The deafening roar of the water died away in the distance, and the party followed the forest paths from the territory of one tribe to that of the next. Steadfast as always, Livingstone met all danger and treachery with courage and contempt of death, a Titan among geographical explorers as well as among Christian missionaries. He drew the main outlines of this southern part of Darkest Africa and laid down the course of the Zambesi on his map. For a year he had been an explorer rather than a missionary. But the dominating thought in his dream of the future was always that the end of geographical exploration was only the beginning of missionary enterprise. At the first Portuguese station he left his Makololo men, promising to return and lead them back to their own villages. Then he travelled down the Zambesi to Quilimane on the sea. He had, therefore, crossed Africa from coast to coast, and was the first scientifically educated European to do so. After fifteen years in Africa he had earned a right to go home. An English ship carried him to Mauritius, and at the end of 1856 he reached England. He was received everywhere with boundless enthusiasm, and never was an explorer feted as he was. He travelled from town to town, always welcomed as a hero. He always spoke of the slave-trade and the responsibility that rested on the white men to rescue the blacks. Africa, lying forgotten and misty beneath its moving rain-belts, became at once the object of attention of all the educated world. Detraction was not silent at the home-coming of the victor. The Missionary Society gave him to understand that he had not laboured sufficiently for the spread of the Gospel, and that he had been too much of an explorer and too little of a missionary. He therefore left the Society; and when, after a sojourn of more than a year at home, he returned to Africa, it was in the capacity of English Consul in Quilimane, and leader of an expedition for the exploration of the interior of Africa.