516 
LIVINGSTONE’S LAST JOURNEY. 
to man has often entailed on myself. Some of your readers 
know that about five years ago I undertook, at the instiga* 
tion of my very dear old friend, Sir Roderick Murchison, 
the task of examining the watershed of South Central 
Africa. The work had a charm for my mind, because the 
dividing line between the North and South was unknown, 
and a fit object for exploration. Having other work on 
hand I at first recommended another for the task, but on 
his declining to go without a handsome salary and some, 
thing to fall back upon afterwards, 1 agreed to go myself, 
and was encouraged by Sir Roderick Murchison, saying in 
a warm jovial manner : “You will be the real discoverer 
of the sources of the Nile.” I thought that two years 
would be sufficient to go from the coast inland across the 
head of Lake Nyassa to the watershed, wherever that 
might be, and after examination try to begin a benevolent 
mission with some tribe on the slope nack from the coast. 
Had 1 known all the time, toil, hunger, hardship, and weary 
hours involved in that precious water parting, I might have 
preferred having my head shaved and a blister put on it to 
grappling with my good old friend’s task ; but having taken 
up the burden I could not bear to be beaten by it. I shall 
tell you a little about the progress made !>v and by. 
At present let me give a glimpse of the slave-trade, to 
which the search and discovery of most of the Nile foun- 
tains have brought me face to face. The whole traffic, 
whether by land or ocean, is a gross outrage on the common 
law of mankind. It is carried on from age to age. and in 
addition to the untold evils it inflicts, presents almost in- 
surmountable obstacles to intercourse between different 
portions of the human family. ’Phis open sore in the world 
is partly owing to human cupidity, partly to the ignorance 
of the more civilized of mankind of the blight which ligl |ts 
chiefly on more degraded piracy on the high sens. It "’ nS 
once as common as slave-trading now is, but as it became 
thoroughly known the whole civilized world rose against it- 
In now trying to make Eastern African slave-trade better 
