If anything were needed to commend the African race, and prove them possessed of qualities fitted to make a noble nation, the courage, affection, and persevering loyalty shown by his attendants after his death might well have this effect. When the sad event became known among the men, it was cordially resolved that every effort should be made to carry their master's remains to Zanzibar. Such an undertaking was extremely perilous, for there were not merely the ordinary risks of travel to a small body of natives, but there was also the superstitious horror everywhere prevalent connected with the dead. Chitambo must be kept in ignorance of what had happened, otherwise a ruinous fine would be sure to be inflicted on them. The secret, however, oozed out, but happily the chief was reasonable. Susi and Chuma, the old attendants of Livingstone, became now the leaders of the company, and they fulfilled their task right nobly. The interesting narrative of Mr. Waller at the end of the _Last Journals_ tells us how calmly yet efficiently they set to work. Arrangements were made for drying and embalming the body, after removing and burying the heart and other viscera. For fourteen days the body was dried in the sun. After being wrapped in calico, and the legs bent inward at the knees, it was enclosed in a large piece of bark from a Myonga-tree in the form of a cylinder; over this a piece of sail-cloth was sewed; and the package was lashed to a pole, so as to be carried by two men. Jacob Wainwright carved an inscription on the Mvula tree under which the body had rested, and where the heart was buried, and Chitambo was charged to keep the grass cleared away, and to protect two posts and a cross-piece which they erected to mark the spot.
They then set out on their homeward march. It was a serious journey, for the terrible exposure had affected the health of most of them, and many had to lie down through sickness. The tribes through which they passed were generally friendly, but not always. At one place they had a regular fight. On the whole, their progress was wonderfully quiet and regular. Everywhere they found that the news of the Doctor's death had got before them. At one place they heard that a party of Englishmen, headed by Dr. Livingstone's son, on their way to relieve his father, had been seen at Bagamoio some months previously. As they approached Unyanyembe, they learned that the party was there, but when Chuma ran on before, he was disappointed to find that Oswell Livingstone was not among them. Lieutenant Cameron, Dr. Dillon, and Lieutenant Murphy were there, and heard the tidings of the men with deep emotion. Cameron wished them to bury the remains where they were, and not run the risk of conveying them through the Ugogo country; but the men were inflexible, determined to carry out their first intention. This was not the only interference with these devoted and faithful men. Considering how carefully they had gathered all Livingstone's property, and how conscientiously, at the risk of their lives, they were carrying it to the coast, to transfer it to the British Consul there, it was not warrantable in the new-comers to take the boxes from them, examine their contents, and carry off a part of them. Nor do we think Lieutenant Cameron was entitled to take away the instruments with which all Livingstone's observations had been made for a series of seven years, and use them, though only temporarily, for the purpose of his Expedition, inasmuch as he thereby made it impossible so to reduce Livingstone's observations as that correct results should be obtained from them. Sir Henry Rawlinson seems not to have adverted to this result of Mr. Cameron's act, in his reference to the matter from the chair of the Geographical Society.