Charles Livingstone is, as far as we know, the only person who has ever seen both Niagara and Mosi-oa-tunya, and he thinks the African waterfall the more magnificent. Perhaps it would be so, were there any one point, as at Niagara, from which the whole can be taken in at one view. But this is not the case here. The illustration on page 520 is an imaginary bird's-eye view, showing the scene as it would appear viewed from a balloon. The diagram on page 521 shows the conformation, by measurement, of the zig-zag gorge.

Sekeletu, according to promise, furnished Livingstone with one hundred and thirty Makololo, bearing much ivory, to accompany him to the coast, commissioning him to sell it and to buy a sugar-mill, a good rifle, different kinds of clothing, brass wire, beads, and "any other beautiful thing." Their way laid at first through the country of the Batokas, a fierce tribe who had a few years before attempted to "eat up" Sebituane, but with ill-success, for he dispersed them and took away their cattle. Their once populous country was now desolate. At one of their deserted villages Livingstone counted five-and-forty human skulls fixed upon stakes, trophies of some old war. This country passed, the natives were friendly, and gladly supplied all the wants of the strangers.

About the middle of December, when half-way to the coast, they came upon the first traces of Europeans—a deserted town, with a ruined church, in which was a broken bell, inscribed with a cross and the letters I. H. S. Byand-by they found the natives in possession of many articles of European manufacture, and before long Livingstone was able to buy a quantity of cotton cloth marked "Lawrence Mills, Lowell." And so on until March 2, 1856, when the Ponguese town of Tete, three hundred miles from the coast, was reached, and the long journey was practically

over.

Here Livingstone left his Makololo companions, promising that nothing but death should prevent him from returning and taking them back to their own country. "Nay, father," said the trusting people, "you will not die; you will return, and take us back to Sekeletu." Meanwhile the commandant at Tette promised that the strangers should be well cared for a promise which, as the sequel will show, was ill performed.

Two of the Makololo begged Livingstone to take them with him to England. He at last consented to take Sekwebu, their leader.

After remaining at Tette until the sickly season on the coast was over, Livingstone and Sekwebu descended to the mouth of the river, where an English vessel was awaiting him with money and supplies. It was so long since he had heard a word of English that he could at first scarcely speak a word of his native tongue. When once at sea, and out of sight of land, poor Sekwebu became utterly bewildered. "What a strange country this is," he said; "all water." At length he became insane, and tried to jump overboard. Livingstone soothed him by saying, "Come, Sekwebu, we are going to Ma-Robert." This was Livingstone's wife, who had while in their country become a great favorite, and was called by them Ma- Robert, "Mother of Robert," that being the name of her eldest sou. "Oh, yes," he said; "where is she, and where is Robert ?" But soon a fresh paroxysm of madness seized him. He tried to spear one of the crew, and then leaped overboard, and actually pulled himself down, hand over hand, by the cable. His body could never be recovered.

Livingstone reached England on the 12th of December, 1856, just four and a-half years after he had parted with

exampled awaited him at home; and he soon set about the preparation of a narrative of his exploration. This he found hard work. "I think," he said, when it was done, "that I would rather cross the Continent of Africa again than attempt to write another book." He was to live to do both.

V. THE EXPEDITION TO THE ZAMBESI.

SO GENERAL was the interest aroused by Livingstone's labors that the British Government in 1858 fitted out an expedition under his charge for still further explorations. The immediate sphere of these was to be the Zambesi River, its mouths and tributaries, with a view to their being used as highways for commerce and Christianity to pass to the vast interior of Africa. The principal members of this expedition were Livingstone himself, who was named Consul-General for Southwestern Africa; Charles, Livingstone's younger brother; and Dr. Kirk, a physician and naturalist. The main objects of this expedition, as officially laid down, were:

"To extend the knowledge already attained of the geography and mineral and agricultural resources of Eastern and Central Africa; to improve our acquaintance with the inhabitants; and to endeavor to engage them to apply themselves to industrial pursuits, and to the cultivation of their lands with a view to the production of raw material to be exported to England in return for British manufactures. It is to be hoped, also, that by encouraging the natives to occupy themselves in the development of the resources of the country, a considerable advance may be made toward the extinction of the slave-trade; as they would soon discover that the former would be more profitable than the latter.”

