The Personal Life of David Livingstone Part 30

"She sits crouching eighteen inches high, and is the most intelligent and least mischievous of all the monkeys I have seen. She holds out her hand to be lifted and carried, and if refused makes her face as in a bitter human weeping, and wrings her hands quite humanly, sometimes adding a foot or third hand to make the appeal more touching.... She knew me at once as a friend, and when plagued by any one always placed her back to me for safety, came and sat down on my mat, decently made a nest of gra.s.s and leaves, and covered herself with the mat to sleep. I cannot take her with me, though I fear that she will die before I return, from people plaguing her. Her fine long black hair was beautiful when tended by her mother, who was killed. I am mobbed enough alone; two sokos--she and I--would not have got breath.

"I have to submit to be a gazing-stock. I don't altogether relish it, here or elsewhere, but try to get over it good-naturedly, get into the most shady spot of the village, and leisurely look at all my admirers. When the first crowd begins to go away, I go into my lodgings to take what food may be prepared, as coffee, when I have it, or roasted maize infusion when I have none. The door is shut, all save a s.p.a.ce to admit light. It is made of the inner bark of a gigantic tree, not a quarter of an inch thick, and slides in a groove behind a post on each side of the doorway. When partially open it is supported by only one of the posts. Eager heads sometimes crowd the open s.p.a.ce, and crash goes the thin door, landing a Manyuema beauty on the floor. 'It was not I,' she gasps out, 'it was Bessie Bell and Jeanie Gray that shoved me in, and--' as she scrambles out of the lion's den, 'see they're laughing'; and; fairly out, she joins in the merry giggle too. To avoid darkness or being half-smothered, I often eat in public, draw a line on the ground, then 'toe the line,' and keep them out of the circle. To see me eating with knife, fork, and spoon is wonderful. 'See!--they don't touch their food!--what oddities, to be sure.'...

"Many of the Manyuema women are very pretty; their hands, feet, limbs, and form are perfect. The men are handsome.

Compared with them the Zanzibar slaves are like London door-knockers, which some atrocious iron-founder thought were like lions' faces. The way in which these same Zanzibar Mohammedans murder the men and seize the women and children makes me sick at heart. It is not slave-trade. It is murdering free people to make slaves. It is perfectly indescribable. Kirk has been working hard to get this murdersome system put a stop to. Heaven prosper his n.o.ble efforts! He says in one of his letters to me, 'It is monstrous injustice to compare the free people in the interior, living under their own chiefs and laws, with what slaves at Zanzibar afterward become by the abominable system which robs them of their manhood. I think it is like comparing the anthropologists with their ancestral sokos.'...

"I am grieved to hear of the departure of good Lady Murchison. Had I known that she kindly remembered me in her prayers, it would have been great encouragement....

"The men sent by Dr. Kirk are Mohammedans, that is, unmitigated liars. Musa and his companions are fair specimens of the lower cla.s.s of Moslems. The two head-men remained at Ujiji, to feast on my goods, and get pay without work. Seven came to Bambarre, and in true Moslem style swore that they were sent by Dr. Kirk to bring me back, not to go with me, if the country were bad or dangerous. Forward they would not go.

I read Dr. Kirk's words to them to follow wheresoever I led.

'No, by the old liar Mohamed, they were to force me back to Zanzibar.' After a superabundance of falsehood, it turned out that it all meant only an advance of pay, though they had double the Zanzibar wages. I gave it, but had to threaten on the word of an Englishman to shoot the ringleaders before I got them to go. They all speak of English as men who do not lie.... I have traveled more than most people, and with all sorts of followers. The Christians of Kuruman and Kolobeng were out of sight the best I ever had. The Makololo, who were very partially Christianized, were next best--honest, truthful, and brave. Heathen Africans are much superior to the Mohammedans, who are the most worthless one can have."

