Toward the end of 1870, before the date of this letter, he had so far recovered that, though feeling the want of medicine as much as of men, he thought of setting out, in order to reach and explore the Lualaba, having made a bargain with Mohamad, for £270, to bring him to his destination. But now he heard that Syde bin Habib, Dugumbé, and others were on the way from Ujiji, perhaps bringing letters and medicines for him. He cannot move till they arrive; another weary time. "Sorely am I perplexed, and grieve and mourn."
The New Year 1871 passes while he is at Bambarré, with its prayer that he might be permitted to finish his task. At last, on 4th February, ten of the men despatched to him from the coast arrive, but only to bring a fresh disappointment. They were slaves, the property of Banians, who were British subjects! and they brought only one letter! Forty had been lost. There had been cholera at Zanzibar, and many of the porters sent by Dr. Kirk had died of it. The ten men came with a lie in their mouth; they would not help him, swearing that the Consul told them not to go forward, but to force Livingstone back. On the 10th they mutinied, and had to receive an advance of pay. It was apparent that they had been instructed by their Banian masters to baffle him in every way, so that their slave-trading should not be injured by his disclosures. Their two head-men, Shereef and Awathe, had refused to come farther than Ujiji, and were reveling in his goods there. Dr. Livingstone never ceased to lament and deplore that the men who had been sent to him were so utterly unsuitable. One of them actually formed a plot for his destruction, which was only frustrated through his being overheard by one whom Livingstone could trust. Livingstone wrote to his friends that owing to the inefficiency of the men, he lost two years of time, about a thousand pounds in money, had some 2000 miles of useless traveling, and was four several times subjected to the risk of a violent death.
At length, having arranged with the men, he sets out on 16th February over a most beautiful country, but woefully difficult to pass through. Perhaps it was hardly a less bitter disappointment to be told, on the 25th, that the Lualaba flowed west-southwest, so that after all it might be the Congo.
On the 29th March Livingstone arrived at Nyangwe, on the banks of the Lualaba. This was the farthest point westward that he reached in his last Expedition.
The slave-trade here he finds to be as horrible as in any other part of Africa. He is heart-sore for human blood He is threatened, bullied, and almost attacked. In some places, however, the rumor spreads that he makes no slaves, and he is called "the good one." His men are a ceaseless trouble, and for ever mutinying, or otherwise harassing him. And yet he perseveres in his old kind way, hoping by kindness to gain influence with them. Mohamad's people, he finds, have passed him on the west, and thus he loses a number of serviceable articles he was to get from them, and all the notes made for him of the rivers they had passed. The difficulties and discouragements are so great that he wonders whether, after all, God is smiling on his work.
His own men circulate such calumnious reports against him that he is unable to get canoes for the navigation of the Lualaba. This leads to weeks and months of weary waiting, and yet all in vain; but afterward he finds some consolation on discovering that the navigation was perilous, that a canoe had been lost from the inexperience of her crew in the rapids, so that had he been there, he should very likely have perished, as his canoe would probably have been foremost.
A change of plan was necessary. On 5th July he offered to Dugumbé £400, with all the goods he had at Ujiji besides, for men to replace the Banian slaves, and for the other means of going up the Lomamé to Katanga, then returning and going up Tanganyika to Ujiji. Dugumbé took a little time to consult his friends before replying to the offer.
Meanwhile an event occurred of unprecedented horror, that showed Livingstone that he could not go to Lomamé in the company of Dugumbé. Between Dugumbé's people and another chief a frightful system of pillage, murder, and burning of villages was going on with horrible activity. One bright summer morning, 15th July, when fifteen hundred people, chiefly women, were engaged peacefully in marketing in a village on the banks of the Lualaba, and while Dr. Livingstone was sauntering about, a murderous fire was opened on the people, and a massacre ensued of such measureless atrocity that he could describe it only by saying that it gave him the impression of being in hell. The event was so superlatively horrible, and had such an overwhelming influence on Livingstone, that we copy at full length the description of it given in the Last Journals:
"Before I had got thirty yards out, the discharge of two guns in the middle of the crowd told me that slaughter had begun; crowds dashed off from the place, and threw down their wares in confusion, and ran. At the same time that the three opened fire on the mass of people near the upper end of the market-place, volleys were discharged from a party down near the creek on the panic-stricken women, who dashed at the canoes. These, some fifty or more, were jammed in the creek, and the men forgot their paddles in the terror that seized all. The canoes were not to be got out, for the creek was too small for so many; men and women, wounded by the balls, poured into them, and leaped and scrambled into the water, shrieking A long line of heads in the river showed that great numbers struck out for an island a full mile off; in going toward it they had to put the left shoulder to a current of about two miles an hour; if they had struck away diagonally to the opposite bank, the current would have aided them, and, though nearly three miles off, some would have gained land; as it was, the heads above water showed the long line of those that would inevitably perish.
"Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and perishing. Some of the long line of heads disappeared quietly; whilst other poor creatures threw their arms high, as if appealing to the great Father above, and sank. One canoe took in as many as it could hold, and all paddled with hands and arms; three canoes, got out in haste, picked up sinking friends, till all went down together, and disappeared. One man in a long canoe, which could have held forty or fifty, had clearly lost his head; he had been out in the stream before the massacre began, and now paddled up the river nowhere, and never looked to the drowning. By and by all the heads disappeared; some had turned down stream toward the bank, and escaped. Dugumbé put people into one of the deserted vessls to save those in the water, and saved twenty-one; but one woman refused to be taken on board, from thinking that she was to be made a slave of; she preferred the chance of life by swimming to the lot of a slave. The Bagenya women are expert in the water, as they are accustomed to dive for oysters, and those who went down stream may have escaped, but the Arabs themselves estimated the loss of life at between 330 and 400 souls. The shooting-party near the canoes were so reckless, they killed two of their own people; and a Banyamwezi follower, who got into a deserted canoe to plunder, fell into the water, went down, then came up again, and down to rise no more.
"After the terrible affair in the water, the party of Tagamoio, who was the chief perpetrator, continued to fire on the people there, and fire their villages. As I write I hear the loud wails on the left bank over those who are there slain, ignorant of their many friends now in the depths of Lualaba. Oh, let Thy kingdom come! No one will ever know the exact loss on this bright sultry summer morning; it gave me the impression of being in Hell. All the slaves in the camp rushed at the fugitives on land, and plundered them; women were for hours collecting and carrying loads of what had been thrown down in terror."
The remembrance of this awful scene was never effaced from Livingstone's heart. The accounts of it published in the newspapers at home sent a thrill of horror through the country. It was recorded at great length in a despatch to the Foreign Secretary, and indeed, it became one of the chief causes of the appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the subject of the African slave-trade, and of the mission of Sir Bartle Frere to Africa to concert measures for bringing it to an end.