Another delay was caused before they went inward, from their having to wait for a season suitable for hunting, as the party had to be kept in food. The mail from England had been lost, and they had the bitter disappointment of losing a year's correspondence from home. The following portions of a letter to the Secretary of the Committee for a Universities Mission gives a view of the situation at this time:
"RIVER ZAMBESI, 26th Jan., 1860.
"The defects we have unfortunately experienced in the 'Ma-Robert,' or rather the 'Asthmatic,' are so numerous that it would require a treatise as long as a lawyer's specification of any simple subject to give you any idea of them, and they have inflicted so much toil that a feeling of sickness comes over me when I advert to them.
"No one will ever believe the toil we have been put to in woodcutting. The quantity consumed is enormous, and we cannot get sufficient for speed into the furnace. It was only a dogged determination not to be beaten that carried me through.... But all will come out right at last. We are not alone, though truly we deserve not his presence. He encourages the trust that is granted by the word, 'I am with you, even unto the end of the world.'...
"It is impossible for you to conceive how backward everything is here, and the Portuguese are not to be depended upon; their establishments are only small penal settlements, and as no women are sent out, the state of morals is frightful. The only chance of success is away from them; nothing would prosper in their vicinity. After all, I am convinced that were Christianity not divine, it would be trampled out by its professors. Dr. Kirk, Mr. C. Livingstone, and Mr. Rae, with two English seamen, do well. We are now on our way up the river to the Makololo country, but must go overland from Kebrabasa, or in a whaler. We should be better able to plan our course if our letters had not been lost. We have never been idle, and do not mean to be. We have been trying to get the Portuguese Government to acknowledge free-trade on this river, and but for long delay in our letters the negotiation might have been far advanced. I hope Lord John Russell will help in this matter, and then we must have a small colony or missionary and mercantile settlement. If this our desire is granted, it is probable we shall have no cause to lament our long toil and detention here. My wife's letters, too, were lost, so I don't know how or where she is. Our separation, and the work I have been engaged in, were not contemplated, but they have led to our opening a path into the fine cotton-field in the North. You will see that the discoveries of Burton and Speke confirm mine respecting the form of the continent and its fertility. It is an immense field. I crave the honor of establishing a focus of Christianity in it, but should it not be granted, I will submit as most unworthy. I have written Mr. Venn twice, and from yours I see something is contemplated in Cambridge.... If young men come to this country, they must lay their account with doing everything for themselves. They must not expect to find influence at once, and all the countries near to the Portuguese have been greatly depopulated. We are now ascending this river without vegetables, and living on salt beef and pork. The slave-trade has done its work, for formerly all kinds of provisions could be procured at every point, and at the cheapest rate. We cannot get anything for either love or money, in a country the fertility of which is truly astonishing.
A few more general topics are touched on in a letter to Mr. Braithwaite:
"I am sorry to hear of the death of Mr. Sturge. He wrote me a long letter on the 'Peace principle,' and before I could study it carefully, it was mislaid. I wrote him from Tette, as I did not wish him to suppose I neglected him, and mentioned the murder of the six Makololo and other things, as difficulties in the way of adopting his views, as they were perfectly unarmed, and there was no feud between the tribes. I fear that my letter may not have reached him alive. The departure of Sir Fowell Buxton and others is very unexpected. Sorry to see the loss of Dr. Bowen, of Sierra Leone--a good man and a true. But there is One who ever liveth to make intercession for us, and to carry on his own work. A terrible war that was in Italy, and the peace engenders more uneasy forebodings than any peace ever heard of. It is well that God and not the devil reigns, and will bring his own purposes to pass, right through the midst of the wars and passions of men. Have you any knowledge of a famous despatch written by Sir George Grey (late of the Cape), on the proper treatment of native tribes? I wish to study it.
"Tell your children that if I could get hold of a hippopotamus I would eat it rather than allow it to eat me. We see them often, but before we get near enough to get a shot they dive down, and remain hidden till we are past. As for lions, we never see them, sometimes hear a roar or two, but that is all, and I go on the plan put forth by a little girl in Scotland who saw a cow coming to her in a meadow, 'O boo! boo! you no hurt me, I no hurt you.'"
At Tette one of his occupations was to fit up a sugar-mill, the gift of Miss Whately, of Dublin, and some friends. To that lady he writes a long letter of nineteen pages. He tells her he had just put up her beautiful sugar-mill, to show the natives what could be done by machinery. Then he adverts to the wonderful freedom from sickness that his party had enjoyed in the delta of the Zambesi, and proceeds to give an account of the Shiré Valley and its people. He finds ground for a favorable contrast between the Shiré natives and the Tette Portuguese:
"They (the natives) have fences made to guard the women from the alligators, all along the Shiré: at Tette they have none, and two women were taken past our vessel in the mouths of these horrid brutes. The number of women taken is so great as to make the Portuguese swear every time they speak of them, and yet, when I proposed to the priest to make a collection for a fence, and offered twenty dollars, he only smiled. You Protestants don't know all the good you do by keeping our friends of the only true and infallible Church up to their duty. Here, and in Angola, we see how it is, when they are not provoked--if not to love, to good works....
"On telling the Makololo that the sugar-mill had been sent to Sekelétu by a lady, who collected a sum among other ladies to buy it, they replied, 'O na le pelu'--she has a heart. I was very proud of it, and so were they.
"... With reference to the future, I am trying to do what I did before--obey the injunction, 'Commit thy way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.' And I hope that He will make some use of me. My attention is now directed specially to the fact that there is no country better adapted for producing the raw materials of English manufactures than this....
"See to what a length I have run. I have become palaverist. I beg you to present my respectful salutation to the Archbishop and Mrs. Whately, and should you meet any of the kind contributors, say how thankful I am to them all."
From Tette he writes to Sir Roderick Murchison, 7th February, 1860, urging his plan for a steamer on Lake Nyassa: "If Government furnishes the means, all right; if not, I shall spend my book-money on it. I don't need to touch the children's fund, and mine could not be better spent. People who are born rich sometimes become miserable from a fear of becoming poor; but I have the advantage, you see, in not being afraid to die poor. If I live, I must succeed in what I have undertaken; death alone will put a stop to my efforts."
A month after he writes to the same friend, from Kongone, 10th March, 1860, that he is sending Rae home for a vessel:
"I tell Lord John Russell that he (Rae) may thereby do us more service than he can now do in a worn-out steamer, with 35 patches, covering at least 100 holes. I say to his Lordship, that after we have, by patient investigation and experiment, at the risk of life, rendered the fever not more formidable than a common cold; found access, from a good harbor on the coast, to the main stream; and discovered a pathway into the magnificent Highland lake region, which promises so fairly for our commerce in cotton, and for our policy in suppressing the trade in slaves, I earnestly hope that he will crown our efforts by securing our free passage through those parts of the Zambesi and Shiré of which the Portuguese make no use, and by enabling us to introduce civilization in a manner which will extend the honor and influence of the English name."
In his communications with the Government at home, Livingstone never failed to urge the importance of their securing the free navigation of the Zambesi. The Portuguese on the river were now beginning to get an inkling of his drift, and to feel indignant at any countenance he was receiving from their own Government.