Toward the end of 1870, before the date of this letter, he had so far recovered that, though feeling the want of medicine as much as of men, he thought of setting out, in order to reach and explore the Lualaba, having made a bargain with Mohamad, for 270, to bring him to his destination. But now he heard that Syde bin Habib, Dugumbe, and others were on the way from Ujiji, perhaps bringing letters and medicines for him. He cannot move till they arrive; another weary time. "Sorely am I perplexed, and grieve and mourn."

The New Year 1871 pa.s.ses while he is at Bambarre, with its prayer that he might be permitted to finish his task. At last, on 4th February, ten of the men despatched to him from the coast arrive, but only to bring a fresh disappointment. They were slaves, the property of Banians, who were British subjects! and they brought only one letter! Forty had been lost. There had been cholera at Zanzibar, and many of the porters sent by Dr. Kirk had died of it. The ten men came with a lie in their mouth; they would not help him, swearing that the Consul told them not to go forward, but to force Livingstone back. On the 10th they mutinied, and had to receive an advance of pay. It was apparent that they had been instructed by their Banian masters to baffle him in every way, so that their slave-trading should not be injured by his disclosures. Their two head-men, Shereef and Awathe, had refused to come farther than Ujiji, and were reveling in his goods there. Dr. Livingstone never ceased to lament and deplore that the men who had been sent to him were so utterly unsuitable. One of them actually formed a plot for his destruction, which was only frustrated through his being overheard by one whom Livingstone could trust. Livingstone wrote to his friends that owing to the inefficiency of the men, he lost two years of time, about a thousand pounds in money, had some 2000 miles of useless traveling, and was four several times subjected to the risk of a violent death.

At length, having arranged with the men, he sets out on 16th February over a most beautiful country, but woefully difficult to pa.s.s through.

Perhaps it was hardly a less bitter disappointment to be told, on the 25th, that the Lualaba flowed west-southwest, so that after all it might be the Congo.

On the 29th March Livingstone arrived at Nyangwe, on the banks of the Lualaba. This was the farthest point westward that he reached in his last Expedition.

The slave-trade here he finds to be as horrible as in any other part of Africa. He is heart-sore for human blood He is threatened, bullied, and almost attacked. In some places, however, the rumor spreads that he makes no slaves, and he is called "the good one." His men are a ceaseless trouble, and for ever mutinying, or otherwise hara.s.sing him.

And yet he perseveres in his old kind way, hoping by kindness to gain influence with them. Mohamad's people, he finds, have pa.s.sed him on the west, and thus he loses a number of serviceable articles he was to get from them, and all the notes made for him of the rivers they had pa.s.sed.

The difficulties and discouragements are so great that he wonders whether, after all, G.o.d is smiling on his work.

His own men circulate such calumnious reports against him that he is unable to get canoes for the navigation of the Lualaba. This leads to weeks and months of weary waiting, and yet all in vain; but afterward he finds some consolation on discovering that the navigation was perilous, that a canoe had been lost from the inexperience of her crew in the rapids, so that had he been there, he should very likely have perished, as his canoe would probably have been foremost.

A change of plan was necessary. On 5th July he offered to Dugumbe 400, with all the goods he had at Ujiji besides, for men to replace the Banian slaves, and for the other means of going up the Lomame to Katanga, then returning and going up Tanganyika to Ujiji. Dugumbe took a little time to consult his friends before replying to the offer.

Meanwhile an event occurred of unprecedented horror, that showed Livingstone that he could not go to Lomame in the company of Dugumbe.

