He did not know, though he suspected, how helpless he was in the hands of the Arabs. His bitter cry could not reach England. Forty letters he wrote, and paid handsomely for their delivery, but the Arabs took care they should never reach the coast. He was literally “cut off” in the interior. He heard nothing from Europe, and Europe heard nothing of him. A few weeks at Ujiji were enough. Then, all unfit as he was, he starts out again for the country in the north-west, the land of the Manyuema, and the great river Lualaba, the direction of which it is his main purpose now to determine. He still believes it is the Nile. CHAPTER VIII When Livingstone crossed Tanganyika again to the west and disappeared into the new country, he certainly did not propose to himself more than an eight or nine months’ absence. In reality he left Ujiji on July 12th, 1869, and saw it no more until October 23rd, 1871. For two years and a quarter he wandered on, while the great world believed him to be dead; and, perhaps, if we had to name one period of his life which was more poignant and more fruitful than any other, it was this. For out of its agonies a new hope was born for humanity. His health returns somewhat as he goes on, though many signs remind him that he is not the man he was. He is only fifty-six, but he is worn out with hardship and privation. He cannot walk up-hill without panting for breath. His cheeks are hollow, and his teeth are broken, or have fallen out, from trying to masticate hard and sticky food. “If you expect a kiss from me,” he writes to his daughter Agnes, “you must take it through a speaking-trumpet!”