It is the object of this book to afford all the information which could be obtained from reliable sources, on the regions visited by Dr. Livingston, and thus, in some measure, to satisfy that laudable public curiosity which his appearance in this country has excited. It opens with a short chapter on its hero as Boy, Man, and Missionary; telling us how he, the son of Neil Livingston, of Blantyre, in Lanarkshire, wrought in the linen factories of that town, first as a piecer-boy, and afterwards as a spinner, "gaining the respect and good-will of his employers by his steadiness and sobriety, and the love of his fellow-workmen and acquaintances by his kindly and affectionate demeanour." How he attended classes at Near-at-hand, Glasgow, during the winter months, and worked steadily in the factories while summer lasted, and exhibited in early life the marks of a resolute and vigorous character, studying early and late while it was time for study, and working as a man should work when the season for bodily labour came; living frugally at all times, and indulging in no enervating excesses; in short, doing thoroughly whatever he undertook to do, and thus preparing himself for the great work which he was afterwards to accomplish. It tells us, too, how in September, 1838, having resolved to devote himself to a missionary life, he passed to London, and underwent the necessary examinations before the directors of the Missionary Society; was sent down to the training establishment at Chipping Ongar, in Essex, where he remained until 1840, when he was appointed to a station in South Africa. Some interesting particulars and characteristic anecdotes of his college life in Essex are given; but for these we must refer our readers to the book itself, while we pass on with our Missionary to Cape Colony, and from thence far into the interior, where Moffat, whose daughter he eventually married, had long been labouring for the salvation of souls among the Bechuanas. In Chapters II., III., and IV., we have an account of the labours of the earlier missionaries among the Kaffirs, Bushmen, Namaquas, Griquas, and other wild tribes of South Africa, with a description of the different tracts of country which they inhabit, and more especially of those bordering on the great Kalahari desert, belonging mostly to the widely-spread Bechuanas nation, among a tribe of which, the Batlapis, is Kuruman, Moffat's station, while Kolobeng, that established by Livingston 200 miles further to the north, is among the Bakwains, another tribe of Bechuanas. Here, for the space of about eight years, did our hero carry on his missionary work; and then after three shorter journeys, described in Chapter V., in the first of which he discovers the half-fabulous Lake Ngami, he sets forth on his great exploration. Before doing this he accompanies his wife and children to Cape Town, and sees them embark for England, being determined to cast himself loose, as it were, from all family ties, and devote himself entirely to the great work of discovering new fields of evangelization. Very luckily for him he was detained longer than he expected on the road back to his station; which during his absence was destroyed by the Dutch Boers, who wished to keep in their own hands the trade with the interior, and were enraged at Livingston for discovering new routes in that direction, and affording facilities for travellers and traders to penetrate to and beyond Lake Ngami. About three hundred pounds' worth of property was burned, with his residence. But our hero bore his loss with Christian fortitude; saying, he could now travel with a single waggon. It was late in the year 1852 that he started on his great expedition; he was accompanied by a small party of the Bakwains; and after traversing the wide sandy plains and forest tracks which intervene, and crossing the river Zouga, he plunged into the vast terra incognita of Central Africa, and was lost to the civilized world for upwards of two years. The first intimation of his whereabout is dated from Angola, on the west coast of Africa, 14th January, 1855. How he got to the Portuguese colony of St. Paul de Loanda-what he discovered and suffered in the long and perilous journeyis narrated in Chapter VI. of the book way to the chief town of the Makololo, if the was a possibility of doing so. He had brough a small pontoon with him from the Cape, an this he and the lad managed to carry, wit what difficulty we may well imagine, when w are told that they had to go splashing throug times crossing streams half a mile wide, lik twenty miles of an inundated plain, some the Sanshurah, and abounding in hippopotami Nor was this all; for when, after some days of ston had, by climbing a high tree, been glad this amphibious kind of travelling, Mr. Living dened by the sight of the Chobé, he found tha it was rendered almost unapproachable by it broad belt of reeds, water-flags, and other aquati plants, whose thickly planted stems were inte laced by a creeper like the convolvulus, which bound them together, and formed one mass tangled vegetation; through, or rather upon this our traveller and his attendant struggled o bending down the reeds and papyri upon the green network below, to form foot-hold above th water, which was often deep, and still carrying the pontoon between them. We may imagin how toilsome must have been such a mode o progression; and then there was the chance of a ugly crocodile poking up its monstrous jaws, an making a snap at the adventurers' legs, whic were intruding on its watery domain; or of haga hippopotamus showing its ugly head, and disputing the way. Down upon their unprotected beads shone the burning sun, and up from beneath rose the seething vapour, laden with the deadly iasma, and stinging insects buzzed and hummed around them; but still they struggled on, and at length got near to the clear