Between Dugumbe's people and another chief a frightful system of pillage, murder, and burning of villages was going on with horrible activity. One bright summer morning, 15th July, when fifteen hundred people, chiefly women, were engaged peacefully in marketing in a village on the banks of the Lualaba, and while Dr. Livingstone was sauntering about, a murderous fire was opened on the people, and a ma.s.sacre ensued of such measureless atrocity that he could describe it only by saying that it gave him the impression of being in h.e.l.l. The event was so superlatively horrible, and had such an overwhelming influence on Livingstone, that we copy at full length the description of it given in the _Last Journals:_

"Before I had got thirty yards out, the discharge of two guns in the middle of the crowd told me that slaughter had begun; crowds dashed off from the place, and threw down their wares in confusion, and ran. At the same time that the three opened fire on the ma.s.s of people near the upper end of the market-place, volleys were discharged from a party down near the creek on the panic-stricken women, who dashed at the canoes. These, some fifty or more, were jammed in the creek, and the men forgot their paddles in the terror that seized all. The canoes were not to be got out, for the creek was too small for so many; men and women, wounded by the b.a.l.l.s, poured into them, and leaped and scrambled into the water, shrieking A long line of heads in the river showed that great numbers struck out for an island a full mile off; in going toward it they had to put the left shoulder to a current of about two miles an hour; if they had struck away diagonally to the opposite bank, the current would have aided them, and, though nearly three miles off, some would have gained land; as it was, the heads above water showed the long line of those that would inevitably perish.

"Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and perishing. Some of the long line of heads disappeared quietly; whilst other poor creatures threw their arms high, as if appealing to the great Father above, and sank. One canoe took in as many as it could hold, and all paddled with hands and arms; three canoes, got out in haste, picked up sinking friends, till all went down together, and disappeared. One man in a long canoe, which could have held forty or fifty, had clearly lost his head; he had been out in the stream before the ma.s.sacre began, and now paddled up the river nowhere, and never looked to the drowning. By and by all the heads disappeared; some had turned down stream toward the bank, and escaped. Dugumbe put people into one of the deserted vessls to save those in the water, and saved twenty-one; but one woman refused to be taken on board, from thinking that she was to be made a slave of; she preferred the chance of life by swimming to the lot of a slave. The Bagenya women are expert in the water, as they are accustomed to dive for oysters, and those who went down stream may have escaped, but the Arabs themselves estimated the loss of life at between 330 and 400 souls. The shooting-party near the canoes were so reckless, they killed two of their own people; and a Banyamwezi follower, who got into a deserted canoe to plunder, fell into the water, went down, then came up again, and down to rise no more.

"After the terrible affair in the water, the party of Tagamoio, who was the chief perpetrator, continued to fire on the people there, and fire their villages. As I write I hear the loud wails on the left bank over those who are there slain, ignorant of their many friends now in the depths of Lualaba. Oh, let Thy kingdom come! No one will ever know the exact loss on this bright sultry summer morning; it gave me the impression of being in h.e.l.l. All the slaves in the camp rushed at the fugitives on land, and plundered them; women were for hours collecting and carrying loads of what had been thrown down in terror."

The remembrance of this awful scene was never effaced from Livingstone's heart. The accounts of it published in the newspapers at home sent a thrill of horror through the country. It was recorded at great length in a despatch to the Foreign Secretary, and indeed, it became one of the chief causes of the appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the subject of the African slave-trade, and of the mission of Sir Bartle Frere to Africa to concert measures for bringing it to an end.

Dugumbe had not been the active perpetrator of the ma.s.sacre, but, he was mixed up with the atrocities that had been committed, and Livingstone could have nothing to do with him. It was a great trial, for, as the Banian men were impracticable, there was nothing for it now but to go back to Ujiji, and try to get other men there with whom he would repeat the attempt to explore the river. For twenty-one months, counting from the period of their engagement, he had fed and clothed these men, all in vain, and now he had to trudge back forty-five days, a journey equal, with all its turnings and windings, to six hundred miles. Livingstone was ill, and after such an exciting time he would probably have had an attack of fever, but for another ailment to which he had become more especially subject. The intestinal ca.n.a.l had given way, and he was subject to attacks of severe internal haemorrhage, one of which came on him now[71]. It appeared afterward that had he gone with Dugumbe, he would have been exposed to an a.s.sault in force by the Bakuss, as they made an attack on the party and routed them, killing two hundred. If Livingstone had been among them, he might have fallen in this engagement. So again, he saw how present disappointments work for good.

