William Garden Blaikie

“ The tame buffaloes of India were taken that he might try whether, like the wild buffaloes of Africa, they would resist the bite of the tsetse-fly; the other animals for the same purpose. There were two words of which Livingstone might have said, as Queen Mary said of Calais, that at his death they would be found engraven on his heart--fever and tsetse; the one the great scourge of man, the other of beast, in South Africa. To help to counteract two such foes to African civilization no trouble or expense would have been judged too great. Already he had lost nine of his buffaloes at Zanzibar. ”

“ With the ever-watchful, loving eye constantly upon me, I may surely follow my bent, and go among the heathen in front, bearing the message of peace and good-will. All appreciate the statement that it is offensive to our common Father to sell and kill his children. ”

“ They were stimulated to take up the cause of African discovery again, and other travelers went out and did excellent service; but the great fact which was from the very first upon Livingstone's mind, and which he used to impress upon you, did not make the impression he wished, and although a good many people took more and more interest in the Civilization of Africa and in the abolition of the slave-trade, which he pointed out was the great obstacle to all progress, still it did not come home to the people generally. ”

“ The natives were not unkindly, but food was very scarce. As they advanced, the horrors of the slave-trade presented themselves in all their hideous aspects. Women were found dead, tied to trees, or lying in the path shot and stabbed, their fault having been inability to keep up with the party, while their amiable owners, to prevent them from becoming the property of any one else, put an end to their lives. ”

“ There be higher than they!"
His discovery of Lake Bangweolo is recorded as quietly as if it had been a mill-pond: "On the 18th July, I walked a little way out, and saw the shores of the lake for the first time, thankful that I had come safely hither." The lake had several inhabited islands, which Dr. Livingstone visited, to the great wonder of the natives, who crowded around him in multitudes, never having seen such a curiosity as a white man before. ”

“ Casembe he finds to be a fierce chief, who rules his people with great tyranny, cutting off their ears, and even their hands, for the most trivial offenses. Persons so mutilated, seen in his village, excite a feeling of horror. This chief was not one easily got at, but Livingstone believed that he gained an influence with him, only he could not quite overcome his prejudice against him. The year 1867 ended with another severe attack of illness.
"The chief interest in Lake Moero," says Livingstone, "is that it forms one of a chain of lakes, connected by a river some 500 miles in length. ”

“ Against his will, the thought of delicious feasts would come upon him, making it all the more difficult to be cheerful, with, probably, the poorest fare on which life could be in any way maintained, To complete his misery, his four goats were lost, so that the one comfort of his table--a little milk along with his maize--was taken from him when most eagerly sought and valued. ”

“ Food was not to be had for love or money. Our finest cloths only brought miserable morsels of the common grain. I trudged it the whole way, and having no animal food save what turtle-doves and guinea-fowls we occasionally shot, I became like one of Pharaoh's lean kine. The last tramp [to Nyassa] brought us to a land of plenty. It was over a very fine country, but quite depopulated.... The principal chief, named Mataka, lives on the watershed overhanging this, but fifty miles or more distant from this; his town contained a thousand houses--many of them square, in imitation of the Arabs. ”

“ Habitually brave and fearless though Livingstone was, it was not without frequent self-stimulation, and acts of faith in unseen truth, that the peace of his mind was maintained. In the midst of his notes of progress, such private thoughts as the following occur from time to time: "It seems to have been a mistake to imagine that the Divine Majesty on high was too exalted to take any notice of our mean affairs. The great minds among men are remarkable for the attention they bestow on minutiæ. ”

“ In spite of all he had suffered in Africa, and though he was without the company of a single European, he had, in setting out, something of the exhilarating feeling of a young traveler starting on his first tour in Switzerland, deepened by the sense of nobility which there is in every endeavor to do good to others. "The mere animal pleasure of traveling in a wild unexplored country is very great.... The sweat of one's brow is no longer a curse when one works for God ”

