The Personal Life of David Livingstone: Chiefly from his Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in the Possession of His FamilyBlaikie, William Garden
Religion
The Personal Life of David Livingstone: Chiefly from his Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in the Possession of His Family
Blaikie, William Garden
Livingstone, David, 1813-1873
greatly depopulated. We are now ascending this river without
vegetables, and living on salt beef and pork. The slave-trade
has done its work, for formerly all kinds of provisions could
be procured at every point, and at the cheapest rate. We
cannot get anything for either love or money, in a country
the fertility of which is truly astonishing.
A few more general topics are touched on in a letter to Mr. Braithwaite:
"I am sorry to hear of the death of Mr. Sturge. He wrote me a
long letter on the 'Peace principle,' and before I could
study it carefully, it was mislaid. I wrote him from Tette,
as I did not wish him to suppose I neglected him, and
mentioned the murder of the six Makololo and other things, as
difficulties in the way of adopting his views, as they were
perfectly unarmed, and there was no feud between the tribes.
I fear that my letter may not have reached him alive. The
departure of Sir Fowell Buxton and others is very unexpected.
Sorry to see the loss of Dr. Bowen, of Sierra Leone--a good
man and a true. But there is One who ever liveth to make
intercession for us, and to carry on his own work. A terrible
war that was in Italy, and the peace engenders more uneasy
forebodings than any peace ever heard of. It is well that God
and not the devil reigns, and will bring his own purposes to
pass, right through the midst of the wars and passions of
men. Have you any knowledge of a famous despatch written by
Sir George Grey (late of the Cape), on the proper treatment
of native tribes? I wish to study it.
"Tell your children that if I could get hold of a
hippopotamus I would eat it rather than allow it to eat me.
We see them often, but before we get near enough to get a
shot they dive down, and remain hidden till we are past. As
for lions, we never see them, sometimes hear a roar or two,
but that is all, and I go on the plan put forth by a little
girl in Scotland who saw a cow coming to her in a meadow, 'O
boo! boo! you no hurt me, I no hurt you.'"
At Tette one of his occupations was to fit up a sugar-mill, the gift of
Miss Whately, of Dublin, and some friends. To that lady he writes a
long letter of nineteen pages. He tells her he had just put up her
beautiful sugar-mill, to show the natives what could be done by
machinery. Then he adverts to the wonderful freedom from sickness that
his party had enjoyed in the delta of the Zambesi, and proceeds to give
an account of the Shiré Valley and its people. He finds ground for a
favorable contrast between the Shiré natives and the Tette Portuguese:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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