220 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
his wife and tlieir children, but again got no further 
than the lake, as the children were seized with fever. 
A year later, April, 1851, Livingstone, again accom¬ 
panied by his family and Mr. Oswell, set out, this time 
with the intention of settling among the Makololo for 
a period. At last he succeeded, and reached the Chobe, 
a southern tributary of the Zambesi, where he found 
Sebituane, “ unquestionably the greatest man in all 
that country,” who gave him a hearty welcome. Un¬ 
fortunately, he died shortly after Livingstone’s arrival, 
and was succeeded by his daughter, who gave Living¬ 
stone liberty to move about as he chose. Availing 
themselves of the permission, he and Oswell, in the end 
of June, discovered the Zambesi at the town of Sesheke, 
which no one had suspected to reach so far into the 
heart of the continent. As Livingstone could find no 
spot between the Chobe and Zambesi suitable for a 
settlement, he resolved, at a severe cost to his feelings, 
to send his family to England, and return to pursue his 
pioneering work by himself. Leaving the Chobe on 
August 13, the party reached Capetown in April, 1852. 
Here Livingstone found himself in bad odour as a friend 
of the Kaffirs, with whom a war was at the time being 
carried on, and was in some danger of being arrested. 
He had a good friend, however, in Sir (then Mr.) 
Thomas Maclear, the Cape astronomer, who gave him 
lessons in taking- astronomical observations that were 
of the greatest service to him afterwards. 
Livingstone may now be said to have completed the 
first period of his career in Africa, the period in which 
the work of the missionary had the greatest prominence. 
Henceforth he appears more in the character of an 
explorer, but it must be remembered that he regarded 
himself to the last as a pioneer missionary, whose work 
was to open up the country to others. Moreover, 
during his last visit to the Makololos he got a glimpse 
of the horrors of the slave trade, and in his subsequent 
wanderings the suppression of that iniquitous traffic 
became an increasingly important object, in the end 
indeed an object of the first importance. 
