January 3, 1872. Had some modest sport among some zebras, and secured a quantity of meat, which will be useful. Livingstone, this afternoon, got upon his favourite topics, the Zambesi Mission, the Portuguese and Arab slave-trade, and these subjects invariably bring him to relate incidents about what he has witnessed of African nature and aptitudes. I conclude, from the importance he attaches to these, that he is more interested in ethnology than in topographical geography. Though the Nile problem and the central line of drainage are frequently on his lips, they are second to the humanities observed on his wanderings, which, whether at the morning coffee, tiffin, or dinner, occupy him throughout the meal. The Manyuema women must have attracted him by their beauty, from which I gather that they must be superior to the average female native. He speaks of their large eyes, their intelligent looks, and pretty, expressive, arch ways. Then he refers to the customs at Cazembe’s Court, and the kindness received from the women there. In a little while, I am listening to the atrocities of Tagamoyo, the half-caste Arab, who surrounded a Manyuema market, and, with his long-shirted followers, fired most murderous volleys on the natives as they were innocently chaffering about their wares. Then there is real passion in his language, and I fancy from the angry glitter in his eyes that, were it in his power, Tagamoyo and his gang should have a quick taste of the terror he has inspired among the simple peoples of Manyuema. He is truly pathetic when he describes the poor enchained slaves, and the unhappy beings whose necks he has seen galled by the tree-forks, lumbering and tottering along the paths, watched by the steady, cruel eyes of their drivers, etc., etc. The topics change so abruptly that I find it almost impossible to remember a tithe of them; and they refer to things about which I know so little that it will be hard to make a summary of what I am told at each meal. One cannot always have his note-book handy, for we drop upon a subject so suddenly, and often, in my interest, I forget what I ought to do. I must trust largely to the fact that I am becoming steeped in Livingstonian ideas upon everything that is African, from pity for the big-stomached picaninny, clinging to the waist-strings of its mother, to the missionary bishop, and the great explorers, Burton, Speke, and Baker. He is a strong man in every way, with an individual tenacity of character. His memory is retentive. How he can remember Whittier’s poems, couplets out of which I hear frequently, as well as from Longfellow, I cannot make out. I do not think he has any of these books with him. But he recites them as though he had read them yesterday. March 3. Livingstone reverted again to his charges against the missionaries on the Zambesi, and some of his naval officers on the expedition.