It was a brilliant summer morning when the _Ilala_ steamed into Lake Nyassa, and in a few hours we were at anchor in the little bay at Livingstonia, My first impression of this famous mission-station certainly will never be forgotten. Magnificent mountains of granite, green to the summit with forest, encircled it, and on the silver sand of a still smaller bay stood the small row of trim white cottages. A neat path through a small garden led up to the settlement, and I approached the largest house and entered. It was the Livingstonia manse--the head missionary's house. It was spotlessly clean; English furniture was in the room, a medicine chest, familiar-looking dishes were in the cupboards, books lying about, but there was no missionary in it. I went to the next house--it was the school, the benches were there and the blackboard, but there were no scholars and no teacher. I passed to the next, it was the blacksmith shop; there were the tools and the anvil, but there was no blacksmith. And so on to the next, and the next, all in perfect order, and all _empty_. Then a native approached and led me a few yards into the forest. And there among the mimosa trees, under a huge granite mountain, were four or five graves. These were the missionaries. I spent a day or two in the solemn shadow of that deserted manse. It is one of the loveliest spots in the world; and it was hard to believe, sitting under the tamarind trees by the quiet lake shore, that the pestilence which wasteth at midnight had made this beautiful spot its home. A hundred and fifty miles north, on the same lake-coast, the remnant of the missionaries have begun their task again, and there, slowly, against fearful odds, they are carrying on their work. Travellers have been pleased to say unkind things of missionaries. That they are sometimes right, I will not question. But I will say of the Livingstonia missionaries, and of the Blantyre missionaries, and count it an honor to say it, that they are brave, efficient, single-hearted men, who need our sympathy more than we know, and are equally above our criticism and our praise.