[Footnote 71: His friends say that for a considerable time before he had been subject to the most grievous pain from haemorrhoids. His sufferings were often excruciating.]

The journey back to Ujiji, begun 20th July, 1871, was a very wretched one. Amid the universal desolation caused by the very wantonness of the marauders, it was impossible for Livingstone to persuade the natives that he did not belong to the same-set. Ambushes were set for him and his company in the forest. On the 8th August they came to an ambushment all prepared, but it had been abandoned for some unknown reason. By and by, on the same day, a large spear flew past Livingstone, grazing his neck; the native who flung it was but ten yards off; the hand of G.o.d alone saved his life[72]. Farther on, another spear was thrown, which missed him by a foot. On the same day a large tree, to which fire had been applied to fell it, came down within a yard of him. Thus on one day he was delivered three times from impending death. He went on through the forest, expecting every minute to be attacked, having no fear, but perfectly indifferent whether he should be killed or not. He lost all his remaining calico that day, a telescope, umbrella, and five spears.

By and Thy he was prostrated with grievous illness. As soon as he could move he went onward, but he felt as if dying on his feet. And he was ill-rigged for the road, for the light French shoes to which he was reduced, and which had been cut to ease his feet till they would hardly hang together, failed to protect him from the sharp fragments of quartz with which the road was strewed. He was getting near to Ujiji, however, where abundant of goods and comforts were no doubt safely stowed away for him, and the hope of relief sustained him under all his trials.

[Footnote 72: The head of this spear is among the Livingstone relics at Newstead Abbey.]

At last, on the 23d October, reduced to a living skeleton, he reached Ujiji. What was his misery, instead of finding the abundance of goods he had expected, to learn that the wretch Shereef, to whom they had been consigned, had sold off the whole, not leaving one yard of calico out of 3000, or one string of beads out of 700 pounds! The scoundrel had divined on the Koran, found that Livingstone was dead, and would need the goods no more. Livingstone had intended, if he could not get men at Ujiji to go with him to the Lualaba, to wait there till suitable men should be sent up from the coast; but he had never thought of having to wait in beggary. If anything could have aggravated the annoyance, it was to see Shereef come, without shame, to salute him, and tell him on leaving, that he was going to pray; or to see his slaves pa.s.sing from the market with all the good things his property had bought! Livingstone applied a term to him which he reserved for men--black or white--whose wickedness made them alike shameless and stupid--he was a "moral idiot."

It was the old story of the traveler who fell among thieves that robbed him of all he had; but where was the good Samaritan? The Government and the Geographical Society appeared to have pa.s.sed by on the other side.

But the good Samaritan was not as far off as might have been thought.

One morning Syed bin Majid, an Arab trader, came to him with a generous offer to sell some ivory and get goods for him; but Livingstone had the old feeling of independence, and having still a few barter goods left, which he had deposited with Mohamad bin Saleh before going to Manyuema, he declined for the present Syed's generous offer. But the kindness of Syed was not the only proof that he was not forsaken. Five days after he reached Ujiji the good Samaritan appeared from another quarter. As Livingstone had been approaching Ujiji from the southwest, another white man had been approaching it from the east. On 28th October, 1871, Henry Moreland Stanley, who had been sent to look for him by Mr. James Gordon Bennett, Jr., of the _New York Herald_ newspaper, grasped the hand of David Livingstone. An angel from heaven could hardly have been more welcome. In a moment the sky brightened. Stanley was provided with ample stores, and was delighted to supply the wants of the traveler. The sense of sympathy, the feeling of brotherhood, the blessing of fellowship, acted like a charm. Four good meals a day, instead of the spare and tasteless food of the country, made a wonderful change on the outer man; and in a few days Livingstone was himself again--hearty and happy and hopeful as before.

