He is reading Speke’s travels with critical enjoyment. He spends a page or two in challenging his statement that African mothers sell their own children. He does not believe it. He has never known an instance, nor have the Arabs. He always defends the essential goodness of the natives, and their common human feelings. Then he appeals to the heroism of the Church at home to come and help the African people. “I would say to missionaries, Come on, brethren, to the real heathen. You have no idea how brave you are till you try. Leaving the coast tribes and devoting yourselves heartily to the savages, as they are called, you will find, with some drawbacks and wickednesses, a very great deal to admire and love.” A little later he is arguing that the interior is a tempting field for “well-sustained efforts of private benevolence.” He thinks the missionary should make up his mind not to depend upon “foreign support,” and gives instances of his own resourcefulness where he had none to depend on but himself. He is for “a sort of Robinson Crusoe life,” the great object being “to improve the improvable among the natives.” As to method, he writes later, “no jugglery or sleight-of-hand ... would have any effect in the civilisation of Africans; they have too much good sense for that. Nothing brings them to place thorough confidence in Europeans but a long course of well-doing.... Goodness and unselfishness impress their minds more than any kind of skill or power. They say, ‘You have different hearts from ours.’ ... The prayer to Jesus for a new heart and a right spirit at once commends itself as appropriate.” He notes, too, that music influences them, and often leads to conversion. Scattered through the journal are his usual keen observations on the animal life and plant life of the district, together with brief narratives of tribal quarrels and crimes. Again and again he confesses uncertainty as to whether he has not been tracing the sources of the Congo rather than the Nile. If he had not had a scientific mind and training, he argues that long ere this he would have cried “Eureka!” and gone home with a half-proved hypothesis. But his absolute love of truth forbids.