Dr. Livingstone goes to mouth of Rovuma--His prayer--His company--His herd of animals--Loss of his buffaloes--Good spirits when setting out--Difficulties at Rovuma--Bad conduct of Johanna men--Dismissal of his Sepoys--Fresh horrors of slave-trade--Uninhabited tract--He reaches Lake Nyassa--Letter to his son Thomas--Disappointed hopes--His double aim, to teach natives and rouse horror of slave-trade--Tenor of religious addresses--Wikatami remains behind--Livingstone finds no altogether satisfactory station for commerce and missions--Question of the watershed--Was it worth the trouble?--Overruled for good to Africa--Opinion of Sir Bartle Frere--At Marenga's--The Johanna men leave in a body--Circulate rumor of his murder--Sir Roderick disbelieves it--Mr. E.D. Young sent out with Search Expedition--Finds proof against rumor--Livingstone half-starved--Loss of his goats--Review of 1866--Reflections on Divine Providence--Letter to Thomas--His dog drowned--Loss of his medicine-chest--He feels sentence of death passed on him--First sight of Lake Tanganyika--Detained at Chitimba's--Discovery of Lake Moero--Occupations during detention of 1867--Great privations and difficulties--Illness--Rebellion among his men--Discovery of Lake Bangweolo--Its oozy banks--Detention--Sufferings--He makes for Ujiji--Very severe illness in beginning of 1869--Reaches Ujiji--Finds his goods have been wasted and stolen--Most bitter disappointment--His medicines, etc., at Unyanyembe--Letter to Sultan of Zanzibar--Letters to Dr. Moffat and his daughter.
On the 19th of March, fortified by a firman from the Sultan to all his people, and praying the Most High to prosper him, "by granting him Influence in the eyes of the heathen, and blessing his intercourse with them," Livingstone left Zanzibar in H.M.S. "Penguin" for the mouth of the Rovuma. His company consisted of thirteen Sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine Nassick boys, two Shupanga men, and two Waiyau. Musa, one of the Johanna men, had been a sailor in the "Lady Nyassa"; Susi and Amoda, the Shupanga men, had been woodcutters for the "Pioneer"; and the two Waiyau lads, Wikatani and Chuma, had been among the slaves rescued in 1861, and had lived for some time at the mission station at Chibisa's. Besides these, he carried with him a sort of menagerie in a dhow--six camels, three buffaloes and a calf, two mules, and four donkeys. What man but Dr. Livingstone would have encumbered himself with such baggage, and for what conceivable purpose except the benefit of Africa? The tame buffaloes of India were taken that he might try whether, like the wild buffaloes of Africa, they would resist the bite of the tsetse-fly; the other animals for the same purpose. There were two words of which Livingstone might have said, as Queen Mary said of Calais, that at his death they would be found engraven on his heart--fever and tsetse; the one the great scourge of man, the other of beast, in South Africa. To help to counteract two such foes to African civilization no trouble or expense would have been judged too great. Already he had lost nine of his buffaloes at Zanzibar. It was a sad pity that owing to the ill-treatment of the remaining animals by his people, who turned out a poor lot, it could never be known conclusively whether the tsetse-bite was fatal to them or not.
In spite of all he had suffered in Africa, and though he was without the company of a single European, he had, in setting out, something of the exhilarating feeling of a young traveler starting on his first tour in Switzerland, deepened by the sense of nobility which there is in every endeavor to do good to others. "The mere animal pleasure of traveling in a wild unexplored country is very great.... The sweat of one's brow is no longer a curse when one works for God; it proves a tonic to the system, and is actually a blessing." The Rovuma was found to have changed greatly since his last visit, so that he had to land his goods twenty-five miles to the north at Mikindany harbor, and find his way down to the river farther up. The toil was fitted to wear out the strongest of his men. Nothing could have been more grateful than the Sunday rest. Through his Nassick boys, he tried to teach the Makondé--a tribe that bore a very bad character, but failed; however, the people were wonderfully civil, and, contrary to all previous usage, neither inflicted fines nor made complaints, though the animals had done some damage to their corn. He set this down as an answer to his prayers for influence among the heathen.