A secondary, but by no means an unimportant, object of this expedition, in Livingstone's view, was that he should conduct the Makololo, whom he had two years before left at Tette, back to their own country. This Zambesi exploration fairly began in May, 1858, when the east coast was reached. It was concluded in April, 1864, although early in the preceding July positive instructions had been received from the British Government for the withdrawal of the party. This expedition, organized on a very liberal scale, added very considerably to our store of geographical and ethnological knowledge; but in other respects it must be pronounced a failure, but from no fault on the part of Livingstone or his associates. No raw material has as yet been furnished to European manufacturers from the region explored, although a source of abundant supply of cotton and sugar at some future day is clearly indicated; and the infamous slave-trade from this region is to-day more destructive than when Livingstone was there.

Our ordinary maps of this region are so imperfect as to be almost useless. We shall endeavor to give some general idea of its topography. From the mouths of the Zambesi River, in about latitude 19° S., and longitude 37° E., draw a line due westward to the meridian of 24o, on the same parallel of latitude. This point, about halfway across the continent, marks Livingstone's furthest westward advance in this expedition. Now upon this straight line draw another curved line, which will fairly represent the course of the Zambesi, if one bears in mind that it stands for a distance of a thousand miles. Probably your map will show a river, most likely without a name, emptying into the Zambesi about a hundred miles from its mouth. This is the river Shire. From its mouth draw another line due north five hundred miles long, and this will stand for the course of the Shire and the long, narrow lake Nyassa of which it is the outlet. This lake was first really discovered by Livingstone, although old Portuguese

maps indicate the existence of a lake somewhere hereabout. But upon these maps all the great African lakes appear to have been confounded into one.

Now, suppose that for more than four years Livingstone and his associates made various journeys, sometimes on the rivers and sometimes on foot, throughout the region, and we shall have something like an idea of the extent of the explorations; it being borne in mind that "the chief object in view was, not to discover objects of nine days' wonder, to gaze at and be gazed at by the barbarians, but to note the climate, the natural productions, the local diseases, the natives, and their relations to the rest of the world." The long land journeys were of course made on foot; the river journeys mainly in canoes; for although the expedition was provided with a small steamer built expressly for the purpose, it proved in every way a failure. This little steamer was named the Ma-Robert, in honor of the wife of Livingstone; but he got to styling her The Asthmatic, on account of her terrible wheezing. It took several hours to get up steam at all; and when steam was up she made so little headway that the natives easily paddled past her in their canoes. She was, morover, built of a newly invented kind of steel plates, a sixteenth of an inch thick, duly patented, but never before tried. Some unexplained chemical action of the water on these plates caused numerous minute holes, from which branches radiated in every direction, so that the bottom was soon like a sieve. Every little while the vessel had to be laid up in order to stop the larger holes; but she was no sooner afloat than new ones made their appearance. In the end the Ma-Robert ran upon a mudbank, and was abandoned.

The Zambesi enters the ocean by several months, inclosing an unhealthy delta, which is admirably adapted to the culture of the sugar-cane. Livingstone supposed-oversanguinely we think-that, if properly cultivated, it would supply all Europe with sugar. The Portuguese claim the coast hereabouts for a thousand miles, and the country for an undetermined distance in the interior; but the only tangible evidences of their dominion are a few ruined forts and three or four settlements, Tette being the upper one. The Zulus claim all on the south side of the river, and the Portuguese practically admit this by rendering a tribute, which they call "having the natives in their pay." The Portuguese have their border troubles. One of these culminated about the time when Livingstone arrived. A half-caste, named Mariano, had built a stockade near the mouth of the Shire, where he established himself as a robber in general and a slave-hunter in particular. Somehow he and the Portuguese got into a fight, of which Livingstone was a witness. The upshot was that Mariano was captured and condemned to three years' imprisonment and a fine. He was, however, released from prison in order that he might go home for money to pay his fine. Instead of doing this, he renewed his old ways of kidnapping; and when Livingstone left the country, three years later, Mariano was in the high tide of success as a slave-hunter, sending his victims for sale to the Portuguese ports.

