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called, in the language of the natives, "rivers upon rivers." The Chobe was found to flow into a main channel to the eastward a great trunk river-which, as afterward traced, finds its way, under various names, the Leambye, Secheke, and Zambesi, to the Mozambique Channel and the Indian Ocean. On first visiting its banks, at the end of a remarkably dry season, it presented a very large volume of water, about a quarter of a mile in breadth; and though the banks were from fifteen to twenty feet high, evidence appeared of an annual overflow to the distance of fifteen "When the wind blows," miles from them. says Dr. Livingston, waves of considerable size rise on its surface, and accidents frequently occur in crossing. It was quite calm when I went over in the morning; but as the time for taking an altitude of the sun approached, the waves were running so high that it was only by great persuasion I could induce the people to paddle me back again." But though a fine region, with a large population of blacks, it was evidently unsuitable for the permanent residence of Europeans, owing to the periodical inundations, and consequently malarious climate. Impressed with this conviction, yet bent upon bringing the newly-discovered races within the pale of Christian effort, the intrepid missionary returned with his companions to Kolobeng, and determined upon sending his wife and children to England, in order to devote himself to a more extensive scheme of exploration for the benefit of the tribes in the far interior.

With a left arm that wanted "mending," having been broken in a struggle with a lion which he had shot, and with an affection of the throat that required skillful treatment, Dr. Livingston accompanied his family to Cape Town, took leave of them, and returned northward.

Attended only by natives, he started from Kuruman, taking with him, in a bullock waggon, a pontoon boat brought from the Cape. Before the close of the year 1852 he had regained his former position, but reached it through almost insuperable difficulties. The whole face of external nature was changed. On his last visit the waters were at their lowest level. Now the streams were at the highest point, and the country was deluged. In addition to this difficulty, sudden illness disabled the whole party, with the exception of the

He was obliged,

leader and one lad.
therefore, to proceed in advance with this
lad, in order to obtain help to bring along
the invalids and the wagon. Embarking
in the pontoon on the inundation, they
passed over miles of flooded lands, in search
of the Chobe, and at last discovered it
tumbling along, after having climbed a high
tree to look out. But to reach the stream
required no ordinary toil and endurance.
A broad chevaux-de-frise presented itself,
of Nature's workmanship, consisting of tall
papyrus reeds, and flags, growing out of
the water, the whole interlaced with a con-
volvulus kind of creeper.
Having broke

through this barrier with great labor, drag-
ging the pontoon after them, a "horrid sort
of grass" was encountered, six feet high,
with serrated edges, which cut the hands
cruelly, and made havoc with strong mole-
skin garments. Three days and nights
were spent, constantly wet up to the middle,
in getting through this miserable jungle.
After launching on the river, it soon carried
them down to a village of the Makololo,
to whom it seemed as if the white man
had fallen from the clouds, so unapproach-
able did they consider themselves from
the state of the streams; and yet he had
come as if "riding on a hippopotamus,"
alluding to the pontoon. The necessary
force was speedily dispatched to bring
along the party left behind.

Often as the profusion of animal life had been remarked by the traveler, he was perfectly astonished at the herds of large game in this region; and, never having heard the sound of a rifle, they were perfectly indifferent to the presence of man. Cowper's lines were remembered, and felt to present a life-like picture:

"The beasts that roam over the plain,
My form with indifference see;
They are so unacquainted with man,

Their tameness is shocking to me."
One evening eighty buffaloes, the most
dangerous of all African quadrupeds when
under irritation, slowly defiled before the
camp fire, and the lion's roar was heard in
At such times, when
close proximity.
those occupations which divert the mind
were over for the day, the wanderer must
have felt powerfully the isolation of his
position, cut off completely from the com-
munion of the civilized world, all kindred
spirits hundreds of miles away, alone in
the midst of savages. Though his com-
panions were most eager to serve him, yet,

[graphic][merged small]

as barbarians, they could not understand | They offered no food, except at an enora civilized and Christian man, and inadvertently tried his patience to the utmost by the savagery of their revels and usages. But a conviction of being in the path of duty, which never wavered for a moment, brought freshly to remembrance, in the time of need, the consoling thought: "Yet I am not alone; for the Father is with me."

