To the ordinary person five months of waiting would have been almost intolerable. There are signs that even Livingstone had some ado to sit still and count the days. But if they were profitless months to him, and if often he was, as he records, “weary, weary,” the revelations contained in his journal are by no means profitless to us. He has time to write fully as to his plans and his motives. He takes us into his confidence; and we see that he has lost nothing in all these years of that eager curiosity which belonged to him as a boy. He still carries in his breast “the heart of a little child.” The wonderful Ptolemy and the naïve Herodotus are pondered over; and all the stories of “fountains” and “pillars” awaken in the great traveller the desire to test them for himself. He is evidently not sure that there is not something in them after all. He would dearly like to find out. He cannot reconcile Ptolemy with the investigation of Baker, Speke, and Grant; and it has all the delight of a fascinating conundrum to him.
April 18th.—“I pray the good Lord of all to favour me so as to allow me to discover the ancient fountains of Herodotus, and if there is anything in the underground excavations to confirm the precious old documents (τἀ βιβλία), the Scriptures of truth, may He permit me to bring it to light, and give me wisdom to make a proper use of it.”
On the first of May he records that he has finished a letter to the New York Herald. This is the letter which concludes with the now world-renowned words upon his tablet in the Abbey—“All I can add in my loneliness is, may Heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one—American, English, or Turk—who will help to heal the open sore of the world.” By a coincidence the words were written one year to the very day before the writer’s death.
He meditates much on the native faiths. He recognises as the fundamental fact “dependence on a Divine Power,” but “without any conscious feeling of its nature.” He notes also their belief in a continued existence after death, so as to be able to do good to those they love and evil to those they hate.
“I don’t know how the great loving Father will bring all out right at last, but He knows and will do it.” For himself, his confidence is anchored, as it has always been, in the plain word of Christ, the perfect Gentleman.
May 13th.—“He will keep His word, the Gracious One, full of grace and truth—no doubt of it. He said, ‘Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out,’ and ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name that will I do.’ He will keep His word: then I can come and humbly present my petition and it will be all right. Doubt is here inadmissible, surely.”
He is reading Speke’s travels with critical enjoyment. He spends a page or two in challenging his statement that African mothers sell their own children. He does not believe it. He has never known an instance, nor have the Arabs. He always defends the essential goodness of the natives, and their common human feelings. Then he appeals to the heroism of the Church at home to come and help the African people. “I would say to missionaries, Come on, brethren, to the real heathen. You have no idea how brave you are till you try. Leaving the coast tribes and devoting yourselves heartily to the savages, as they are called, you will find, with some drawbacks and wickednesses, a very great deal to admire and love.” A little later he is arguing that the interior is a tempting field for “well-sustained efforts of private benevolence.” He thinks the missionary should make up his mind not to depend upon “foreign support,” and gives instances of his own resourcefulness where he had none to depend on but himself. He is for “a sort of Robinson Crusoe life,” the great object being “to improve the improvable among the natives.” As to method, he writes later, “no jugglery or sleight-of-hand ... would have any effect in the civilisation of Africans; they have too much good sense for that. Nothing brings them to place thorough confidence in Europeans but a long course of well-doing.... Goodness and unselfishness impress their minds more than any kind of skill or power. They say, ‘You have different hearts from ours.’ ... The prayer to Jesus for a new heart and a right spirit at once commends itself as appropriate.” He notes, too, that music influences them, and often leads to conversion.
Scattered through the journal are his usual keen observations on the animal life and plant life of the district, together with brief narratives of tribal quarrels and crimes. Again and again he confesses uncertainty as to whether he has not been tracing the sources of the Congo rather than the Nile. If he had not had a scientific mind and training, he argues that long ere this he would have cried “Eureka!” and gone home with a half-proved hypothesis. But his absolute love of truth forbids.
By the middle of July his men have not come, though he has heard of them as being on the way. He is very tired of the delay; but returns at length to the subject of missions in Africa, and indulges in one passage which clearly shows how his Puritan common-sense never deserted him. “A couple of Europeans beginning and carrying on a mission without a staff of foreign attendants implies coarse country fare, it is true, but this would be nothing to those who at home amuse themselves with fasts, vigils, &c.” A great deal of power is thus lost in the Church. Fastings and vigils, without a special object in view, are time run to waste. They are made to minister to a sort of self-gratification, instead of being turned to account for the good of others. They are like groaning in sickness. Some people amuse themselves when ill with continuous moaning. The forty days of Lent might be annually spent in visiting adjacent tribes and bearing unavoidable hunger and thirst with a good grace. Considering the greatness of the object to be attained, men might go without sugar, coffee, tea, &c. I went from September, 1866, to December, 1868, without either.”
He gives us also a vivid summary of his impressions of the slave system, assuring us that “in sober seriousness, the subject does not admit of exaggeration. To overdraw its evils is a simple impossibility. The sights I have seen, though common incidents of the traffic, are so nauseous that I always try to drive them from memory. In the case of most disagreeable recollections I can succeed, in time, in consigning them to oblivion, but the slaving scenes come back unbidden, and make me start up at dead of night horrified by their vividness.”