The most interesting portion of this expedition was the journey which Livingstone made from Tette to conduct the Makololo back to their homes near the Fails of Mosi-oatunya. Things had not gone well with these people. The promise of the Portuguese authorities for their protection had been ill-kept. Thirty of them had died of the smallpox, and six had been murdered by a half-caste chief whom they had gone to visit. Of the others, some had taken up with slave women, had children, and thought they were as well off here as they would be at home. Others had grown indolent and drunken. The journey was commenced on the 15th of May, 1860. They had not gone many miles

before thirty of the men-a third of the whole numberturned back.

66

The long journey of six or seven hundred miles occupied just two months. It had fared ill with Sekeletu and his tribe. He had manifested little of the capacity of his great father. He had been attacked with leprosy, and would not show himself to his subjects. "In the days of the great Lion," said one, we had chiefs and elders to carry on the government, and the great chief knew them all, and everything they did, and the whole country was wisely ruled; but Sekeletu knows nothing of what his underlings do, and they care nothing for him, and the Makololo power is fast passing away.' The foreboding proved to be prophecy. Sekeletu died four years after; a war for the succession broke out. Most of the Makololo returned to their ancient homes, near Lake Ngami; the subject tribes revolted, and the powerful native State founded by Sebituane came to an end.

Livingstone and his two white companions returned to Tette, going most of the way in canoes down the Zambesi, whose course was now, for the first time, traced. The explorations in the valley of the Shire were now resumed. But a terrible change had come over that region which less than two years before had worn an aspect of industry, plenty, and almost pastoral quiet. Some of the fierce neighboring tribes, incited by Portuguese slave-traders, had made a fierce onset upon the region, and the explorers saw gang after gang of the poor people driven off as slaves to the Portuguese settlements. The men were fastened together in pairs by the goree or slave-stick. This consists of a branch, six or seven feet long, with a fork at one end, which is placed upon the neck of the slave; an iron rod is then riveted through the ends of the fork. Two of these sticks are lashed together endwise, with a man fastened in each. The women, some of them carrying infants, are chained to the men, while the children who are able to walk go by the sides of their parents.

"No words," says Livingstone, "can convey an adequate idea of the widespread desolation which the once pleasant Shire Valley now presented. Instead of smiling villages and crowds of people, scarcely a soul was to be seen. A drought had swept over the land after the slave-hunting panic had passed over it. Large masses of the people had fled down to the Shire, only anxious to get the river between them and their enemies. Most of the food had been left behind, and starvation had cut off so many that the remainder were too few to bury the dead. The corpses we saw floating down the river were only a remnant of those that had perished, whom their friends could not bury nor the over-gorged crocodiles devour. Whenever we took a walk human skeletons were seen in every direction; and it was painfully interesting to observe the different postures in which the poor wretches had breathed their last. A whole heap had been thrown down a slope behind a village where the fugitives often crossed the river. Many had ended their misery under shady trees, others under projecting crags in the hills; while others lay in their huts, with closed doors, which, when opened, disclosed the moldering corpses, with the poor rags still around the loins."

