He sets out to explore Manyuema and the river Lualaba--Loss of forty-two letters--His feebleness through illness--He arrives at Bambarré--Becomes acquainted with the soko or gorilla--Reaches the Luama River--Magnificence of the country--Repulsiveness of the people--Cannot get a canoe to explore the Lualaba--Has to return to Bambarré--Letter to Thomas, and retrospect of his life--Letter to Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann--Miss Tinné--He is worse in health than ever, yet resolves to add to his programme and go round Lake Bangweolo--Letter to Agnes--Review of the past--He sets out anew in a more northerly direction--Overpowered by constant wet--Reaches Nyangwe--Long detention--Letter to his brother John--Sense of difficulties and troubles--Nobility of his spirit--He sets off with only three attendants for the Lualaba--Suspicions of the natives--Influence of Arab traders--Frightful difficulties of the way--Lamed by foot-sores--Has to return to Bambarré--Long and wearisome detention--Occupations--Meditations and reveries--Death no terror--Unparalleled position and trials--He reads his Bible from beginning to end four times--Letter to Sir Thomas Maclear--To Agnes--His delight at her sentiments about his coming home--Account of the soko--Grief to hear of death of Lady Murchison--Wretched character of men sent from Zanzibar--At last sets out with Mohamad--Difficulties--Slave-trade most horrible--Cannot get canoes for Lualaba--Long waiting--New plan--Frustrated by horrible massacre on banks of Lualaba--Frightful scene--He must return to Ujiji--New illness--Perils of journey to Ujiji--Life three times endangered in one day--Reaches Ujiji--Shereef has sold off his goods--He is almost in despair--Meets Henry M. Stanley and is relieved--His contributions to Natural Science during last journeys--Professor Owen in the Quarterly Review.

After resting for a few weeks at Ujiji, Dr. Livingstone set out, 12th July, 1869, to explore the Manyuema country. Ujiji was not a place favorable for making arrangements; it was the resort of the worst scum of Arab traders. Even to send his letters to the coast was a difficult undertaking, for the bearers were afraid he would expose their doings. On one day he despatched no fewer than forty-two--enough, no doubt, to form a large volume; none of these even arrived at Zanzibar, so that they must have been purposely destroyed. The slave-traders of Urungu and Itawa, where he had been, were gentlemen compared with those of Ujiji, who resembled the Kilwa and Portuguese, and with whom trading was simply a system of murder. Here lay the cause of Livingstone's unexampled difficulties at this period of his life; he was dependent on men who were not only knaves of the first magnitude, but who had a special animosity against him, and a special motive to deceive, rob, and obstruct him in every possible way.

After considerable deliberation he decided to go to Manyuema, in order to examine the river Lualaba, and determine the direction of its flow. This would settle the question of the watershed, and in four or five months, if he should get guides and canoes, his work would be done. On setting out from Ujiji he first crossed the lake, and then proceeded inland on foot. He was still weak from illness, and his lungs were so feeble that to walk up-hill made him pant. He became stronger, however, as he went on, refreshed doubtless by the interesting country through which he passed, and the aspect of the people, who were very different from the tribes on the coast.

On the 21st September he arrived at Bambarré, in Manyuema, the village of the Chief Moenékuss. He found the people in a state of great isolation from the rest of the world, with nothing to trust to but charms and idols,--both being bits of wood. He made the acquaintance of the soko or gorilla, not a very social animal, for it always tries to bite off the ends of its captor's fingers and toes. Neither is it particularly intellectual, for its nest shows no more contrivance than that of a cushat dove. The curiosity of the people was very great, and sometimes it took an interesting direction. "Do people die with you?" asked two intelligent young men. "Have you no charm against death? Where do people go after death?" Livingstone spoke to them of the great Father, and of their prayers to Him who hears the cry of his children; and they thought this to be natural.

He rested at Bambarré till the 1st of November, and then went westward till he reached the Luamo River, and was within ten miles of its confluence with the Lualaba. He found the country surpassingly beautiful: "Palms crown the highest heights of the mountains, and their gracefully-bent fronds wave beautifully in the wind. Climbers of cable size in great numbers are hung among the gigantic trees; many unknown wild fruits abound, some the size of a child's head, and strange birds and monkeys are everywhere. The soil is excessively rich, and the people, though isolated by old feuds that are never settled, cultivate largely."

