636 LIVINGSTONE'S RETROSPECT. 



without leaving his skull to ornament some village. He 

 opened up the way for me — let us hope also for the Bible. 

 Then, again, while I was labouring at Kolobeng, seeing 

 only a small arc of the cycle of Providence ; I could not 

 understand it, and felt inclined to ascribe our successive 

 and prolonged droughts to the wicked one. But when 

 forced by these, and the Boers, to become explorer, and 

 open a new country in the north rather than set my face 

 southwards, where missionaries are not needed ; the 

 gracious Spirit of God influenced the minds of the heathen 

 to regard me with favour ; the Divine hand is again per- 

 ceived. Then, I turned away westwards, rather than in 

 the opposite direction, chiefly from observing that some 

 native Portuguese, though influenced by the hope of a 

 reward from their Government to cross the continent, 

 had been obliged to return from the east without accom- 

 plishing their object. Had I gone at first in the eastern 

 direction, which the course of the great Leeambye seemed 

 to invite, I should have come among the belligerents near 

 Tete, when the war was raging at its height, instead of, 

 as it happened, when all was over. And again, when 

 enabled to reach Loanda, the resolution to do my duty 

 by going back to Linyanti, probably saved me from the 

 fate of my papers in the " Forerunner." And then, last 

 of all, this new country is partially opened to the sym- 

 pathies of Christendom, and I find that Sechele himself 

 has, though unbidden by man, been teaching his own 

 people. In fact, he has been doing all that I was pre- 

 vented from doing, and I have been employed in exploring 

 — a work I had no previous intention of performing. I 

 think, that I see the operation of the unseen hand in all 

 this, and I humbly hope, that it will still guide me to do 

 good in my day and generation in Africa. 



Viewing the success awarded to opening up the new 

 country, as a development of Divine Providence in relation 

 to the African family, the mind naturally turns to the 

 probable influence it may have on negro slavery ; and 

 more especially on the practice of it by a large portion of 

 our own race. We now demand increased supplies of 

 cotton and sugar, and then reprobate the means our 

 American brethren adopt to supply our wants. We claim 

 a right to speak about this evil, and also to act in refer- 

 ence to its removal, the more especially because we are 

 of one blood. It is on the Anglo-American race that the 



