330 
LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNEY 
earnest desire was to explore the course of the Lualaba and ascertain 
if it could be identified with the Nile. Reaching this stream he made 
an attempt to navigate it for some distance, but ill-health and the 
sullen obstinacy of the natives sent him back to Bambarre. In June, 
1870, he started again, accompanied only by three “faithfuls”—Susi, 
Chuma, and Gardner; but again failing health drove him back. For 
nearly three months he was laid up with ulcers on the feet, and this 
may help to explain the following remark in his journal: “I read the 
whole Bible through four times whilst I was in Manyuema.” 
The first of January, 1871, found him still weak and waiting at 
Bambarre. Then ten men out of a much larger number arrived, sent 
from Zanzibar by Dr. Kirk, the consul, and Livingstone’s old friend. 
They left Zanzibar with over forty letters for the doctor; they arrived 
with one! They were worthless scoundrels, who mutinied as soon as 
he started westward, and threatened to return to their comrades, 
whom they had left at Ujiji with the stores for the doctor, and who 
were meanwhile living on them. By dint of great persistence, how¬ 
ever, Livingstone managed to reach the Lualaba by the end of March, 
and to his deep disappointment he found that the river had a some¬ 
what westerly course, and was more probably the Congo than the Nile. 
Five years had now passed since he left Zanzibar, years of con¬ 
tinual disappointment and ill-health. His efforts to continue his work 
were now prevented by the mutinous behavior of his escort, wh o- said 
that they had orders to return to Ujiji after finding him. He was 
obliged to accompany them and on reaching this place, 600 miles away, 
he found that the rascal who had charge of his stores had stolen the 
whole of them. 
His body racked by pain and disease, his mind tormented by a 
series of bitter disappointments, his efforts thwarted and hopes blasted 
by the conduct of his very servants, and then on returning at last to 
Ujiji only to find that the means he required to buy even his daily bread 
had been dissipated by a scoundrel who had added to the crime of theft 
the vice of hypocrisy (the fellow had divined on the Koran, and found 
that the doctor was dead),—surely at this hour Livingstone was 
passing through a trial fiery enough to have consumed all his patience 
and resignation! But just at this moment, when his spirits were at 
their lowest ebb, help of the most, unexpected kind was at hand. 