The country was very populous, and Livingstone so excited the curiosity of the people that he could hardly get quit of the crowds. It was not so uninteresting to be stared at by the women, but he was wearied with the ugliness of the men. Palm-toddy did not inspire them with any social qualities, but made them low and disagreeable. They had no friendly feeling for him, and could not be inspired with any. They thought that he and his people were like the Arab traders, and they would not do anything for them. It was impossible to procure a canoe for navigating the Lualaba, so that there was nothing for it but to return to Bambarré, which was reached on the 19th December, 1869.

A long letter to his son Thomas (Town of Moenékuss, Manyuema Country, 24th September, 1869) gives a retrospect of this period, and indeed, in a sense, of his life:

"My dear Tom,--I begin a letter, though I have no prospect of being able to send it off for many months to come. It is to have something in readiness when the hurry usual in preparing a mail does arrive. I am in the Manyuema Country, about 150 miles west of Ujiji, and at the town of Moenekoos or Moenékuss, a principal chief among the reputed cannibals. His name means 'Lord of the light-gray parrot with a red tail,' which abounds here, and he points away still further west to the country of the real cannibals. His people laugh, and say, 'Yes, we eat the flesh of men,' and should they see the inquirer to be credulous, enter into particulars. A black stuff smeared on the cheeks is the sign of mourning, and they told one of my people who believes all they say that it is animal charcoal made of the bones of the relatives they have eaten. They showed him the skull of one recently devoured, and he pointed it out to me in triumph. It was the skull of a gorilla, here called 'soko,' and this they do eat. They put a bunch of bananas in his way, and hide till he comes to take them, and spear him. Many of the Arabs believe firmly in the cannibal propensity of the Manyuema. Others who have lived long among them, and are themselves three-fourths African blood, deny it. I suspect that this idea must go into oblivion with those of people who have no knowledge of fire, of the Supreme Being, or of language. The country abounds in food,--goats, sheep, fowls, buffaloes, and elephants: maize, holcuserghum, cassaba, sweet potatoes, and other farinaceous eatables, and with ground-nuts, palm-oil, palms, and other fat-yielding nuts, bananas, plantains, sugar-cane in great plenty. So there is little inducement to eat men, but I wait for further evidence.
"Not knowing how your head has fared, I sometimes feel greatly distressed about you, and if I could be of any use I would leave my work unfinished to aid you. But you will have every medical assistance that can be rendered, and I cease not to beg the Lord who healeth his people to be gracious to your infirmity.
"The object of my Expedition is the discovery of the sources of the Nile. Had I known all the hardships, toil, and time involved, I would of been of the mind of St. Mungo, of Glasgow, of whom the song says that he let the Molendinar Burn 'rin by,' when he could get something stronger. I would have let the sources 'rin by' to Egypt, and never been made 'drumly' by my plashing through them. But I shall make this country and people better known. 'This,' Professor Owen said to me, 'is the first step; the rest will in due time follow.' By different agencies the Great Ruler is bringing all things into a focus. Jesus is gathering all things unto Himself, and He is daily becoming more and more the centre of the world's hopes and of the world's fears. War brought freedom to 4,000,000 of the most hopeless and helpless slaves. The world never saw such fiendishness as that with which the Southern slaveocracy clung to slavery. No power in this world or the next would ever make them relax their iron grasp. The lie had entered into their soul. Their cotton was King. With it they would force England and France to make them independent, because without it the English and French must starve. Instead of being made a nation, they made a nation of the North. War has elevated and purified the Yankees, and now they have the gigantic task laid at their doors to elevate and purify 4,000,000 of slaves. I earnestly hope that the Northerners may not be found wanting in their portion of the superhuman work. The day for Africa is yet to come. Possibly the freed men may be an agency in elevating their fatherland.
"England is in the rear. This affair in Jamaica brought out the fact of a large infusion of bogiephobia in the English. Frightened in early years by their mothers with 'Bogie Blackman,' they were terrified out of their wits by a riot, and the sensation writers, who act the part of the 'dreadful boys' who frightened aunts, yelled out that emancipation was a mistake. 'The Jamaica negroes were as savage as when they left Africa.' They might have put it much stronger by saying, as the rabble that attended Tom Sayers's funeral, or that collects at every execution at Newgate. But our golden age is not in the past. It is in the future--in the good time coming yet for Africa and for the world.
"The task I undertook was to examine the watershed of South Central Africa. This was the way Sir Roderick put it, and though he mentioned it as the wish of the Geographical Council, I suspect it was his own idea; for two members of the Society wrote out 'instructions' for me, and the watershed was not mentioned. But scientific words were used which the writers evidently did not understand.
