There is nothing in this whole terrible journey so touching, and revealing so much, as this extract from his journal does. It shows that he is human, and yet far above common human weakness. Beset with difficulties, his only white companion dead or about to be left behind, the Arabs themselves and the natives telling him he cannot go on, left all alone in a hostile country, his men deserting him, he pauses and ponders. To make all these outer conditions darker, he is smitten down with fever that saps the energies, unnerves the heart and fills the imagination with gloomy forebodings, and makes the soul sigh for rest. It is the lowest pit of despondency into which a man may be cast. He feels it, and all alone, fever-worn and sad, he surveys the prospect before him. There is not a single soul on which to lean--not a sympathizing heart to turn to while fever is burning up his brain, and night, moonless and starless, is settling down around him. He would be less than human not to feel the desolation of his position, and for a moment to sink under this accumulation of disastrous circumstances. He does feel how utterly hopeless and sad is his condition; and all through the first part of this entry in his journal, there is something that sounds like a mournful refrain; yet at its close, out of his gloomy surroundings, up from his feverish bed speaks the brave heart in trumpet tones, showing the indomitable will that nothing can break, crying out of the all-enveloping gloom, "_no living man or living men shall stop me_--only death can prevent me." There spoke one of the few great natures God has made. The closing words of that entry in his journal ring like a bugle-note from his sick-bed, and foretell his triumph.