DR. LIVINGSTONE TO THE EDITOR OF | first eighty miles or so. We could of course see "GOOD WORDS." LAKE NYASSA, August 28, 1866. MY DEAR DR. MACLEOD,- The hint you threw out in our last interview about the Hermannsburg missionaries has been turned over in my mind again and again in the weary treadmill trudge of some 300 miles from the coast to this. Let me try and give you some idea of the country passed over, and then, if I succeed, you will be able to form a judgment in the matter. From the coast, at a nice little land-locked harbour called Pemba, at the bottom of Mikindany bay, which you may look for twenty-five miles north of the river Rovuma, the country is a gradual slope, up to within forty or fifty miles of this. The land around the harbour rises at once to 150 or 200 feet, and is prettily wooded. There are six villages of half-caste Arabs dotted round the harbour, the circumference of which is over three miles. The entrance is narrow but deep, and the southern part affords anchorage for ships of any size. When we leave this, and proceed away southwards towards the Rovuma, we travel in a wady—not very like your Wady Toora or Mousa, the remembrance of which makes the eyes blink, but still a genuine orthodox wady, having the appearance of a dry river's bed. This has thickly wooded banks and braes, sloping up 100 or 150 feet on each side, and the path somewhat like a sheep-walk, winds along the bottom among grass which often towers over one's head, and has stalks as thick as quills. We are not blinded, it is true, by the glare from sand and stones, but have often to keep the eyes half shut for fear of the spikelets of grass. The only water is to be found in wells. The barometer showed a gradual ascent, and in time we got on a plateau cut up in various directions by these smothering wadys. On the heights and their slopes we have generally dense forests the trees not so large as they are thickly planted, and horribly intertwined with climbing plants. I call them plants, but they are in fact trees run mad in the struggle for existence some are as thick as a man-of-war's hawsers and as round; others are flat like sword scabbards; and along the centre of the flat on each side are set groups of straight strong thorns; others have hooked thorns like our sweet briar, but magnified, and meaning mischief. These and other entanglers give one the idea that Africa has got a pretty fair share of the curse- "Thorns and briars," &c. Paths had been made by the people, who are named Makonde, but they were much too low for camels and too narrow for buffaloes. We got them cleared for very reasonable wages; and when we were eighty or ninety miles from the coast, or away from the damp of the Indian Ocean, the forest became much more open. It was still, however, dense enough to prevent our getting more than a mere glimpse to any distance. The Rovuma has the plateau mentioned, a mile or two distant from each bank, for the it-a great green mass of foliage, with an occasional red rock jutting out. The confluence of the Loendi and Rovuma is about 150 miles from the sea. The sources of both lie near each other, and both have the same character-sandy bottoms, rapid currents, and many rocky islands. We went along the Rovuma for some distance above the confluence, and then, always ascending, came first to an undulating and then to a mountainous country. Although the country was still covered with open forest, we could get a view of the distant mountains from the crests of the waves into which the region has been worn or upheaved. About 130 miles from this we entered a well-watered, fruitful, but depopu lated district. A dearth of food from the confluence to that point gave us rather hard lines, and we had to push on as fast as we could to reach the land of plenty before us. With four of my companions, I succeeded in reaching the inhabited part on the morning of the eighth day. In the course of the sixth day's march I counted fifteen running burns, some ten yards wide and thigh deep, though it was the dry season. We were then between 2,000 and 3,000 feet above the level of the sea, and found it cold enough for flannels. The most of this depopulated tract shows evidence of a former prosperity. ridges, like our potatoe drills, on which the people plant dourra, maize, beans, and cassava, to allow the superflous rains to run off, were everywhere visible. Calcined clay pipes, used in smelting furnaces, are so abundant that it is clear the people worked extensively in iron. The watershed between the coast and lake is about forty miles from the latter, and is about 3,400 or 4,000 feet of altitude. Where I write is 1,200 feet, and not so cold as on the heights. The On the seaboard we have low Arab halfcastes; but seven miles inland, we come to the Makonde, who make clearances in the forest and cultivate grain pretty largely. Food is very cheap, and a village may be found every two or three miles. At certain seasons they dig gumcopal for sale. We found them very civil, but they