"My love to Mary and all the children, with all our friends at Congleton."
In a letter to Mr. James Young, Dr. Livingstone gives good reasons for not wishing to push the colonization scheme at present, as he had recommended to the Universities Mission to add a similar enterprise to their undertaking:
"If you read all I have written you by this mail, you will deserve to be called a literary character. I find that I did not touch on the colonization scheme. I have not changed in respect to it, but the Oxford and Cambridge mission have taken the matter up, and as I shall do all I can to aid them, a little delay will, perhaps, be advisable.
"We are waiting for our steamer, and expect her every day; our first trip is a secret, and you will keep it so. We go to the Rovuma, a river exterior to the Portuguese claims, as soon as the vessel arrives. Captain Oldfield of the 'Lyra' is sent already, to explore, as far as he can, in that ship. The entrance is fine, and forty-five miles are known, but we keep our movements secret from the Portuguese--and so must you; they seize everything they see in the newspapers. Who are my imprudent friends that publish everything? I suspect Mr. ----, of ----, but no one gives me a name or a clue. Some expected me to feel sweet at being jewed by a false philanthropist, and bamboozled by a silly R. N. I did not, and could not, seem so; but I shall be more careful in future.
"Again back to the colony. It is not to sleep, but preparation must be made by collecting information, and maturing our plans. I shall be able to give definite instructions as soon as I see how the other mission works--at its beginning--and when we see if the new route we may discover has a better path to Nyassa than by Shiré--we shall choose the best, of course, and let you know as soon as possible. I think the Government will not hold back if we have a feasible plan to offer. I have recommended to the Universities Mission a little delay till we explore,--and for a working staff, two gardeners acquainted with farming; two country carpenters, capable of erecting sheds and any rough work; two traders to purchase and prepare cotton for exportation; one general steward of mission goods, his wife to be a good plain cook; one medical man, having knowledge of chemistry enough to regulate _indigo_ and sugar-making. All the attendants to be married, and their wives to be employed in sewing, washing, attending the sick, etc., as need requires. The missionaries not to think themselves deserving a good English wife till they have erected a comfortable abode for her."
In the Royal Geographical Society this year (1860), certain communications were read which tended to call in question Livingstone's right to some of the discoveries he had claimed as his own. Mr. Macqueen, through whom these communications came, must have had peculiar notions of discovery, for some time before, there had appeared in the Cape papers a statement of his, that Lake 'Ngami of 1859 was no new discovery, as Dr. Livingstone had visited it seven years before; and Livingstone had to write to the papers in favor of the claims of Murray, Oswell, and Livingstone, against himself! It had been asserted to the Society by Mr. Macqueen, that Silva Porto, a Portuguese trader, had shown him a journal describing a journey of his from Benguela on the west to Ibo and Mozambique on the east, beginning November 26, 1852, and terminating August, 1854. Of that journal Mr. Macqueen read a copious abstract to the Society (June 27, 1859), which is published in the Journal for 1860.
In a letter to Sir Roderick Murchison (20th February, 1861), Livingstone, while exonerating Mr. Macqueen of all intention of misleading, gives his reasons for doubting whether the journey to the East Coast ever took place. He had met Porto at Linyanti in 1853, and subsequently at Naliele, the Barotse capital, and had been told by him that he had tried to go eastward, but had been obliged to turn, and was then going westward, and wished him to accompany him, which he declined, as he was a slave-trader; he had read his journal as it appeared in the Loanda "Boletim," but there was not a word in it of a journey to the East Coast; when the Portuguese minister had wished to find a rival to Dr. Livingstone, he had brought forward, not Porto, as he would naturally have done if this had been a genuine journey, but two black men who came to Tette in 1815; in the Boletim of Mozambique there was no word of the arrival of Porto there; in short, the part of the journal founded on could not have been authentic. Livingstone felt keenly on the subject of these rumors, not on his own account, but on account of the Geographical Society and of Sir Roderick who had introduced him to it; for nothing could have given him more pain than that either of these should have had any slur thrown on them through him, or even been placed for a time in an uncomfortable position.