to more kindly shores. 



" Two days afterwards our boat rounded the south-western extremity of 

 Wiro, a peninsula of Ukerewe, and rode on the grey waters of Speke Grulf, 

 the distant shore line of Usukuma bounding the south view about twenty- 

 two miles off. A strong headwind rising, we turned into a small bay in 



