But this does not exhaust his labors. He is deeply interested in philological studies, and is writing on the Sichuana language:
"I have been hatching a grammar of the Sichuana language," he writes to Mr. Watt. "It is different in structure from any other language, except the ancient Egyptian. Most of the changes are effected by means of prefixes or affixes, the radical remaining unchanged. Attempts have been made to form grammars, but all have gone on the principle of establishing a resemblance between Sichuana, Latin, and Greek; mine is on the principle of analysing the language without reference to any others. Grammatical terms are only used when I cannot express my meaning in any other way. The analysis renders the whole language very simple, and I believe the principle elicited extends to most of the languages between this and Egypt. I wish to know whether I could get 20 or 30 copies printed for private distribution at an expense not beyond my means. It would be a mere tract, and about the size of this letter when folded, 40 or 50 pages perhaps[28]. Will you ascertain the cost, and tell me whether, in the event of my continuing hot on the subject half a year hence, you would be the corrector of the press?... Will you examine catalogues to find whether there is any dictionary of ancient Egyptian within my means, so that I might purchase and compare? I should not grudge two or three pounds for it. Professor Vater has written on it, but I do not know what dictionary he consulted. One Tattam has written a Coptic grammar; perhaps that has a vocabulary, and might serve my purpose. I see Tattam advertised by John Russell Smith, 4 Old Compton Street, Soho, London,--'Tattam (H.), _Lexicon Egyptiaco-Latinum e veteribus linguae Egyptiacae monumentis; _ thick 8vo, bds., 10s., Oxf., 1835.' Will you purchase the above for me?"
[Footnote 28: This gives a correct idea of the length of many of his letters.]
At Mabotsa and Chonuane the Livingstones had spent but a little time; Kolobeng may be said to have been the only permanent home they ever had. During these years several of their children were born, and it was the only considerable period of their lives when both had their children about them. Looking back afterward on this period, and its manifold occupations, whilst detained in Manyuema, in the year 1870, Dr. Livingstone wrote the following striking words:
The heart that felt this one regret in looking back to this busy time must have been true indeed to the instincts of a parent. But Livingstone's case was no exception to that mysterious law of our life in this world, by which, in so many things, we learn how to correct our errors only after the opportunity is gone. Of all the crooks in his lot, that which gave him so short an opportunity of securing the affections and moulding the character of his children seems to have been the hardest to bear. His long detention at Manyuema appears, as we shall see hereafter, to have been spent by him in learning more completely the lesson of submission to the will of God; and the hard trial of separation from his family, entailing on them what seemed irreparable loss, was among the last of his sorrows over which he was able to write the words with which he closes the account of his wife's death in the _Zambesi and its Tributaries_,--"FIAT, DOMINE, VOLUNTUS TUA!"