"Give my love to Oswell and Anna Mary and the Aunties. I have received no letter from any of you since I left home. The good Lord bless you all, and be gracious to you.--Affectionately yours,
Another letter is addressed to Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann, September, 1869. He enters at considerable length into his reasons for the supposition that he had discovered, on the watershed, the true sources of the Nile. He refers in a generous spirit to the discoveries of other travelers, mistaken though he regarded their views on the sources, and is particularly complimentary to Miss Tinné:
"A Dutch lady whom I never saw, and of whom I know nothing save from scraps in the newspapers, moves my sympathy more than any other. By her wise foresight in providing a steamer, and pushing on up the river after the severest domestic affliction--the loss by fever of her two aunts--till after she was assured by Speke and Grant that they had already discovered in Victoria Nyanza the sources she sought, she proved herself a genuine explorer, and then by trying to go S.W. on land. Had they not, honestly enough of course, given her their mistaken views, she must inevitably, by boat or on land, have reached the head-waters of the Nile. I cannot conceive of her stopping short of Bangweolo. She showed such indomitable pluck she must be a descendant of Van Tromp, who swept the English Channel till killed by our Blake, and whose tomb every Englishman who goes to Holland is sure to visit.
"We great he-beasts say, 'Exploration was not becoming her sex.' Well, considering that at least 1600 years have elapsed since Ptolemy's informants reached this region, and kings, emperors, and all the great men of antiquity longed in vain to know the fountains, exploration does not seem to have become the other sex either. She came much further up than the two centurions sent by Nero Caesar.
"I have to go down and see where the two arms unite,--the lost city Meroe ought to be there,--then get back to Ujiji to get a supply of goods which I have ordered from Zanzibar, turn bankrupt after I secure them, and let my creditors catch me if they can, as I finish up by going round outside and south of all the sources, so that I may be sure no one will cut me out and say he found other sources south of mine. This is one reason for my concluding trip; another is to visit the underground houses in stone, and the copper mines of Katanga which have been worked for ages (Malachite). I have still a seriously long task before me. My letters have been delayed inexplicably, so I don't know my affairs. If I have a salary I don't know it, though the _Daily Telegraph_ abused me for receiving it when I had none. Of this alone I am sure--my friends will all wish me to make a complete work of it before I leave, and in their wish I join. And it is better to go in now than to do it in vain afterward."
"I have still a seriously long task before me." Yet he had lately been worse in health and weaker than he had ever been; he was much poorer than he expected to be, and the difficulties had proved far beyond any he had hitherto experienced. But so far from thinking of taking things more easily than before, he actually enlarges his programme, and resolves to "finish up by going round outside and south of all the sources." His spirit seems only to rise as difficulties are multiplied.
He writes to his daughter Agnes at the same time: "You remark that you think you could have traveled as well as Mrs. Baker, and I think so too. Your mamma was famous for roughing it in the bush, and was never a trouble." The allusion carries him to old days--their travels to Lake 'Ngami, Mrs. Livingstone's death, the Helmores, the Bishop, Thornton. Then he speaks of recent troubles and difficulties, his attack of pneumonia, from which he had not expected to recover, his annoyances with his men, so unlike the old Makololo, the loss of his letters and boxes, with the exception of two from an unknown donor that contained the _Saturday Review_ and his old friend _Punch_ for 1868. Then he goes over African travelers and their achievements, real and supposed. He returns again to the achievements of ladies, and praises Miss Tinné and other women. "The death-knell of American slavery was rung by a woman's hand. We great he-beasts say Mrs. Stowe exaggerated. From what I have seen of slavery I say exaggeration is a simple impossibility. I go with the sailor who, on seeing slave-traders, said: 'If the devil don't catch these fellows, we might as well have no devil at all.'"