Before closing this chapter and entering on the last two years of Livingstone's life, which have so lively an interest of their own, it will be convenient to glance at the contributions to natural science which he continued to make to the very end. In doing this, we avail ourselves of a very tender and Christian tribute to the memory of his early friend, which Professor Owen contributed to the _Quarterly Review,_ April, 1875, after the publication of Livingstone's _Last Journals_.

Mr. Owen appears to have been convinced by Livingstone's reasoning and observations, that the Nile sources were in the Bangweolo watershed--a supposition now ascertained to have been erroneous. But what chiefly attracted and delighted the great naturalist was the many interesting notices of plants and animals scattered over the _Last Journals_. These Journals contain important contributions both to economic and physiological botany. In the former department, Livingstone makes valuable observations on plants useful in the arts, such as gum-copal, papyrus, cotton, india-rubber, and the palm-oil tree; while in the latter, his notices of "carnivorous plants," which catch insects that probably yield nourishment to the plant, of silicified wood and the like, show how carefully he watched all that throws light on the life and changes of plants. In zoology he was never weary of observing, especially when he found a strange-looking animal with strange habits.

Spiders, ants, and bees of unknown varieties were brought to light, but the strangest of his new acquaintances were among the fishy tribes. He found fish that made long excursions on land, thanks to the wet gra.s.s through which they would wander for miles, thus proving that "a fish out of water" is not always the best symbol for a man out of his element.

There were fish, too, that burrowed in the earth; but most remarkable at first sight were the fish that appeared to bring forth their young by ejecting them from their mouths. If Bruce or Du Chaillu had made such a statement, remarks Professor Owen, what ridicule would they not have encountered! But Livingstone was not the man to make a statement of what he had not ascertained, or to be content until he had found a scientific explanation of it. He found that in the branchial openings of the fish, there occur bags or pouches, on the same principle as the pouch of the opossum, where the young may be lodged for a time for protection or nourishment, and that when the creatures are discharged through the mouth into the water, it is only from a temporary cradle where they were probably enjoying repose, beyond the reach of enemies.

Perhaps the greatest of Livingstone's scientific discoveries during this journey was that "of a physical condition of the earth's surface in elevated tracts of the great continent, unknown before." The bogs or earth-sponges, that from his first acquaintance with them gave him so much trouble, and at last proved the occasion of his death, were not only remarkable in themselves, but-interesting as probably explaining the annual inundations of most of the rivers. Wherever there was a plain sloping toward a narrow opening in hills or higher ground, there were the conditions for an African sponge. The vegetation falls down and rots, and forms a rich black loam, resting often, two or three feet thick, on a bed of pure river sand. The early rains turn the vegetation into slush, and fill the, pools. The later rains, finding the pools already full, run off to the rivers, and form the inundation. The first rains occur south of the equator when the sun goes vertically over any spot, and the second or greater rains happen in his course north again.

This, certainly, was the case as observed on the Zambesi and Shire, and taking the different times for the sun's pa.s.sage north of the equator, it explained the inundations of the Nile.

Such notices show that in his love of nature, and in his careful observation of all her agencies and processes, Livingstone, in his last journeys, was the same as ever. He looked reverently on all plants and animals, and on the solid earth in all its aspects and forms, as the creatures of that same G.o.d whose love in Christ it was his heart's delight to proclaim. His whole life, so varied in its outward employments, yet so simple and transparent in its one great object, was ruled by the conviction that the G.o.d of nature and the G.o.d of revelation were one. While thoroughly enjoying his work as a naturalist, Professor Owen frankly admits that it was but a secondary object of his life. "Of his primary work the record is on high, and its imperishable fruits remain on earth. The seeds of the Word of Life implanted lovingly, with pains and labor, and above-all with faith; the out-door scenes of the simple Sabbath service; the testimony of Him to whom the worship was paid, given in terms of such simplicity as were fitted to the comprehension of the dark-skinned listeners,--these seeds will not have been scattered by him in vain. Nor have they been sown in words alone, but in deeds, of which some part of the honor will redound to his successors. The teaching by forgiveness of injuries,--by trust, however unworthy the trusted,--by that confidence which imputed his own n.o.ble nature to those whom he would win,--by the practical enforcement of the fact that a man might promise and perform--might say the thing he meant,--of this teaching by good deeds, as well as by the words of truth and love, the successor who treads in the steps of LIVINGSTONE, and accomplishes the discovery he aimed at, and pointed the way to, will a.s.suredly the benefit[73]."

