Livingston's Last Journals [pp. 342-347]

LI ZVZNGSTONE'S LAST JO URNALS.
was weak and ill, and yet he persevered.
In June, I870, all his people deserted but
three, "Susi, Chuma, and Gardner." Baffled by the difficulties of his way, and
sorely troubled by the demoralization of
his men, he was forced to turn back. In
August, he writes, "Patience is all I can
exercise, irritable ulcers hedge me in
now, as did my attendants in June; but
all will be for the best, for it is in Providence and not in me." "The watershed is from seven to eight hundred
miles long from west to east," "Parts
of it are enormous sponges, or bogs; in
other parts innumerable rills unite into
rivulets, which again form rivers." "It
is seven hundred miles across the circle."
When he had been out four years, reported "murdered," "married to an African princess," and the like, he writes,
"I am in agony. for news from home."
"All I feel sure of now is, that all my
friends will wish me to complete my
task."
In I870, he hears of MIr. Young's searchtrip to Nyassa, and says, "Musa," who
reported him dead, "is a fair specimen,"
for heartlessness and falsehood, of the
lower classes of Mohammedans in East
Africa. "Burton had to dismiss most
of his followers at Ujiji for dishonesty;
Speke's followers deserted at the first approach of danger, and Musa fled in terror on hearing a false report from a halfcaste Arab about the Masitu, one hundred
and fifty miles distant, though I promised
to go west and not to turn north till
past the beat of that tribe." In I87I, all
his paper and ink are exhausted. He
makes ink from the seeds of a plant, and
writes his journals on scraps of old newspapers. A ftzc-simzile of the shifts to which
the tired, sick, desponding, and impoverished traveler had to resort, is given at
page 368 of the "Last Journals." July
20, I87I, he starts back for Ujiji. The
natives attacked them; spears were
thrown by unseen assailants, one of
which grazed his back; another missed
him by about a foot in front; three times
in one day he was delivered from impending death. The natives were infu
riated by the aggressions of the Arab
slaving-parties, and confounded Livingstone and his party with other foreigners.
The entries in his journal for August and
September are brief notes that attest
how severely he was suffering during this
part of the return trip. October 3, I87I,
this man, whom some imagined married
to an African princess, living in thoughtless ease, in a state of semi-barbarism, in
inner Africa, and forgetting his native
tongue, records, "I read the whole Bible
through four times while I was in Manyuema!" a period of not more than twelve
months.
October 23d, he reaches Ujiji again
"reduced to a skeleton." An Arab,
Shereef,had sold all his goods; "did not
have a single yard of calico out of three
thousand, nor a string of beads out of
seven hundred pounds." He had no
prospect but beggary, and felt miserable.
Just as his fortunes and his spirits were
at their lowest ebb, he was relieved by
Mr. Henry M. Stanley, traveling correspondent of the New York Herald,-an
expedition sent out by James Gordon Bennet, Jr., at an expense of $2o,ooo000, to find
Livingstone. It will interest the numerous readers of Stanley's interesting
work, one of the most interesting ever
written on Interior Africa, "How I found
Livingstone," to compare his narrative
with the now published Journals of Livingstone, and to read the grateful expressions of the great explorer for the
timely aid that reached him just at the
period of his greatest exhaustion and
disappointment. The news of two years
was thrilling, — the fate of France, the
ocean telegraph, the election of General
Grant, the death of Lord Clarendon, and
five thousand dollars voted him for supplies by the Government. In company
with Stanley, he explored the northern
end of Lake Tanganyika, and found that
instead of its flowing outward and northwardly to supply the Nile, a river was
running into the lake with a current of
txvo miles an hour! So here was the end
of another of the thousand and one "theoretical discoveries" with which African
1875.]
345