Though suffering badly from fever, Livingstone pushed on; he passed the important tributary of the Zambesi, the Shire, which he afterwards explored, and finally reached Quilimane on the shores of the Indian Ocean. It was now 20th May 1856, just four years after he had left Cape Town on his great journey from west to east, since when he had travelled eleven thousand miles. After waiting six weeks on the "great mud bank, surrounded by extensive swamps and rice grounds," which form the site of Quilimane, Livingstone embarked on board a gunboat, the _Frolic_, for England. He had one Makololo with him--the faithful Sekwebu. The poor black man begged to be allowed to follow his master on the seas. "But," said Livingstone, "you will die if you go to such a cold country as mine." "Let me die at your feet," pleaded the black man. He had not been to Loanda, so he had never seen the sea before. Waves were breaking over the bar at Quilimane and dashing over the boat that carried Sekwebu out to the brig. He was terribly alarmed, but he lived to reach Mauritius, where he became insane, hurled himself into the sea, and was drowned! On 12th December 1856, Livingstone landed in England after an absence of sixteen years. He had left home as an obscure missionary; he returned to find himself famous. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him its gold medal; France and Scotland hastened to do him honour. Banquets and receptions were given for him, and finally this "plain, single-minded man, somewhat attenuated by years of toil, and with his face tinged by the sun of Africa," was received by the Queen at Windsor. The enthusiasm aroused by this longest expedition in the history of African travel was unrivalled, and the name of Livingstone was on every lip. But meanwhile others were at work in central Africa, and we must turn from the discoveries of Livingstone for the moment. CHAPTER LXIII BURTON AND SPEKE IN CENTRAL AFRICA Livingstone had just left Loanda and was making his way across Africa from west to east, when an English expedition set forth to find the Great Lakes still lying solitary and undiscovered, although they were known to exist. If we turn to the oldest maps of Africa, we find, rudely drawn and incorrectly placed, large inland waters, that may nevertheless be recognised as these lakes just about to be revealed to a wondering world. Ptolemy knew of them, the Arabs spoke of them, Portuguese traders had passed them, and a German missionary had caught sight of the Mountains of the Moon and brought back strange stories of a great inland lake.