From this preliminary examination of the river and the country to the northward, Dr. Livingston returned to Linyanti, and, having sent back the party from Kuruman to that station, he set out again toward the north, on the 10th of November, accompanied by twenty-seven native attendants.

Soon after entering upon this new direction, the sorest troubles and greatest dangers of the pilgrimage were experienced. On approaching the bounds of civilization, the extremes of barbarism were encountered; for the native tribes, depraved by the slave trade, received the advancing party as a spoil and a prey.

mous price; they allowed no passage through their villages without exacting a heavy fine; they availed themselves of the meanest pretext to extort a present, and swords and spears were brandished to enforce submission to their rapacity. But for a firm yet calm bearing, and the care of Providence, the traveler would undoubtedly have lost his life. As it was, he had to part with everything, and was in extreme distress, when happily a far-inland Portuguese colonist was met with, by whose assistance he reached Cassange. From this point all his wants were liberally supplied by the colonial authorities, and the party entered Loando in May, 1854, where Mr. Gabriel, her majesty's arbitrator-the only Englishman in the place-hospitably accommodated Dr. Livingston. "I shall never forget," says he, "the delicious pleasure of lying down on his bed, after sleeping six months on the ground." The astonishment of his twenty-seven faithful

attendants on beholding the city, the sea, the cruisers in the harbor, and the novel objects of civilized life, may readily be imagined. They were duly reported on returning to their countrymen in the interior, and have since formed the topic of many a tale to wondering groups on the banks of their native rivers. "Our fathers," said they, "told us that the world has no end. But they were wrong; for, as we traveled on, all at once we came to the world's end, and the world said to us, 'I'm done—there's no more of me-there's nothing but sea.'"

With the liveliest satisfaction, the news of the traveler's emergence from the terra incognita of Africa was received in England; and, in honor of this arduous service, the University of Glasgow conferred upon the explorer the degree of LL.D.

province, by correcting its maps in various particulars, fixing the latitude and longitude of important places, while casting an observant eye upon the pursuits and condition of the people, chiefly blacks and halfbreeds.

Upon encountering the tribes beyond the Portuguese frontier, demoralized by contact with them, but independent of their control, the same inhospitable treatment was experienced as on the previous occasion; and it must have been a sore trial to the temper to deal with them, making the most extortionate demands as the price of food, or for the means of crossing a stream, or for the simple permission to pass on, and get out of their abominable neighborhood. Sorrowfully also must the European have seen his native attendants stripped of the fruit of their hard-won Though naturally anxious to see his earnings at Loanda to satisfy the rapacity native land and rejoin his family, Dr. Liv- of the miscreants. Yet they made the ingston felt bound to decline the favorable sacrifices without a murmur; and subseopportunity of doing so from the Portu- quently, in all reports respecting the exguese port, subordinating private feeling pedition, public and private, uniformly exto the demands of public duty. He had pressed themselves in the kindest terms to conduct back to their far-off homes the toward their leader. All inhospitality twenty-seven confiding natives who had ceased upon entering the country of the attended his footsteps; and the prime ob- unsophisticated African. The party now ject of his expedition-that of discovering found themselves at home, were received a practicable route for Christianity and with enthusiasm in the villages through commerce between the interior and the which they passed, and wanted for nothing coast, with a salubrious district for a mis- the people had to give. From Nariel, in sion station-had not been effected. He August, a brief letter to Mr. Gabriel at resolved, therefore, to retrace his course Loando, forwarded by a native trader, into Linyanti, and follow from thence the formed him: "My men are all in high channel of the Zambesi to Quilimane, one spirits, and quite prepared for another trip, of the Portuguese ports on the opposite or although, as we have had to sell almost eastern side of Africa. "I return," wrote everything for food, they have but little to he, "because I feel that the work to which show after their long absence from home." I set myself is only half accomplished. Having constructed canoes, they embarked The way out to the eastern coast may be upon the Leambye, and, with a powerful less difficult than I have found that to the current in their favor, were rapidly carried west. If I succeed, we shall at least have down toward Linyanti, where they arrived a choice. I intend, God helping me, to at the close of the following month. Sego down the Zambesi or Leambye to Quili- keletu, the chief, received them with every mane." This was sketching for himself demonstration of delight; and the Makololo a journey of more than two thousand miles, welcomed their traveled countrymen as completely across the continent, from the the wise men of the nation. They had Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. visited the land of the Wasunga, or wise men, the term applied throughout Southern Africa in one form or another to the whites; and the tale of their adventure has since, doubtless, formed the staple of many a 'long yarn" on the banks of their rivers.