"The examination of the watershed contained the true scientific mode of procedure, and Sir Roderick said to me: 'You will be the discoverer of the sources of the Nile,' I shaped my course for a path across the north end of Lake Nyassa, but to avoid the certainty of seeing all my attendants bolting at the first sight of, the wild tribes there, the Nindi, I changed off to go round the south end, and if not, cross the middle. What I feared for the north took place in the south when the Johanna men heard of the Mazitu, though we were 150 miles from the marauders, and I offered to go due west till past their beat. They were terrified, and ran away as soon as they saw my face turned west. I got carriers from village to village, and got on nicely with people who had never engaged in the slave-trade; but it was slow work. I came very near to the Mazitu three times, but obtained information in time to avoid them. Once we were taken for Mazitu ourselves, and surrounded by a crowd of excited savages. They produced a state of confusion and terror, and men fled hither and thither with the fear of death on them. Casembe would not let me go into his southern district till he had sent men to see that the Mazitu, or, as they are called in Lunda, the Watuta, had left. Where they had been all the food was swept off, and we suffered cruel hunger. We had goods to buy with, but the people had nothing to sell, and were living on herbs and mushrooms. I had to feel every step of the way, and generally was groping in the dark. No one knew anything beyond his own district, and who cared where the rivers ran? Casembe said, when I was going to Lake Bangweolo: 'One piece of water was just like another (it is the Bangweolo water), but as your chief desired you to visit that one, go to it. If you see a traveling party going north, join it. If not, come back to me and I will send you safely along my path by Moero;' and gave me a man's load of a fish like whitebait. I gradually gained more light on the country, and slowly and surely saw the problem of the fountains of the Nile developing before my eyes. The vast volume of water draining away to the north made me conjecture that I had been working at the sources of the Congo too. My present trip to Manyuema proves that all goes to the river of Egypt. In fact, the head-waters of the Nile are gathered into two or three arms, very much as was depicted by Ptolemy in the second century of our era. What we moderns can claim is rediscovery of what had fallen into oblivion, like the circumnavigation of Africa by the Phoenican admiral of one of the Pharaohs, B.C. 600. He was not believed, because 'he had the sun on his right hand in going round from east to west.' Though to us this stamps his tale as genuine, Ptolemy was not believed, because his sources were between 10 and 12 north latitude, and collected into two or three great head branches. In my opinion, his informant must have visited them.
"I cared nothing for money, and contemplated spending my life as a hard-working, poor missionary. By going into the country beyond Kuruman we pleased the Directors, but the praises they bestowed excited envy. Mamma and you all had hard times. The missionaries at Kuruman, and south of it, had comfortable houses and gardens. They could raise wheat, pumpkins, maize, at very small expense, and their gardens yielded besides apples, pears, apricots, peaches, quinces, oranges, grapes, almonds, walnuts, and all vegetables, for little more than the trouble of watering. A series or droughts compelled us to send for nearly all our food 270 miles off. Instead of help we had to pay the uttermost farthing for everything, and got bitter envy besides. Many have thought that I was inflated by the praises I had lavished upon me, but I made it a rule never to read anything of praise. I am thankful that a kind Providence has enabled me to do what will reflect honor on my children, and show myself a stout-hearted servant of Him from whom comes every gift. None of you must become mean, craven-hearted, untruthful, or dishonest, for if you do, you don't inherit it from me. I hope that you have selected a profession that suits your taste. It will make you hold up your head among men, and is your most serious duty. I shall not live long, And it would not be well to rely on my influence. I could help you a little while living, but have little else but what people call a great name to bequeath afterward. I am nearly toothless, and in my second childhood. The green maize was in one part the only food we could get with any taste. I ate the hard fare, and was once horrified by finding most of my teeth loose. They never fastened again, and generally became so loose as to cause pain. I had to extract them, and did so by putting on a strong thread with what sailors call a clove-hitch, tie the other end to a stump above or below, as the tooth was upper or lower, strike the thread with a heavy pistol or stick, and the tooth dangled at the stump, and no pain was felt. Two upper front teeth are thus out, and so many more, I shall need a whole set of artificials. I may here add that the Manyuema stole the bodies of slaves which were buried, till a threat was used. They said the hyenas had exhumed the dead, but a slave was cast out by Banyamwezi, and neither hyenas nor men touched it for seven days. The threat was effectual. I think that they are cannibals, but not ostentatiously so. The disgust expressed by native traders has made them ashamed. Women never partook of human flesh. Eating sokos or gorillas must have been a step in the process of teaching them to eat men. The sight of a soko nauseates me. He is so hideously ugly, I can conceive no other use for him than sitting for a portrait of Satan. I have lost many months by rains, refusal of my attendants to go into a canoe, and irritable eating ulcers on my feet from wading in mud instead of sailing. They are frightfully common, and often kill slaves. I am recovering, and hope to go down Lualaba, which I would call Webb River or Lake; touch then another Lualaba, which I will name Young's River or Lake; and then by the good hand of our Father above turn homeward through Karagwe. As ivory-trading is here like gold-digging, I felt constrained to offer a handsome sum of money and goods to my friend Mohamad Bogharib for men. It was better to do this than go back to Ujiji, and then come over the whole 260 miles. I would have waited there for men from Zanzibar, but the authority at Ujiji behaved so oddly about my letters, I fear they never went to the coast. The worthless slaves I have saw that I was at their mercy, for no Manyuema will go into the next district, and they behaved as low savages who have been made free alone can. Their eagerness to enslave and kill their own countrymen is distressing....
"Give my love to Oswell and Anna Mary and the Aunties. I have received no letter from any of you since I left home. The good Lord bless you all, and be gracious to you.--Affectionately yours,
"DAVID LIVINGSTONE."