mid-current of the Chobe. But what is this? Another obstacle arises, more formidable far than the tangled mass of reeds and flags and intertwining creepers- 'a horrid sort of grass, about six feet high, and having serrated edges, which cut the hands most cruelly and against which even leather and oleskin afford no adequate defence, for the es of the traveller's trousers, and the toes of his boots, although nearly new, are quite cut through. A rough sort of a protest this, on the part of the naked African, against European oration and refinement. No doubt the horrid Tas had never before come in contact with leather boots and moleskin unmentionables.' "Perseverance conquers all, and even the Cabe's body-guards were at length obliged to give way before this Anglo-Saxon onslaught; the clear water is reached, and merrily down the stream, on his pontoon, floats Livingston, glad nough to rest his wearied limbs after three days' wading and plunging amid the reedy forest, and three nights' uneasy sleep on some marshy mound, or bed of matted rushes, with clothes saturated with wet, and an ever-present sense of damp and sliminess. About twenty miles from the spot where the travellers embarked, stood, on the river bank, where the ground was somewhat raised, a village of the Makololo, and we may fancy the astonishment of these sable sons of Ham, as the pontoon with its strange freight hove in sight. They could not believe it possible that any mortal man had made his way through the obstacles by which they were surrounded; and their explanation of the phenomenon was, that there came one, riding upon a hippopotamus, who had fallen from the clouds. Great was the excitement in the village; out from their huts rushed old and young, rich and poor we were going to say; but this division of classes was scarcely possible in so primitive a community: granny and the toddling child, the warrior and the tender maiden, all in a happy state of unconsciousness that they are more uncovered than befits European ideas of modesty and decorum. There is dancing and clapping of hands, and shrill exclamations of astonishment and delight, and these manifestations are redoubled when it is discovered that the strange being whom they supposed had dropped from the clouds, is the good missionary and friend of their great chief Sebitaone, who was with him when he died, and spake words of comfort to his people, and promised to come again and perhaps settle among them. Send to Linyante! send messengers!' they cry, 'and tell our young chief Sekeletu, that his father's friend is here; here to instruct us, and make us a great people, as he did the Bakwains and the Batlapis. Now we shall conquer the Malabeles, and go to live upon the high grounds; nor be longer hemmed in amid the swamps and rivers, like the sea-cows and the crocodiles. Such were the words of these simple people of the wilds, to whom the white man, with his wonderful knowledge of all things, was a kind of superior being, more than ever exalted in their estimation now that he had, as it were, dropped down upon them, in the wet season, when, if at no other time, they thought themselves perfectly secure from intruders from without." rior. Every thing they saw and hear was "wonderful! wonderful!" The had always been told that the earth h no end; but here, when they came to t sea, the earth said to them "I'm do for! there is no more of me!" And th the ships, the "sea waggons!" They h prided themselves on their skill in ma ing and managing their canoes; but wh they saw here took the conceit all o of them. Having engaged to unload coal vessel, they set to work expecting get the job done in a few hours; but so gave it up in despair, and were nev tired of wondering among themselv how one ship could contain so ma "stones that burn." Simple-minded very children, to them all things arou SO new and strange that the seemed to have got into a new world, a among a set of superior beings. I Livingston, especially, they regarded wi a kind of reverential awe, which prompt them, on more than one occasion, to bo the knee before him. But, now, our traveller's health somewhat recruited; and, as he consider his work but half done, he sets out on hi return to Linyante, intending from thenc to trace his way out to the eastern coast and endeavour to discover some mor eligible sites for missions than he had ye been able to do. This is just one picture, out of many which might be selected, to show what difficulties our hero had to encounter, and how indomitable were his courage and perseverance. He remains awhile at Linyante, and then passes on, first north-were ward up the rivers Leeambye and Leeba, and then turns to the north-west, and after many perilous adventures and much sickness, arrives at length at Loanda, in a state of such utter prostration of strength, from fever and dysentery, as to be unable to sit on his ox for ten minutes at a time. But, all through the journey, his noble soul never shrunk from the duty which he had undertaken. Wherever he went, however great his trials and sufferings, his prayer still was-"I hope God will in His mercy permit me to establish the Gospel somewhere in this region; and that I may live to see the double in- Behold him, therefore, at the close o fluence of commerce and Christianity 1854, take once more his pilgrim-staff in employed to stay the bitter fountain of hand, and set forth with his little band o African misery." And still, although so natives, who are laden with presents from weakened, and racked as he often was the white men, and full of eagerness with pain, surrounded by hostile natives, tell their friends at home of all the wonwho threatened his life, he yet lost noders they here saw. Now again, howopportunity of prosecuting his geographical researches, fixing the exact position of all rivers and important places; so that he was able to point