This was Livingstone's first experience of the horrors of slave-hunting upon a large scale; for hitherto he had been only in regions where it had scarcely penetrated. Indeed, slave hunting in Southern Central Africa is of very modern date. Incited by Arabs from the eastern coast, and by Portuguese from the eastern and western, it has now reached the very centre of the Continent from both directions, as we learn from Cameron; and unless a speedy end be somehow put to it, the whole vast region will in a few years become depopulated. The British Consul reports that nineteen thousand slaves pass annually through the custom-house of Zanzibar alone. These belong only to the Arab traders. The number sent from Portuguese ports on the east coast we presume to be still greater; and

ON THE RIVER SHIKE.

mouth of the Zambesi, bringing a number of ladies who were to join a mission proposed to be established near Lake Nyassa. Among them was the wife of Livingstone. They proceeded up the river. But the reunion with her husband, from whom she had been parted for the whole eight years of his travels, was to be brief. In three months she was no more. He tells with touching brevity the story of her death:

"During unhealthy April the fever was more severe in Shupanga and Mazaro than usual. We had several cases on board. They were quickly cured; but, from our being in the Delta, as quickly returned. About the middle of the month Mrs. Livingstone was prostrated by this disease, which was accompanied by violent vomiting. Nothing is known which can allay this most distressing symptom, which renders medicine of no avail, as it is instantly rejected. She received whatever medical aid could be rendered by Dr. Kirk, but became unconscious, and her eyes were closed in the sleep of death as the sun set on the Christian Sabbath, the 27th of April, 1862. A coffin was made during the night; a grave was dug under the branches of the great baobab-tree. With sym

Livingstone says:

"The sight of this desert, but eighteen months ago a wellpeopled valley, now literally strewn with human bones, forced the conviction upon us that the destruction of human life in the Middle Passage, however great, constitutes but a small portion of the waste. We never realized the atrocious nature of the traffic until we saw it at the fountain-head. Besides those actually captured, thousands are killed and die of their wounds and of famine, driven from their villages by the slave-raid proper; while other thousands perish in internecine wars waged for slaves with their own clansmen and neighbors."

Cameron's revelations of what he saw of the Portuguese atrocities toward the west coast are still more terrible. At one time he saw a fresh gang of a little more than a hundred women and children brought in to the slave caravan with which he was traveling; and he estimates that to secure these not less than ten villages, with an aggregate population of fully two thousand souls, had been destroyed; the majority of the people being either killed outright or driven into the jungle to perish by famine or wild beasts. The slave-hunters owe their power solely to the possession of firearms; and we believe that the only way to put an end to their ravages is to supply the tribes with similar weapons. A few thousand rifles scattered through the interior would do more to put down slavehunting than could be effected by all the fleets of the civilized world; for, in point of native courage the hunted tribes are vastly superior to the brutal Arabs and Portuguese. Indeed, as Cameron had opportunity of knowing, the slave-hunters on the west coast keep clear of the districts where the people are, however sparingly, supplied with guns.

bereaved husband in burying his dead; and the seamen kindly voluntered to mount guard for some nights at the spot where her body rests in hope. Those who are not aware how this brave, good English wife made a delightful home at Kolobeng, a thousand miles from the Cape, and as the daughter of Moffatt and a Christian lady, exercised most beneficial influence over the rude tribes of the interior, may wonder that she should have braved the dangers and toils of this down-trodden land. She knew them all, and in the disinterested and dutiful attempt to renew her labors was called to her rest instead. Fiat Domine, voluntas tua.""

Four and a half years later, Livingstone fairly started on that journey from which he was never to return, reached the hills from which he could look down upon the Lake and the valley of the Shire; and he then made in his journal this record:

"Many hopes have been disappointed here. Far down on the right bank of the Zambesi lies the dust of her whose death changed all my future prospects; and now, instead of the slavetrade being checked by lawful commerce on the Lake, slave-dhows prosper. The good Bishop Mackenzie sleeps far down the Shire, and with him all present hope of the Gospel being introduced into Central Africa. But all will come right some day, though I may not live to participate in the joy, or even see the commencement of better times."

The work of the expedition lasted two years more, another small steamer, the Lady Nyassa, having been sent out to replace the wheezy little "Asthmatic." But orders for recall had been given, and at the close of April, 1864, Livingstone sailed in the Lady. Nyassa for Bombay, an ocean voyage of two thousand five hundred miles. He himself acted as navigator, the whole complement on board being four Europeans and nine natives, two of whom were boys. The two boys were placed in a mission school st Bombay. They are the Chuma and Sasi, whom we shall