FROM ZANZIBAR TO UJIJI.
A.D. 1866-1869.
Dr. Livingstone goes to mouth of Rovuma--His prayer--His company--His herd of animals--Loss of his buffaloes--Good spirits when setting out--Difficulties at Rovuma--Bad conduct of Johanna men--Dismissal of his Sepoys--Fresh horrors of slave-trade--Uninhabited tract--He reaches Lake Nyassa--Letter to his son Thomas--Disappointed hopes--His double aim, to teach natives and rouse horror of slave-trade--Tenor of religious addresses--Wikatami remains behind--Livingstone finds no altogether satisfactory station for commerce and missions--Question of the watershed--Was it worth the trouble?--Overruled for good to Africa--Opinion of Sir Bartle Frere--At Marenga's--The Johanna men leave in a body--Circulate rumor of his murder--Sir Roderick disbelieves it--Mr. E.D. Young sent out with Search Expedition--Finds proof against rumor--Livingstone half-starved--Loss of his goats--Review of 1866--Reflections on Divine Providence--Letter to Thomas--His dog drowned--Loss of his medicine-chest--He feels sentence of death passed on him--First sight of Lake Tanganyika--Detained at Chitimba's--Discovery of Lake Moero--Occupations during detention of 1867--Great privations and difficulties--Illness--Rebellion among his men--Discovery of Lake Bangweolo--Its oozy banks--Detention--Sufferings--He makes for Ujiji--Very severe illness in beginning of 1869--Reaches Ujiji--Finds his goods have been wasted and stolen--Most bitter disappointment--His medicines, etc., at Unyanyembe--Letter to Sultan of Zanzibar--Letters to Dr. Moffat and his daughter.
On the 19th of March, fortified by a firman from the Sultan to all his people, and praying the Most High to prosper him, "by granting him Influence in the eyes of the heathen, and blessing his intercourse with them," Livingstone left Zanzibar in H.M.S. "Penguin" for the mouth of the Rovuma. His company consisted of thirteen Sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine Nassick boys, two Shupanga men, and two Waiyau. Musa, one of the Johanna men, had been a sailor in the "Lady Nyassa"; Susi and Amoda, the Shupanga men, had been woodcutters for the "Pioneer"; and the two Waiyau lads, Wikatani and Chuma, had been among the slaves rescued in 1861, and had lived for some time at the mission station at Chibisa's. Besides these, he carried with him a sort of menagerie in a dhow--six camels, three buffaloes and a calf, two mules, and four donkeys. What man but Dr. Livingstone would have encumbered himself with such baggage, and for what conceivable purpose except the benefit of Africa? The tame buffaloes of India were taken that he might try whether, like the wild buffaloes of Africa, they would resist the bite of the tsetse-fly; the other animals for the same purpose. There were two words of which Livingstone might have said, as Queen Mary said of Calais, that at his death they would be found engraven on his heart--fever and tsetse; the one the great scourge of man, the other of beast, in South Africa. To help to counteract two such foes to African civilization no trouble or expense would have been judged too great. Already he had lost nine of his buffaloes at Zanzibar. It was a sad pity that owing to the ill-treatment of the remaining animals by his people, who turned out a poor lot, it could never be known conclusively whether the tsetse-bite was fatal to them or not.
In spite of all he had suffered in Africa, and though he was without the company of a single European, he had, in setting out, something of the exhilarating feeling of a young traveler starting on his first tour in Switzerland, deepened by the sense of nobility which there is in every endeavor to do good to others. "The mere animal pleasure of traveling in a wild unexplored country is very great.... The sweat of one's brow is no longer a curse when one works for God; it proves a tonic to the system, and is actually a blessing." The Rovuma was found to have changed greatly since his last visit, so that he had to land his goods twenty-five miles to the north at Mikindany harbor, and find his way down to the river farther up. The toil was fitted to wear out the strongest of his men. Nothing could have been more grateful than the Sunday rest. Through his Nassick boys, he tried to teach the Makondé--a tribe that bore a very bad character, but failed; however, the people were wonderfully civil, and, contrary to all previous usage, neither inflicted fines nor made complaints, though the animals had done some damage to their corn. He set this down as an answer to his prayers for influence among the heathen.