are said not to be always so; and on a former occasion they began to shoot at us, with arrows and balls, without the smallest provocation. Four of the balls went through the boat's sail above our heads. Beyond the Makonde we come to the Matambwe, who differ little but in dialect and the markings on their faces and bodies. Still further inland, we meet the Makoa, easily known by marks like a half-moon on the forehead. And then we have Waiau or Waiyau — elsewhere called Ajawa-and the people of the Lake Wanyassa, or Manganja. With the excep tion of the last, all may be described as of various shades of brown some are very light indeed. Their heads, especially those of the Waiyau, are round and compact; foreheads good, but small; in the nose, the ala nasi are always full; lips moderately thick, but the profile is not at all prognathous, like the West Coast negro; height, middle size; bodies and limbs well-shaped and strong. The women wear the hideous lip-| principal slave-merchants at 'Kilwa see very ring, and either file their teeth to points or into little of it, and care less. I refer more largely notches. Each tribe has its own dialect; but to this half-caste class because, though they this causes no difficulty- there are so many who have scarcely any religion, they have abundance understand several. of bigotry, and they form the main obstacle to efforts by Christian missionaries. The Sultan has no power over them. They obey him when it suits them, and pay no attention to his orders when they are unpalatable. No attempts have ever been made, so far as I can learn, by any Arab of any sort, on the East coast or inland, to propagate Mahometanisın. This indifference is ascribed by some to the probable fact, that many Arabian emigrants mixed with the native population before Mahomet appeared, and that the present mixed race had too much of the African in them to imbibe the fanaticism of the prophet's immediate successors. However it may have been, the coast tribes are a most unpromising people for a missionary to have anything to do with. From all I can gather, Africa must be christianized from within. The Waiyau even are a more likely people to receive the Gospel than any of the littoral tribes, who are steeped in prejudice and religious pride. Our great difficulty was the dearth of food that prevailed over a wide district. We had, of course, a share of those petty annoyances which are best forgotten, but which sometimes creep into books of travels, till they make one scunner. The most formidable obstacle is the slave trade. Every year, swarms of Zanzibar and coast Arabs come up laden with ammunition and calico. The usual practice is to go to a Waiyau village, exhibit their goods, and say, "These want slaves." They are invited to remain where they are; and marau ling parties, with gunpowder on tick (I have forgotten the proper word), sally forth to the Manganja villages, and there the bowmen never make any stand against firearms. Most of the women and children of the villages attacked are brought back. The men who escape often perish of starvation, for their stores are all consumed by fire, in the mere wantonness of wickedness, by the marauders. This is the process which depopulated the rich, fertile country we travelled over; and it is that of which we saw so much at the hands of the Portuguese in the Shire valley. Each caravan is called a safari, and consists of a dozen or more underlings, with a captain, after whom the safari is named. They divide when they reach the Waiyau country; and parties go to separate villages, with instructions to return to some point agreed on, when they have each secured a complement of slaves. We nearly met seven of these safaris; but no sooner did they hear that the English were coming, than off they scampered across country, through pathless forests. One was, however, just entering on the uninhabited part referred to, as no news had reached the leader till we had lighted upon him. On hearing that I had been making forced marches to procure food for my party behind, and that we were all nearly famished, he generously presented an ox and bag of flour. I felt no inclination to look a gift horse in the teeth. The guilt in all this slaving is so subdivided, that no one, unless he sees the whole process, can appreciate its enormity; and then, in describing what one has actually seen, and carefully keeping a long way within the truth, there is always a natural apprehension of being considered guilty of exaggeration by the would-be long-headed and worldly-wise. The goods are usually advanced on credit by merchants at 'Kilwa (Quilloa) and elsewhere. The riff-raff half-castes who accompany the leader of the safari, and sometimes go with the Waiyau marauders, look on slaves as so many cattle. It is probable that those whom we saw tied to trees, and left to perish because the owner was vexed at losing his money by their being unable to travel further, were the victims of this class. These half-castes see the clue to part of