“ Arabs and Waiyau, invited into the country by their selling, foster feuds,--wars and depopulation ensue. We mention the Bible--future state--prayer; advise union, that they would unite as one family to expel enemies, who came first as slave-traders, and ended by leaving the country a wilderness."
It was about this time that Wikatani, one of the two Waiyau boys who had been rescued from slavery, finding, as he believed or said, some brothers and sisters on the western shore of the lake, left Livingstone and remained with them. ”

“ Musa, one of the Johanna men, had been a sailor in the "Lady Nyassa"; Susi and Amoda, the Shupanga men, had been woodcutters for the "Pioneer"; and the two Waiyau lads, Wikatani and Chuma, had been among the slaves rescued in 1861, and had lived for some time at the mission station at Chibisa's. Besides these, he carried with him a sort of menagerie in a dhow--six camels, three buffaloes and a calf, two mules, and four donkeys. What man but Dr. Livingstone would have encumbered himself with such baggage, and for what conceivable purpose except the benefit of Africa? ”

“ The two geographical feats were--his first sight of Lake Tanganyika, and his discovery of Lake Moero. In April he reached Lake Liemba, as the lower part of Tanganyika was called. The scenery was wonderfully beautiful, and the air of the whole region remarkably peaceful. The want of medicine made an illness here very severe; on recovering, he would have gone down the lake, but was dissuaded, in consequence of his hearing that a chief was killing all that came that way. ”

“ If they know that you wish them to behave well it will have great effect. I wish to go down Tanganyika, through Luanda and Chowambe, and pass the river Karagwe, which falls into Lake Chowambe. Then come back to Ujiji, visit Manyuema and Rua, and then return to Zanzibar, when I hope to see your Highness in the enjoyment of health and happiness."
Livingstone showed only his usual foresight in taking these precautions for the protection of his next cargo of goods. ”

“ An astronomer cannot be great unless his mind can grasp an infinity of very small things, each of which, if unattended to, would throw his work out. A great general attends to the smallest details of his army. ”

“ Young's most interesting journey, not even for the detail of that wonderful achievement, the carrying of the pieces of the "Search" past the Murchison Cataracts, and their reconstruction at the top, without a single piece missing. The sum and substance of Mr. Young's story was, that first, quite unexpectedly, he came upon a man near the south end of Lake Nyassa, who had seen Livingstone there, and who described him well, showing that he had not crossed at the north end, as Musa had said, but, for some reason, had come round by the south ”

“ Moffat, bearing date "Near Lake Moero, March, 1868," dwells dolefully on his inability to reach Lake Bemba in consequence of the flooded state of the country, and then his detention through the strifes of the Arabs and the natives. The letter, however, is more occupied with reviewing the past than narrating the present. In writing to Dr. Moffat, he enters more minutely than he would have done with a less intimate and sympathetic friend into the difficulties of his lot--difficulties that had been increased by some from whom he might have expected other things. ”

“ At last he gets the escort of some Arab traders, who show him much kindness, but again he is prostrated by illness, and at length he reaches Lake Moero, 8th November, 1867. He hears of another lake, called Bembo or Bangweolo, and to hear of it is to resolve to see it. But he is terribly wearied with two years' traveling without having heard from home, and he thinks he must first go to Ujiji, for letters and stores. Meanwhile, as the traders are going to Casembe's, he accompanies them thither. ”

“ We mention our relationship to our Father, the guilt of selling any of his children, the consequences:--_e.g._ it begets war, for as they don't like to sell their own, they steal from other villagers, who retaliate. ”

“ The people have nothing to sell but a little millet-porridge and mushrooms. "Woe is me! good enough to produce fine dreams of the roast beef of old England, but nothing else. I have become very thin, though I was so before; but now, if you weighed me, you might calculate very easily how much you might get for the bones. But--we got a cow yesterday, and I am to get milk to-morrow.... I grieve to write it, poor poodle 'Chitane' was drowned" [15th January, in the Chimbwé] ; "he had to cross a marsh a mile wide, and waist-deep.... ”