"In one of his journeys Dr. Livingstone travelled an estimated distance of eleven thousand miles, and the sum of his travels in Africa has been placed as high as sixty thousand miles. A great part of this was performed on foot. There were many journeys by river and lake, nearly always in native canoes, and comparatively few in boats of European construction, owing to the difficulty of carrying them around cataracts or other obstructions on the rivers, or making long traverses from one lake to another. In South Africa, and in some parts of Central Africa, horses or donkeys may be used for riding purposes; but these animals are scarce, and quite as liable as their masters to fall victims to the pestilential fevers of Africa.
"The climate is not by any means the worst enemy of the dumb animals that accompany the African traveller. Lions prowl around the camps, and when their presence is quite unexpected they spring from the bushes and kill the horse or other animal they have marked for their prey with a single stroke of their powerful paw. Many travellers have lost their favorite steeds in this way, and in South Africa thousands upon thousands of oxen have been killed by lions. On the return of Dr. Livingstone's party to the coast they undertook to bring his riding donkey, but the poor beast was killed by a lion only a few days' journey from the spot where the doctor died.
A LION KILLING LIVINGSTONE'S DONKEY.
"According to custom the men had built a stable for him, where they thought he would be secure, as it was close to their quarters. In the middle of the night there was a loud crash that roused everybody: the men ran out, and found the stable broken and the donkey gone. They set fire to the grass to make a light, as the night was very dark, and as soon as the blaze rose up they saw a lion close to the body of the donkey. They fired at the intruder, and wounded him. He retreated growling, and the men did not think it prudent to follow. The donkey was quite dead, and there is no doubt that he was instantly killed when the lion sprung upon him. The next morning they found a broad track of blood where the lion had dragged himself along; but as there was the track of another lion close by it they did not follow the trail far into the bushes.
"Dr. Livingstone was early impressed with the horrors of the slave-trade in the interior of Africa, and in all his writings he frequently referred to the infamous business. In one part of his journal he describes how he found the dead body of a woman tied by the neck to a tree. The people of the country told him that she had been unable to keep up with the caravan, and her master, finding that he must abandon her, determined to make an example that would frighten the rest. So he tied her to the tree and left her to die, and whenever any others of his caravan broke down they met a similar fate or were killed on the spot. One day some of the doctor's men went a little way from the path and found a number of slaves yoked together with sticks, and so near death from starvation that none of them were able to speak.
"GOREE," OR SLAVE-STICK.