Another letter is addressed to Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann, September, 1869. He enters at considerable length into his reasons for the supposition that he had discovered, on the watershed, the true sources of the Nile. He refers in a generous spirit to the discoveries of other travelers, mistaken though he regarded their views on the sources, and is particularly complimentary to Miss Tinné:

"A Dutch lady whom I never saw, and of whom I know nothing save from scraps in the newspapers, moves my sympathy more than any other. By her wise foresight in providing a steamer, and pushing on up the river after the severest domestic affliction--the loss by fever of her two aunts--till after she was assured by Speke and Grant that they had already discovered in Victoria Nyanza the sources she sought, she proved herself a genuine explorer, and then by trying to go S.W. on land. Had they not, honestly enough of course, given her their mistaken views, she must inevitably, by boat or on land, have reached the head-waters of the Nile. I cannot conceive of her stopping short of Bangweolo. She showed such indomitable pluck she must be a descendant of Van Tromp, who swept the English Channel till killed by our Blake, and whose tomb every Englishman who goes to Holland is sure to visit.
"We great he-beasts say, 'Exploration was not becoming her sex.' Well, considering that at least 1600 years have elapsed since Ptolemy's informants reached this region, and kings, emperors, and all the great men of antiquity longed in vain to know the fountains, exploration does not seem to have become the other sex either. She came much further up than the two centurions sent by Nero Caesar.
"I have to go down and see where the two arms unite,--the lost city Meroe ought to be there,--then get back to Ujiji to get a supply of goods which I have ordered from Zanzibar, turn bankrupt after I secure them, and let my creditors catch me if they can, as I finish up by going round outside and south of all the sources, so that I may be sure no one will cut me out and say he found other sources south of mine. This is one reason for my concluding trip; another is to visit the underground houses in stone, and the copper mines of Katanga which have been worked for ages (Malachite). I have still a seriously long task before me. My letters have been delayed inexplicably, so I don't know my affairs. If I have a salary I don't know it, though the Daily Telegraph abused me for receiving it when I had none. Of this alone I am sure--my friends will all wish me to make a complete work of it before I leave, and in their wish I join. And it is better to go in now than to do it in vain afterward."