Toward the close of the year 1854, our intrepid traveler girded himself for his great undertaking, and bade farewell to the waters of the Atlantic. He was aided in every possible way by the authorities of Angola, the merchants of the capital, and the inhabitants of the colony; and returned the favor, while journeying through the

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Refreshed by a few weeks' halt, and duly prepared for the prosecution of his journey, Dr. Livingston started for the

canoes could be procured; and over a country covered with shingle and shrubs, Dr. Livingston had to trudge on foot, while the heat was excessive. When within eight miles of Tete, where he was sure of a hospitable reception, he was so completely overcome as to be unable to move a step farther. Fortunately, while lying on the ground, the governor, Major Sicard, hearing of his proximity, sent out to him the "materials of a civilized breakfast;" and thus refreshed, he entered the town on the morning of March the 2d, 1856.

Though once more within the sphere of civilized life, he was still three hundred miles away from the coast; and as it was the season of the year when the intervening delta of the Zambesi is specially unhealthy, he awaited its termination at Tete, kindly entertained by the governor. In this town Dr. Livingston finally left the band of faithful natives who had accompanied him from the interior, under promise, if spared in life, to return to them in the course of the present year-a pledge which he is now on the eve of fufilling. He felt no difficulty in leaving them to their own resources; for, besides being capital hunters, they were industrious men, with friendly Portuguese at hand to help them in case of need. Having reached the port of Quilimane on the 26th of May, after an interval, H.M.S. "Frolic" hove in sight, which conveyed him to the Mau

east African coast toward the close of October, attended by upward of a hundred natives, picked out of a large batch of volunteers who were anxious to place themselves under his guidance. He proposed to follow generally the course of the Zambesi, proceeding along the northern bank; and we have to attend him to an island in the river, in the most southerly part of its channel, where one of the most welcome incidents awaited him that could possibly befall the traveler, and the explorer was rewarded for all his toils and sufferings. This was by the discovery of a highland region, free from tangled woods and reedy, pestilential marshes, with a fertile soil carpeted with short grass, stretching away to the eastward from the confluence of the Kafue with the Zambesi. Filled with thankfulness, and elate with hope at having found a salubrious locality adapted to be the site of a mission-station, he pursued his way, meeting with uniform kindness from the natives, and experiencing no difficulty in supplying his party with food. Though daily rations for a hundred and fourteen men, hungry travelers too, involved no trifling consumption of provender, there was game everywhere at hand in abundance. Zebras supplied roast beef; giraffes, fillets of veal; antelopes, haunches of venison; and if African pork or bacon was wanted, there was plenty to be obtained from the portly hippopotamus. Countless multitudes of the beautiful spring-ritius, on his way to England. A most bok were seen scouring the plains. "I could form no idea of the number of these lovely animals I saw in actual migration. I can compare them to locusts alone; for as far as the eye could reach, they appeared a tremulous mass, sometimes in sprinklings and at other times in dense crowds, upon a plain six or seven miles long by three or four broad." As for elephants, they were so thick upon the ground, in some parts of the country, that the travelers had often to shout to them to get out of the way.

The first traces of Europeans were encountered at Zumbo, an island at the junction of the Loangua with the Zambesi; but they were the ruins merely of a town long deserted. This was the farthest point from the coast ever reached by the Portuguese in light canoes. On approaching their present settlements great difficulties were experienced. The natives had to be avoided, being ferocious marauders; all the oxen were killed by the tsetse; no

melancholy incident marked his arrival at the British colony. Deeming it desirable that one of his native attendants should see England, and report of it to his countrymen in Central Africa, as an eye-witness of its wonders, he had selected at Tete the most apparently eligible for the purpose, who descended with him to Quili

mane.

