By Sir Roderick Murchison and his other staunch friends Livingstone was
as warmly welcomed as ever. When Murchison proposed to him that he
should go out again, although he seems to have had a desire to spend the
remainder of his days at home, the prospect was too tempting to be
rejected. He was appointed British consul to Central Africa without a
salary, and government contributed only £500 to the expedition. The
chief help came from private friends. During the latter part of the
expedition government granted him £1000, but that, when he learned of
it, was devoted to his great undertaking. The Geographical Society
contributed £500. The two main objects of the expedition were the
suppression of slavery by means of civilizing influences, and the
ascertainment of the watershed in the region between Nyasa and
Tanganyika. At first Livingstone thought the Nile problem had been all
but solved by Speke, Baker and Burton, but the idea grew upon him that
the Nile sources must be sought farther south, and his last journey
became in the end a forlorn hope in search of the "fountains" of
Herodotus. Leaving England in the middle of August 1865, via Bombay,
Livingstone arrived at Zanzibar on the 28th of January 1866. He was
landed at the mouth of the Rovuma on the 22nd of March, and started for
the interior on the 4th of April. His company consisted of thirteen
sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine African boys from Nasik school, Bombay,
and four boys from the Shiré region, besides camels, buffaloes, mules
and donkeys. This imposing outfit soon melted away to four or five boys.
Rounding the south end of Lake Nyasa, Livingstone struck in a
north-north-west direction for the south end of Lake Tanganyika, over
country much of which had not previously been explored. The Loangwa was
crossed on the 15th of December 1866. On Christmas day Livingstone lost
his four goats, a loss which he felt very keenly, and the medicine chest
was stolen in January 1867. Fever came upon him, and for a time was his
almost constant companion; this, with other serious ailments which
subsequently attacked him, and which he had no medicine to counteract,
told on even his iron frame. The Chambezi was crossed on the 28th of
January, and the south end of Tanganyika reached on the 31st of March.
Here, much to his vexation, he got into the company of Arab slave
dealers (among them being Tippoo-Tib) by whom his movements were
hampered; but he succeeded in reaching Lake Mweru (Nov. 1867). After
visiting Lake Mofwa and the Lualaba, which he believed was the upper
part of the Nile, he, on the 18th of July 1868, discovered Lake
Bangweulu. Proceeding up the west coast of Tanganyika, he reached Ujiji
on the 14th of March 1869, "a ruckle of bones." Livingstone recrossed
Tanganyika in July, and passed through the country of the Manyema, but
baffled partly by the natives, partly by the slave hunters, and partly
by his long illnesses it was not till the 29th of March 1871 that he
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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