_Trading._ In a short time the African Lakes Company began to exert an influence in the country. Its agents brought out a steamer to ply between Mazaro and the Mission settlements. The intention was to aid the Missions and encourage the natives in commerce. The negroes, it was felt, might easily wonder what could be the object of the Missionary, but they could all understand the object of the Trader. Hitherto the great trade of the country had been in slaves, nor could a native chief be expected to lay aside this traffic all at once, seeing, as he did, no harm in dealing in human flesh and blood. He pleaded, and that truly, that he had nothing to sell but slaves. Some legitimate trade required therefore to be introduced. In dealing with the natives, Trading Companies would evidently have to face great difficulties. Unfortunately these negroes had learned to look to all traders for rum and powder. Besides, as time is of no value to the native, he demands for his goods the same price in the interior that he would get at the coast. Like the Missionary, the Trader in such lands has to educate the people gradually. But the Trading Company soon conferred a great boon on the Mission Stations. At first we had always great difficulty in getting ordinary stores from England. For a long time while we had plenty of tea we had no sugar, on other occasions while we had plenty of sugar we had no tea! But the superior means of communication put an end to these difficulties. This company is desirous of opening up the country by making a road as far as Lake Tanganyika. This is certainly a very good programme. When operations are extended over such a large field, no doubt, many difficulties may be expected. On one occasion a chief robbed and murdered no fewer than fourteen natives that were employed by the company, and when a party went back to remonstrate, another man lost his life in the scuffle. But the making of roads is a work that the natives much like, and which soon advances the civilization of a district. _Field for Emigration._ Livingstone as he passed through this region often thought of the poor in his native land. He knew how human beings were crowded together in large cities, where they seldom saw a green field or enjoyed the pure air. There they lived, cast aside into some filthy street to be hidden as it were from the more respectable citizens. Might not this hard fate be modified? The vast unpeopled plains and mountains of Africa impressed us with the lesson that Great Britain is but a little part of God’s vast world.