My mission to find Livingstone was very simple, and was a clear and definite aim. All I had to do was to free my mind from all else, and relieve it of every earthly desire but the finding of the man whom I was sent to seek. To think of self, friends, banking-account, life-insurance, or any worldly interest but the one sole purpose of reaching the spot where Livingstone might happen to rest, could only tend to weaken resolution. Intense application to my task assisted me to forget all I had left behind, and all that might lie ahead in the future. In some ways, it produced a delightful tranquillity which was foreign to me while in Europe. To be indifferent to the obituaries the papers may publish to-morrow, that never even a thought should glance across the mind of law-courts, jails, tombstones; not to care what may disturb a Parliament, or a Congress, or the state of the Funds, or the nerves excited about earthquakes, floods, wars, and other national evils, is a felicity few educated men in Britain know; and it compensated me in a great measure for the distress from heat, meagreness of diet, malaria, and other ills, to which I became subject soon after entering Africa. Every day added something to my experience. I saw that exciting adventures could not happen so often as I had anticipated, that the fevers in Africa were less frequent than in some parts of the Mississippi Valley, that game was not visible on every acre, and that the ambushed savage was rare. There were quite as many bright pictures to be met with as there were dark. Troubles taught patience, and with the exercise of patience came greater self-control and experience. My ideas respecting my Zanzibari and Unyamwezi followers were modified after a few weeks’ observation and trials of them. Certain vices and follies, which clung to their uneducated natures, were the source of great trouble; though there were brave virtues in most of them, which atoned for much that appeared incorrigible. Wellington is reported to have said that he never knew a good-tempered man in India; and Sydney Smith thought that sweetness of temper was impossible in a very cold or a very hot climate. With such authorities it is somewhat bold, perhaps, to disagree; but after experiences of Livingstone, Pocock, Swinburne, Surgeon Parke, and other white men, one must not take these remarks too literally. As for my black followers, no quality was so conspicuous and unvarying as good-temper; and I think that, since I had more occasion to praise my black followers than blame them, even I must surely take credit for being more often good-tempered than bad; and besides, I felt great compassion for them. How often the verse in the Psalms recurred to me: ‘Like as a father pitieth his own children’!