On 25th August 1872 he started on his last journey. He had a well-equipped expedition sent up by Stanley from the coast, including sixty men, donkeys, and cows. He embarked on his fresh journey with all his old eagerness and enthusiasm, but a few days' travel showed him how utterly unfit he was for any more hardships. He suffered from intense and growing weakness, which increased day by day. He managed somehow to ride his donkey, but in November his donkey died and he struggled along on foot. Descending into marshy regions north of Lake Bangweolo, the journey became really terrible. The rainy season was at its height, the land was an endless swamp, and starvation threatened the expedition. To add to the misery of the party, there were swarms of mosquitoes, poisonous spiders, and stinging ants by the way. Still, amid all the misery and suffering, the explorer made his way on through the dreary autumn months. Christmas came and went; the new year of 1873 dawned. He could not stop. April found him only just alive, carried by his faithful servants. Then comes the last entry in his diary, 27th April: "Knocked up quite. We are on the banks of R. Molilamo." [Illustration: LIVINGSTONE ENTERING THE HUT AT ILALA ON THE NIGHT THAT HE DIED. From Livingstone's _Last Journals_, by permission of Mr. John Murray.] [Illustration: THE LAST ENTRIES IN LIVINGSTONE'S DIARY.] They laid him at last in a native hut, and here one night he died alone. They found him in the early morning, just kneeling by the side of the rough bed, his body stretched forward, his head buried in his hands upon the pillow. The negroes buried his heart on the spot where he died in the village of Ilala on the shores of Lake Bangweolo under the shadow of a great tree in the still forest. Then they wrapped his body in a cylinder of bark wound round in a piece of old sailcloth, lashed it to a pole, and a little band of negroes, including Susi and Chuma, set out to carry their dead master to the coast. For hundreds of miles they tramped with their precious burden, till they reached the sea and could give it safely to his fellow-countrymen, who conveyed it to England to be laid with other great men in Westminster Abbey. "He needs no epitaph to guard a name Which men shall praise while worthy work is done. He lived and died for good, be that his fame. Let marble crumble: this is living-stone." [Illustration: SUSI, LIVINGSTONE'S SERVANT. From a sketch by H. M. Stanley.] CHAPTER LXVIII THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT