The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death | Page 6

writing letters home, and finished forty-two, which in
some measure will make up for my long silence. The Ujijians are
unwilling to carry my letters, because, they say, Seyed Majid will order
the bearer to return with others: he may say, "You know where he is, go
back to him," but I suspect they fear my exposure of their ways more
than anything else.[4]
_16th May, 1869._--Thani bin Suellim sent me a note yesterday to say
that he would be here in two days, or say three; he seems the most
active of the Ujijians, and I trust will help me to get a canoe and men.
The malachite at Katañga is loosened by fire, then dug out of four hills:
four manehs of the ore yield one maneh of copper, but those who
cultivate the soil get more wealth than those who mine the copper.

[No change of purpose was allowed to grow out of sickness and
disappointment. Here and there, as in the words written on the next day,
we find Livingstone again with his back turned to the coast and gazing
towards the land of the Manyuema and the great rivers reported there.]
_17th May, 1869._--Syde bin Habib arrived to-day with his cargo of
copper and slaves. I have to change house again, and wish I were away,
now that I am getting stronger. Attendants arrive from Parra or Mparra.
[The old slave-dealer, whom he met at Casembe's, and who seems to
have been set at liberty through Livingstone's instrumentality, arrives at
Ujiji at last.]
_18th May, 1869._--Mohamad bin Saleh arrived to-day. He left this
when comparatively young, and is now well advanced in years.
The Bakatala at Lualaba West killed Salem bin Habib. _Mem._--Keep
clear of them. Makwamba is one of the chiefs of the rock-dwellers,
Ngulu is another, and Masika-Kitobwé on to Baluba. Sef attached
Kilolo N'tambwé.
_19th May, 1869._--The emancipation of our West-Indian slaves was
the work of but a small number of the people of England--the
philanthropists and all the more advanced thinkers of the age.
Numerically they were a very small minority of the population, and
powerful only from the superior abilities of the leading men, and from
having the right, the true, and just on their side. Of the rest of the
population an immense number were the indifferent, who had no
sympathies to spare for any beyond their own fireside circles. In the
course of time sensation writers came up on the surface of society, and
by way of originality they condemned almost every measure and
person of the past. "Emancipation was a mistake;" and these fast
writers drew along with them a large body, who would fain be
slaveholders themselves. We must never lose sight of the fact that
though the majority perhaps are on the side of freedom, large numbers
of Englishmen are not slaveholders only because the law forbids the
practice. In this proclivity we see a great part of the reason of the
frantic sympathy of thousands with the rebels in the great Black war in
America. It is true that we do sympathize with brave men, though we

may not approve of the objects for which they fight. We admired
Stonewall Jackson as a modern type of Cromwell's Ironsides; and we
praised Lee for his generalship, which, after all, was chiefly
conspicuous by the absence of commanding abilities in his opponents,
but, unquestionably, there existed besides an eager desire that
slaveocracy might prosper, and the Negro go to the wall. The would-be
slaveholders showed their leanings unmistakably in reference to the
Jamaica outbreak; and many a would-be Colonel Hobbs, in lack of
revolvers, dipped his pen in gall and railed against all Niggers who
could not be made slaves. We wonder what they thought of their hero,
when informed that, for very shame at what he had done and written, he
had rushed unbidden out of the world.
_26th May, 1869._--Thani bin Suellim came from Unyanyembé on the
20th. He is a slave who has risen to freedom and influence; he has a
disagreeable outward squint of the right eye, teeth protruding from the
averted lips, is light-coloured, and of the nervous type of African. He
brought two light boxes from Unyembé, and charged six fathoms for
one and eight fathoms for the other, though the carriage of both had
been paid for at Zanzibar. When I paid him he tried to steal, and
succeeded with one cloth by slipping it into the hands of a slave. I gave
him two cloths and a double blanket as a present. He discovered
afterwards what he knew before, that all had been injured by the wet on
the way here, and sent two back openly, which all saw to be an insult.
He asked a little coffee, and I