CHAPTER XXXIII 
Livingstone’s Journey Across Africa 
T HE journey which had ended successfully at Loanda, in spite 
of numerous physical difficulties and the extortion and hos¬ 
tility of certain chiefs, had not fulfilled all Livingstone had 
hoped. The country he had discovered was highly injurious to the 
health of Europeans, and could not therefore be regarded as suitable 
for the great mission center ever before his eyes; and the difficulties 
of the route precluded its proving an easy and safe highroad from the 
interior of the continent to the sea. He had still before him the dis¬ 
covery of these two necessities for the development and evangelization 
of the natives, and to a man of Livingstone's intense conscientiousness 
this discovery appeared in the light of an immediate duty. Moreover, 
his faithful Makololo, who had accompanied him for so many hundreds 
of miles to the shores of the great sea, and who had looked upon the 
white man's “canoe" in the shape of a British war-vessel, and had 
declared it to be “no canoe, but a town"*—these men could not be 
allowed to find their way back to Linyanti. Their leader must takf 
them himself. 
In the meanwhile, however, that leader was prostrated by a severe 
attack of fever, lying for long weeks on a bed of sickness, though 
carefully tended by his fellow-countryman, Mr. Gabriel. On his 
recovery, Livingstone set about acknowledging the many kindnesses 
that had been shown him by the Portuguese authorities, and Investi¬ 
gating the state of affairs in Loanda and Angola, and the real policy 
of the government. 
The trade in slaves, of which, as he had drawn nearer and nearer 
to the coast, he had met increasing traces as well as proofs, was the 
uppermost idea in his mind. Despite the hospitality and personal 
courtesy of the Portuguese he encountered at Loanda, he could not 
but see that the a ttitude of hostility to the slave trade which they had 
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