Difficulties and hardships of journey--His traveling kit--Four books--His Journal--Mode of traveling--Beauty of country--Repulsiveness of the people--Their religious belief--The negro--Preaching--The magic-lantern--Loneliness of feeling--Slave-trade--Management of the natives--Danger from Chiboque--from another chief--Livingstone ill of fever--At the Quango--Attachment of followers--"The good time coming"--Portuguese settlements--Great kindness of the Portuguese--Arrives at Loanda--Received by Mr. Gabriel--His great friendship--No letters--News through Mr. Gabriel--Livingstone becomes aquainted with naval officers--Resolves to go back to Linyanti and make for East Coast--Letter to his wife--Correspondence with Mr. Maclear--Accuracy of his observations--Sir John Herschel--Geographical Society award their gold metal--Remarks of Lord Ellesmere.
The journey from Linyanti to Loanda occupied from the 11th November, 1853, to 31st May, 1854. It was in many ways the most difficult and dangerous that Livingstone had yet performed, and it drew out in a very wonderful manner the rare combination of qualities that fitted him for his work. The route had never been traversed, so far as any trustworthy tradition went, by any European. With the exception of a few of Sekelétu's tusks, the oxen needed for carrying, and a trifling amount of coffee, cloth, beads, etc., Livingstone had neither stores of food for his party, nor presents with which to propitiate the countless tribes of rapacious and suspicious savages that lined his path. The Barotse men who accompanied him, usually called the "Makololo," though on the whole faithful and patient, "the best that ever accompanied me," were a burden in one sense, as much as a help in another; chicken-hearted, ready to succumb to every trouble, and to be cowed by any chief that wore a threatening face. Worse if possible, Livingstone himself was in wretched health. During this part of the journey he had constant attacks of intermittent fever[40], accompanied in the latter stages of the road with dysentery of the most distressing kind. In the intervals of fever he was often depressed alike in body and in mind. Often the party were destitute of food of any sort, and never had they food suitable for a fever-stricken invalid. The vexations he encountered were of no common kind: at starting, the greater part of his medicines was stolen, much though he needed them; in the course of the journey, his pontoon was left behind; at one time, while he was under the influence of fever, his riding-ox threw him, and he fell heavily on his head; at another, while crossing a river, the ox tossed him into the water; the heavy rains, and the necessity of wading through streams three or four times a day, kept him almost constantly wet; and occasionally, to vary the annoyance, mosquitos would assail him as fiercely as if they had been waging a war of extermination. The most critical moments of peril, demanding the utmost coolness and most dauntless courage, would sometimes occur during the stage of depression after fever; it was then he had to extricate himself from savage warriors, who vowed that he must go back, unless he gave them an ox, a gun, or a man. The ox he could ill spare, the gun not at all, and as for giving the last--a man--to make a slave of, he would sooner die. At the best, he was a poor ragged skeleton when he reached those who had hearts to feel for him and hands to help him. Had he not been a prodigy of patience, faith, and courage, had he not known where to find help in all time of his tribulation, he would never have reached the haunts of civilized men.
[Footnote 40: The number of attacks was thirty-one.]
His traveling-kit was reduced to the smallest possible ilk; that he minded little, but he was vexed to be able to take so few books. A few days after setting out, he writes in his private Journal;
"I feel the want of books in this journey more than anything else. A Sichuana Pentateuch, a lined journal, Thomson's Tables, a Nautical Almanac, and a Bible, constitute my stock. The last constitutes my chief resource; but the want of other mental pabulum is felt severely. There is little to interest in the conversation of the people. Loud disputes often about the women, and angry altercations in which the same string of abuse is used, are more frequent than anything else."