LIVINGSTONE’S LAST JOURNEY 
333 
of the world/’ He was thinking, as ever, of the gaping wound which 
slavery had made. 
When reflecting in his journal on missions and the necessity for 
liberality of mind and charity, he says: “I have avoided giving 
offence to intelligent Arabs, who having pressed me, asking if I 
believed in Mohammed—by saying, ‘No, I do not: I am a child of 
Jesus bin Miriam/ avoiding anything offensive in my tone.” 
At last the men whom Stanley had sent off arrived, and they 
proved to be a very good lot. Some had been with Stanley when he 
relieved Livingstone, and others were recruited from the Geographical 
Society’s expedition. The doctor started almost immediately—on the 
25th of August—and reached the Tanganyika about six weeks later. 
Following the eastern shores, he rounded the southern point of the lake, 
and in bad health struck south, and then west for Lake Bangweolo. 
The rainy season was upon them. Day after day it rained or 
drizzled or hailed, and the country rapidly underwent a change for 
the worse. Streams became rivers, and rivers mighty and resistless 
torrents. As the mountain slopes of Urungu were left behind, that 
disagreeable feature of African geography to which Livingstone intro¬ 
duced us—the “sponge”—became frequent. Where terra drma was 
met with, too often it was overlaid with knee-deep water. To make 
matters worse, the natives assumed an unfriendly attitude, and it 
became almost impossible to obtain food. Fever and an aggravated 
form of dysentery laid hold of the doctor’s worn-out body, and reduced 
his strength to such an extent that once again he had to be carried by 
his men on a kitanda, a light palanquin with a wooden framework. 
They were splashing through the endless sponges round the east end 
of Lake Bangweolo, and pushing forward through innumerable diffi- 
culties. All the symptoms of his illnes-s became more acute, and he 
suffered most excruciating pain. Several times he fainted from loss 
of blood, and a drowsiness seemed to steal over him ever and again. 
The entries in his journal became shorter and shorter, until at last 
only the dates appeared; he was too weak to write more. Yet we learn 
from Susi and Chuma, his faithful servants, that he frequently asked 
questions of the natives with regard to distant hills, the rivers they 
were crossing, whence they came and whither they flowed. 