The sight of the sea, then tossed by a tempest, and of the ship of war, filled the poor Makololo with amazement; and on embarking in a boat to gain the vessel, he turned to Dr. Livingston, with a look of intense excitement, and said, "Is this the way you go?" There can be little doubt that the surprise and alarm occasioned by a first contact with such novelties shook to derangement the mind of the untutored native.

He made, however, the passage to the Mauritius; but on entering the harbor of St. Louis, he no sooner saw a steamer in motion than he rushed overboard and perished.

IN

HOW I WENT TO CAPE COD.

N the month of June, 1846, I found myself the victim of some strange physical irregularity, the nature of which I have never yet exactly ascertained. My lungs were singularly affected, and probably my heart might have been diseased. (I beg here not to be understood as referring to an affection of the latter organ, so common among young persons of a certain age and of both sexes; it was a bona fide case of physical derangement.) My respiratory organs were by no means agreeable in their action, and I saw that I must either adopt some new method of breathing, or abandon the process altogether. When I consulted my friends, some of them made light of what was to me a weighty matter. One censured me for making "a great noise about nothing." Another, in cruel mockery, advised me to get some light portable animal, which I could carry under my arm to do my breathing for me. A few, with more of the milk of human kindness, seemed to appreciate my condition, and advised me to" do something;" a very important and valuable piece of advice to one who had always earned his bread by doing something, when he could get it to do.

At length, finding that the advice of my friends did not cure me, I went to a physician. After much inquiry and some show of professional wisdom, this son of Esculapius informed me that I had injured my- | self by too close confinement, and had evidently "studied too hard;" a fact, by the way, which all my teachers had carelessly overlooked! As a remedy, I was directed to give up my business, abandon my books, and leave the city, which, after some hesitation about my studies, I consented to do.

After much discussion Cape Cod was fixed upon as my place of rustication. It was the home of my maternal ancestors, and I felt sure of a hearty welcome among my friends. I engaged my passage in the Truro packet, and at the appointed time was on hand, having in escort a female cousin, on her return home to consummate a matrimonial affair, to which she had been one of the parties for several months.

Before going further I must premise that I was born in Vermont, a grand old state to be born in, and to grow up in; also to emigrate from; all of which grand

things

I had experienced; but by no means a first-rate place for a good nautical education. It will be readily surmised that, as I had scarcely ever seen the salt water, and as my knowledge of navigation and hydraulics extended no further than the washing of sheep and attending a saw-mill, I was not likely to be considered a very skillful sailor. In nautical parlance I was a mere "land-lubber," who, on being ordered to "let go the jib," would as soon throw the anchor overboard as anything! But I was determined to act my part as reputably as possible, and thus raise the character of my Green Mountain brethren in their incipient experience of a sea-faring life. Alas! it is not always that a good will results in a corresponding deed. After getting on board about nine o'clock in the evening, while making preparations to shove off, I stepped on the wharf and went to another pier further down, where I knew the packet intended to stop for some passengers. I waited with my cousin at the wrong place till the packet was standing out toward the channel, and I heard the announcement," All aboard!" I began to suspect some mistake. "Aren't you going to take us ?" said I, somewhat anxiously. "Who's us?" answered the skipper. Then followed a running fire of questions and explanations, during which I had some reason to fear that my reputation for acuteness of perception was not making a very favorable impression on the sailors. But there was no time to lose; a boat was lowered; a few strokes of the oar brought it as near the wharf as possible; trunks, band-boxes, and bundles were tilted over two or three intervening decks, with such unceremonious rapidity, that I was twice in imminent peril of breaking my neck, and of illustrating some of the more important principles of hydrostatics and pneumatics without the aid of a lecturing apparatus. When all were piled into the boat, away we shot, sculling swiftly among brigs, schooners, sloops, steamboats, fishing-smacks, etc., till we came up with our packet, slowly floating down the tide. Anxious to patch up my mutilated reputation, I rushed forward to throw a rope on the deck, so as to attach our boat to the packet. In doing this, I came very near upsetting the carpet-bag, band-box, and valise, and irretrievably sliding the whole cargo of baggage into the harbor. But we escaped this calamity,

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