his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. For a minute they watched him: he did not stir, there was no sign of breathing; then one of them, Matthew, advanced softly to him and placed his hands to his cheeks. It was sufficient; life had been extinct some time, and the body was almost cold: Livingstone was dead.
DEATH OF LIVINGSTONE.
His sad-hearted servants raised him tenderly up and laid him full length on the bed. They then went out to consult together, and while there they heard the cocks crow. It was therefore between midnight and morning of May 1, 1873, his spirit had taken its flight. His last African journey began in 1866.
The noble Christian philanthropist, the manful champion of the weak and oppressed, the unwearied and keen-eyed lover of nature, the intrepid explorer whose name is as inseparably connected with Africa as that of Columbus is with America, had
sunk down exhausted in the very heart of the continent, with his life-long work still unfinished. His highest praise is that he spent thirty years in the darkest haunts of cruelty and savagery and yet never shed the blood of his fellow-man. The noblest testimony to his character and his influence is the conduct of that faithful band of native servants who had followed his fortunes so long and so far, and who, embalming his body, and secretly preserving all his papers and possessions, carried safely back over the long weary road to the coast all that remained of the hero and his work.
Cameron was on his way toward Ujiji to rescue Livingstone when he heard of his death. He pursued his journey and reached Lake Tanganyika, determined to unravel the mystery of its outlet. He started on a sailing tour around the lake in March 1874. His flag boat was the “Betsy.” He only got half way round, but in this distance he counted the mouths of a hundred rivers, and found the shores constantly advancing in bold headlands and receding in deep bays. Both land and water teem with animal life. Elephants abounded in the jungles, rhinoceri and hippopotami were frequently seen, and many varieties of fish were caught. In one part the cliffs of the shores were sandstone, in another they were precipices of black marble, here were evidences of a coal formation, there crags of chalk whose bases were as clearly cut by the waves as if done with a knife. In many places cascades tumbled over the crags showing that the table land above was like a sponge filled with moisture.
The native boatmen were lazy and full of superstitions. Every crag and island seemed to be the resort of a demon of some kind, whose power for harm had no limit in their imaginations. Never but once, and that in the country of King Kasongo, had he seen the natives fuller of credulity nor more subject to the powers of witchcraft and magic. Their stories of the various forms of devils which dwelt in out of the way places were wilder than any childish fiction, and their magicians had unbridled control of their imaginations.
KING KASONGO’S MAGICIANS.