[Footnote 73: _Quarterly Review_, April, 1875, pp. 498, 499.]

CHAPTER XXI.

LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY.

A.D. 1871-1872.

Mr. Gordon Bennett sends Stanley in search of Livingstone--Stanley at Zanzibar--Starts for Ujiji--Reaches Unyanyembe--Dangerous illness--War between Arabs and natives--Narrow escape of Stanley--Approach to Ujiji--Meeting with Livingstone--Livingstone's story--Stanley's news--Livingstone's goods and men at Bagamoio--Stanley's accounts of Livingstone--Refutation of foolish and calumnious charges--They go to the north of the lake--Livingstone resolves not to go home, but to get fresh men and return to the sources--Letter to Agnes--to Sir Thomas Maclear--The travelers go to Unyanyembe--More plundering of stores--Stanley leaves for Zanzibar--Stanley's bitterness of heart at parting--Livingstone's intense grat.i.tude to Stanley--He intrusts his Journal to him, and commissions him to send servants and stores from Zanzibar--Stanley's journey to the coast--Finds Search Expedition at Bagamoio--Proceeds to England--Stanley's reception--Unpleasant feelings--eclairciss.e.m.e.nt--England grateful to Stanley.

The meeting of Stanley and Livingstone at Ujiji was as unlikely an occurrence as could have happened, and, along with many of the earlier events in Livingstone's life, serves to show how wonderfully an Unseen Hand shaped and guarded his path. Neither Stanley nor the gentleman who sent him had any personal interest in Livingstone. Mr. Bennett admitted frankly that he was moved neither by friendship nor philanthropy, but by regard to his business and interest as a journalist. The object of a journal was to furnish its readers with the news which they desired to know; the readers of the _New York Herald_ desired to know about Livingstone; as a journalist, it was his business to find out and tell them. Mr. Bennett determined that, cost what it might, he would find out, and give the news to his readers. These were the very unromantic notions, with an under-current probably of better quality, that were pa.s.sing through his mind at Paris, on the 16th October, 1869, when he sent a telegram to Madrid, summoning Henry M. Stanley, one of the "own correspondents" of his paper, to "come to Paris on important business."

On his arrival, Mr. Bennett asked him bluntly, "Where do you think Livingstone is?" The correspondent could not tell--could not even tell whether he was alive. "Well," said Mr. Bennett, "I think he is alive, and that he may be found, and I am going to send you to find him." Mr.

Stanley was to have whatever money should be found necessary; only he was to find Livingstone. It is very mysterious that he was not to go straight to Africa--he was to visit Constantinople, Palestine, and Egypt first. Then, from India, he was to go to Zanzibar; get into the interior, and find him if alive; obtain all possible news of his discoveries; and if he were dead, get the fact fully verified, find out the place of his burial, and try to obtain possession of his bones, that they might find a resting-place at home.

It was not till January, 1871, that Stanley reached Zanzibar. To organize an expedition into the interior was no easy task for one who had never before set foot in Africa. To lay all his plans without divulging his object would, perhaps, have been more difficult if it had ever entered into any man's head to connect the _New York Herald_ with a search for Livingstone. But indomitable vigor and perseverance succeeded, and by the end of February and beginning of March, one hundred and ninety-two persons in all had started in five caravans at short intervals from Bagamoio for Lake Tanganyika, two white men being of the party besides Stanley, with horses, donkeys, bales, boats, boxes, rifles, etc., to an amount that made the leader of the expedition ask himself how such an enormous weight of material could ever be carried into the heart of Africa.

