“Yes, yes; is he coming here?”
“No, my boy, he must not come here.”
“Then let us take Dick, and Tom, and Hercules, and go to him.”
Mrs. Weldon tried to conceal her tears.
“Have you heard from papa?”
“No.”
“Then why do you not write to him?”
“Write to him?” repeated his mother, “that is the very thing I was thinking about.”
The child little knew the agitation that was troubling her mind.
Meanwhile Mrs. Weldon had another inducement which she hardly ventured to own to herself for postponing her final decision. Was it absolutely impossible that her liberation should be effected by some different means altogether?
A few days previously she had overheard a conversation outside her hut, and over this she had found herself continually pondering.
Alvez and one of the Ujiji dealers, discussing the future prospects of their business, mutually agreed in denouncing the efforts that were being made for the suppression of the slave-traffic, not only by the cruisers on the coast, but by the intrusion of travellers and missionaries into the interior.
Alvez averred that all these troublesome visitors ought to be exterminated forthwith.
“But kill one, and another crops up,” replied the dealer.
“Yes, their exaggerated reports bring up a swarm of them,” said Alvez.
It seemed a subject of bitter complaint that the markets of Nyangwé, Zanzibar, and the lake-district had been invaded by Speke and Grant and others, and although they congratulated each other that the western provinces had not yet been much persecuted, they confessed that now that the travelling epidemic had begun to rage, there was no telling how soon a lot of European and American busybodies might be among them. The depots at Cassangé and Bihé had both been visited, and although Kazonndé had hitherto been left quiet, there were rumours enough that the continent was to be tramped over from east to west.8
“And it may be,” continued Alvez, “that that missionary fellow, Livingstone, is already on his way to us; if he comes there can be but one result; there must be freedom for all the slaves in Kazonndé.”
“Freedom for the slaves in Kazonndé!” These were the words which in connection with Dr. Livingstone’s name had arrested Mrs. Weldon’s attention, and who can wonder that she pondered them over and over again, and ventured to associate them with her own prospects?
Here was a ray of hope!
The mere mention of Livingstone’s name in association with this story seems to demand a brief survey of his career.
Born on the 19th of March, 1813, David Livingstone was the second of six children of a tradesman in the village of Blantyre, in Lanarkshire. After two years’ training in medicine and theology, he was sent out by the London Missionary Society, and landed at the Cape of Good Hope in 1840, with the intention of joining Moffat in South Africa. After exploring the country of the Bechuanas, he returned to Kuruman, and, having married Moffat’s daughter, proceeded in 1843 to found a mission in the Mabotsa valley.
After four years he removed to Kolobeng in the Bechuana district, 225 miles north of Kuruman, whence, in 1849, starting off with his wife, three children, and two friends, Mr. Oswell and Mr. Murray, he discovered Lake Ngami, and returned by descending the course of the Zouga.
The opposition of the natives had prevented his proceeding beyond Lake Ngami at his first visit, and he made a second with no better success. In a third attempt, however, he wended his way northwards with his family and Mr. Oswell along the Chobe, an affluent of the Zambesi, and after a difficult journey at length reached the district of the Makalolos, of whom the chief, named Sebituané, joined him at Linyanté. The Zambesi itself was discovered at the end of June, 1851, and the doctor returned to the Cape for the purpose of sending his family to England.
His next project was to cross the continent obliquely from south to west, but in this expedition he had resolved that he would risk no life but his own. Accompanied, therefore, by only a few natives, he started in the following June, and skirting the Kalahari desert entered Litubaruba on the last day of the year; here he found the Bechuana district much ravaged by the Boers, the original Dutch colonists, who had formed the population of the Cape before it came into the possession of the English. After a fortnight’s stay, he proceeded into the heart of the district of the Bamangonatos, and travelled continuously until the 23rd of May, when he arrived at Linyanté, and was received with much honour by Sekeletoo, who had recently become sovereign of the Makalolos. A severe attack of fever detained the traveller here for a period, but he made good use of the enforced rest by studying the manners of the country, and became for the first time sensible of its terrible sufferings in consequence of the slave-trade.
Descending the course of the Chobe to the Zambesi, he next entered Naniele, and after visiting Katonga and Libonta, advanced to the point of confluence of the Leeba with the Zambesi, where he determined upon ascending the former as far as the Portuguese possessions in the west; it was an undertaking, however, that required considerable preparation, so that it was necessary for him to return to Linyanté.
On the 11th of November he again started. He was accompanied by twenty-seven Makalolos, and ascended the Leeba till, in the territory of the Balonda, he reached a spot where it received the waters of its tributary the Makondo.
It was the first time a white man had ever penetrated so far.
Proceeding on their way, they arrived at the residence of Shinté, the most powerful of the chieftains of the Balonda, by whom they were well received, and having met with equal kindness from Kateema, a ruler on the other side of the Leeba, they encamped, on the 20th of February, 1853, on the banks of Lake Dilolo.
Here it was that the real difficulty commenced; the arduous travelling, the