His vexations, however, were not long of beginning. Both the Sepoy marines and the Nassick boys were extremely troublesome, and treated the animals abominably. The Johanna men were thieves. The Sepoys became so intolerable that after four months' trial he sent most of them back to the coast. It required an effort to resist the effect of such, things, owing to the tendency of the mind to brood over the ills of travel. The natives were not unkindly, but food was very scarce. As they advanced, the horrors of the slave-trade presented themselves in all their hideous aspects. Women were found dead, tied to trees, or lying in the path shot and stabbed, their fault having been inability to keep up with the party, while their amiable owners, to prevent them from becoming the property of any one else, put an end to their lives. In some instances the captives, yet in the slave-sticks, were found not quite dead. Brutality was sometimes seen in another form, as when some natives laughed at a poor boy suffering from a very awkward form of hernia, whose mother was trying to bind up the part. The slave-trade utterly demoralized the people; the Arabs bought whoever was brought to them, and the great extent of forest in the country favored kidnapping; otherwise the people were honest.
Farther on they passed through an immense uninhabited tract, that had once evidently had a vast population. Then, in the Waiyau country, west of Mataka's, came a splendid district 3400 feet above the sea, as well adapted for a settlement as Magomero, but it had taken them four months to get at it, while Magomero was reached in three weeks. The abandonment of that mission he would never cease to regret. As they neared Lake Nyassa, slave parties became more common. On the 8th August, 1866, they reached the lake, which seemed to Livingstone like an old familiar friend which he never expected to see again. He thanked God, bathed again in the delicious water, and felt quite exhilarated.
Writing to his son Thomas, 28th August, he says:
"The Sepoys were morally unfit for travel, and then we had hard lines, all of us. Food was not to be had for love or money. Our finest cloths only brought miserable morsels of the common grain. I trudged it the whole way, and having no animal food save what turtle-doves and guinea-fowls we occasionally shot, I became like one of Pharaoh's lean kine. The last tramp [to Nyassa] brought us to a land of plenty. It was over a very fine country, but quite depopulated.... The principal chief, named Mataka, lives on the watershed overhanging this, but fifty miles or more distant from this; his town contained a thousand houses--many of them square, in imitation of the Arabs. Large patches of English peas in full bearing grew in the moist hollows, or were irrigated. Cattle showed that no tsetse existed. When we arrived, Mataka was just sending back a number of cattle and captives to their own homes. They had been taken by his people without his knowledge from Nyassa. I saw them by accident: there were fifty-four women and children, about a dozen young men and boys, and about twenty-five or thirty head of cattle. As the act was spontaneous, it was the more gratifying to witness....
"I sometimes remember you with some anxiety, as not knowing what opening may be made for you in life.... Whatever you feel yourself best fitted for, 'commit thy way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will bring it to pass.' One ought to endeavor to devote the peculiarities of his nature to his Redeemer's service, whatever these may be."
Resting at the lake, and working up journal, lunars, and altitudes, he hears of the arrival of an Englishman at Mataka's, with cattle for him, "who had two eyes behind as well as two in front--news enough for awhile." Zoology, botany, and geology engage his attention as usual. He tries to get across the lake, but cannot, as the slavers own all the dhows, and will neither lend nor sell to him; he has therefore to creep on foot round its southern end. Marks of destruction and desolation again shock the eye--skulls and bones everywhere. At the point where the Shiré leaves Nyassa, he could not but think of disappointed hopes--the death of his dear wife, and of the Bishop, the increasing vigor of the slave-trade, and the abandonment of the Universities Mission. But faith assured him of good times coming, though he might not live to see them. Would only he had seen through the vista of the next ten years! Bishop Tozer done with Africa, and Bishop Steere returning to the old neighborhood, and resuming the old work of the Universities Mission; and his own countrymen planted his name on the promontory on which he gazed so sorrowfully, training the poor natives in the arts of civilization, rearing Christian households among them, and proclaiming the blessed Gospel of the God of love!