ANOTHER LETTER. 569 
dense vegetation, and came to inquire the cause. When he 
had consulted his elders, he sent an offer to me in the even- 
ing, to collect all his people, and if I lent him my people 
who had guns, he would bring me ten goats instead of 
three milch cows I had lost. I again explained the mistake 
under which his next neighbors labored, and as he under- 
stood the whole case, he was ready to admit that my join- 
ing in his ancient feud would only make matters worse. 
Indeed, my old Highland blood had been roused by the 
wrongs which his foes had suffered, and all through I could 
not help sympathizing with them, though I was the especial 
object of their revenge. I have, etc., 
David Livingstone, 
Her Majesty’s Consul, Inner Africa. 
Dr. Livingstone to Earl Granville. 
Ujiji, Dec. 18lh, 1871. 
My Lord: — The dispatch of Lord Clarendon, dated 31st 
of May, 1870, came to this place on the 13th ult., and its 
vexy kindly tone and sympathy afforded me a world of en- 
couragement. Your Lordship will excuse me in saying 
that with my gratitude there mingled sincere soitow that 
the personal friend who signed it was no more. 
In the kind wish expressed for my return home I can 
join most cordially ; indeed, 1 am seized with a soi'e long- 
ing every time my family, now growing up, comes into my 
mind ; but if I explain, you will not deem me unreasonable 
in making one moi-c effort to make a feasible finish of my 
woi-k. I know about six hundred miles of the long water- 
shed of South Central Africa pretty fairly- From this the 
majority of the vast number of the springs of the Nile do 
unquestionably arise and form great mains of drainage in 
the Great Nile Valley, which begins in latitude ten to 
twelve degrees south. But in the seventh hundred miles 
four gi'eat fountains are reported, which are different from 
all I have seen in rising from the base of an earthen mound 