The ordinary and extraordinary risks and troubles of travel in these parts fell to Mr. Stanley's lot in unstinted abundance. But when Unyanyembe was reached, the half-way station to Ujiji, troubles more than extraordinary befell. First, a terrible attack of fever that deprived him of his senses for a fortnight. Then came a worse trouble.

The Arabs were at war with a chief Mirambo, and Stanley and his men, believing they would help to restore peace more speedily, sided with the Arabs. At first they were apparently victorious, but immediately after, part of the Arabs were attacked on their way home by Mirambo, who lay in ambush for them, and were defeated. Great consternation prevailed. The Arabs retreated in panic, leaving Stanley, who was ill, to the tender mercies of the foe. Stanley, however, managed to escape. After this experience of the Arabs in war, he resolved to discontinue his alliance with them. As the usual way to Ujiji was blocked, he determined to try a route more to the south. But his people had forsaken him. One of his two English companions was dead, the other was sick and had to be sent back.

Mirambo was still threatening. It was not till the 20th September that new men were engaged by Stanley, and his party were ready to move.

They marched slowly, with various adventures and difficulties, until, by Mr. Stanley's reckoning, on the 10th November (but by Livingstone's earlier), they were close on Ujiji. Their approach created an extraordinary excitement. First one voice saluted them in English, then another; these were the salutations of Livingstone's servants, Susi and Chuma. By and by the Doctor himself appeared. "As I advanced slowly toward him," says Mr. Stanley, "I noticed he was pale, looked wearied, had a gray beard, wore a bluish cap with a faded gold band round it, had on a red-sleeved waistcoat and a pair of gray tweed trousers. I would have run to him, only I was a coward in the presence of such a mob,--would have embraced him, only he, being an Englishman, I did not know how he would receive me; so I did what cowardice and false pride suggested was the best thing--walked deliberately to him, took off my hat and said, 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume?' 'Yes,' said he, with a kind smile, lifting his cap slightly. I replace my hat on my head, and he puts on his cap, and we both grasp hands, and then I say aloud--'I thank G.o.d, Doctor, I have been permitted to see you.' He answered, 'I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.'"

The conversation began--but Stanley could not remember what it was. "I found myself gazing at him, conning the wonderful man at whose side I now sat in Central Africa. Every hair of his head and beard, every wrinkle of his face, the wanness of his features, and the slightly wearied look he bore, were all imparting intelligence to me--the knowledge I craved for so much ever since I heard the words, 'Take what you want, but find Livingstone,' What I saw was deeply interesting intelligence to me and unvarnished truth. I was listening and reading at the same time. What did these dumb witnesses relate to me?

"Oh, reader, had you been at my side on this day in Ujiji, how eloquently could be told the nature of this man's work? Had you been there but to see and hear! His lips gave me the details; lips that never lie. I cannot repeat what he said; I was too much engrossed to take my notebook out, and begin to stenograph his story. He had so much to say that he began at the end, seemingly oblivious of the fact that five or six years had to be accounted for. But his account was oozing out; it was growing fast into grand proportions--into a most marvelous history of deeds."

And Stanley, too, had wonderful things to tell the Doctor. "The news,"

says Livingstone, "he had to tell one who had been two full years without any tidings from Europe made my whole frame thrill. The terrible fate that had befallen France, the telegraphic cables successfully laid in the Atlantic, the election of General Grant, the death of good Lord Clarendon, my constant friend; the proof that Her Majesty's Government had not forgotten me in voting 1000 for supplies, and many other points of interest, revived emotions that had lain dormant in Manyuema." As Stanley went on, Livingstone kept saying, "You have brought me new life--you have brought me new life."