out many errors in the maps of the Portuguese, by whom he was most kindly received and treated. In Chapter VII. we have an interesting description of St. Paul de Loanda, and a brief but lucid sketch of the rise and decline of the power of Portugal in Western Africa. An amusing account is given us of the astonishment of the natives of the Barotse valley, who had accompanied our traveller from the inte to ever, they have to run the gauntlet through fierce and rapacious tribes, whose contact with European slave-dealers has by no means improved their moral cha racter; they gather round the travellers at every rivers' brink where their villages are situated, and demand exorbitant tolls for permission and the means to cross And so the poor Barotse lose all their treasures, including a horse and a rich dress sent by the Bishop of Angola, who is, also, governor of the province, to their chief Sekeletu. Reaching, at length, the Casai river, the last they would have to like these: eross before they got among friendly wild chorus would burst forth in words something tribes, the request for a passage was met by the modest demand of a gun, a bullock, and a man, as toll for being ferried over, &c.: "Very well,' said the Doctor, with perfect calmness; 'I am sorry I cannot comply with these terms. What will you do with us?' 'Oh,' said the chief, increasing his price on account of the urgency of the occasion, you must give me all you have got. In no way disconcerted, as it appeared, our travellers prepared to spend the night on the bank of the river, and the chief directed that his canoes should be put away, feeling confident that the party could not proceed without them. But the Barotse had sharp eyes, and, without seeming to do so, had carefully watched the course of one of the canoes into a distant creek, far, as it was imagined, beyond their reach. Then, when only the twinkling stars looked out, and the owners of the canoe were fast asleep in their tents, these children of the Leeambye silently swam to the creek, and brought out the boat, in which the watchful party were conveyed safely over the river, and long ere their enemies awoke from their slumbers, they were far out of their reach, and among a friendly people, as all were with whom they came in contact from this point. The good white man was here at home again. All knew him, or had heard favourably of him; and in the different towns and villages through which he passed, he wanted nothing that the people had to give; although, in the true spirit of trade with which all Africans are imbued, they often detained him on various pretences, in order that he might be obliged to purchase a meal of them. "And now again-oh, joy of joys!-the river Leeba is in sight, and soon down the mid-channel our travellers glide in the light canoe, the Barotse singing as they bend to the paddles, and at times breaking out into exclamations of delight at the thought of being so near home. Each familiar object seems like a dear friend to them, and every rock and clump of trees which they swiftly pass calls up recollections of some event in their earlier life which they had for a time forgotten. And yet they had not been long away; but the dangers and the toils they had gone through, and the wonders they had seen, made it seem like a life-time; the little space was so crowded with events, and had in it so much of novelty and excitement, that ever after they spoke of it as of Some great lengthened period of existence. On their way down the Leeba, and thence into the Lambye, they frightened all the wild creatures by their shouting and singing. Sometimes one or other of them, unable to control his delight, would send his paddle spinning high in the air, and then spring overboard to catch it as it fell, and go swimming and splashing down the stream for awhile, to the great astonishment of the hippopotami and crocodiles. Sometimes a single voice would arise from amid them in a shrill scream, as though its owner would send it before him, to announce his approach to his friends in the valley, towards which they were speeding; other voices would then join, and giving utterance to their eager thoughts and thronging recollections, the "Home! home! Barotse go! Far from the land of the white man's foe; "Home! home! Barotse go! Unto a land where the broad streams flow; "Home! home! Barotse go! Bring white chief, in his swift canoe; "And so, as we said, with singing and shouting and great outbursts of merriment, they paddle down the Leeba into their own Leeambye, and come to the Barotse country, where they are welcomed by friends and relatives, who are as eager to listen to, as they are to tell, their wonderful tales of travel. Faithfully have they fulfilled their engagement with Dr. Livingston, unswerving in their fidelity through all trials and dangers; and as faithfully has he performed his promise to bring them back to their own country. They tell their friends that he is 'very good chief, very good!' And that he belongs to a race, the mightiest upon the face of the earth: they live in grand houses as high as hills, and beautifully furnished; and they have canoes so big that there would not be water enough in the Leeambye to float them; and they spread out great wings like birds, only ten thousand times bigger, and fly across the great lake, that has no boundary, but runs off right into the sky. 'Yes; right into the sky! We know that, for we have seen it swallow up the moon, or break it all to pieces and scatter the fragments far and wide over its surface. Call the Makololo sailors? Bah! not they; Barotse neither. White men, they are the sailors; they live on the water, their ships are floating houses, and they never go upon land; no, never, except just now and then, to oblige the black people." Chapter VII. is filled up with much valuable information respecting the coun |