the mortality that takes place on the way to the coast. But the Waiyau and the My estimate of Mataka, the principal chief of the watershed country, may have been too favourable. You may judge of the effects of huge baskets of porridge on a famished Scotchman, -none of your thin brose, but such as a spade would stand as upright in as Cleopatra's needle does in the mud of the Nile. But some of his people had gone without his knowledge, and he had given orders before our arrival to send them and their cattle back. I accidentally saw them they were fifty-four women and children, about a dozen boys, and some thirty head of cattle and calves. He fed us most bountifully all the time we were at his town, which consists of at least a thousand houses, and took care that we should travel easily through his country, which extends to the Lake. My opinion is, if these Hermannsburg men are made of really good stuff, they could make their way up, and keep the way open. They could raise wheat in winter, and all European vegetables at the same time; and the native grain when the people do. If they sowed at other times they would not reap. They would require calico sufficient to keep them a year, and after that, only for the purchase of small articles and work. If, however, they are men who would sit down in despair when they had no sugar to their tea, and call out sacrifice, sacrifice, they had better far eat sour krout at home, and never quote me as advising them to attempt what only good men and true can do. February 1, 1867.-I am away far beyond the Ayars, and, I believe, on the watershed we have been in search of. It has taken a long time to work our way up, and I have suffered a good deal of gnawing hunger; but I have made many friends, spoken a few words to some in whose memory they may stick, and everywhere protested against men buying and selling each other. I send this by some black slave traders, but have some doubts as to its reaching its destination. They refuse to give me more than half a day to write, which induces me to beg you to remember me to the Buchanans and say salaam to your wife. Affectionately yours, DAVID LIVINGSTONE. the house, which is her property. But Linda has fallen in love with a wild young fellow called Ludovic Valcarm -a thoughtless, selfish, harum-scarum young man, whom all the devout people in Nurnberg regard as a veritable child of the devil. To save her from the sin of loving such a man, Madame Staubach exerts all her authority over her niece, and almost forces her to marry Peter Steinmarc, for whom Linda has From The London Review. a strong aversion. Now Linda believes in her aunt's theory of the world. "She lived with NINA BALATKA-LINDA TRESSEL. her aunt a quiet, industrious, sober life, striving Ir is now about a year ago that there appeared to be obedient, striving to be religious with the among the murder-and-bigamy novels of the religion of her aunt. She had almost brought libraries a modest, little two-volumed story, herself to believe that it was good for her to be which seemed to claim recognition on other crushed. She had quite brought herself to wish grounds. It had no murder, no bigamy, no to believe it. She had within her heart no dered-haired adulteress; in short, all the puppets sire for open rebellion against domestic authorand stage-play of the vampire school of fiction ity. The world was a dangerous bad world, in which much afflicts us yet-were wholly dis- which men were dust and women something carded. In their place, we found a severe sim- lower than dust. She would tell herself so very plicity of style, a rare capacity of insight into often, and strive to believe herself when she did character, and the plain, tender story of a Bo- so. But, for all this, there was a yearning for hemian girl who loved, suffered, and was made something beyond her present life for somehappy. That story was "Nina Balatka; and thing that should be of the world, worllly. somehow it separated itself from the vampire When she heard profane music she would long novels, and was talked about, and read, and re-to dance. When she heard the girls laughing in membered. The authorship was attributed to the public gardens, she would long to stay and one or two gentlemen who— with all respect be laugh with them. Pretty ribbons and brightit said- might as appropriately have been sus- coloured silks were a snare to her. When she pected of writing Browning's "Evelyn Hope,' ,"could shake out her curly locks in the retireor Tennyson's "St. Agnes' Eve." We are not ment of her own little chamber, she liked to aware that "Nina Balatka" was ever said to be feel them and to know that they were pretty." the writing of a woman, perhaps because there Borne down by the pious importunity of her was neither immorality nor obstetric informa- aunt, Linda promises to become the wife of Peter tion in the book; but the appearance of " Linda Steinmarc; and on the very night before the Tressel" almost settles the point. The heroic wedding-day, Ludovic Valcarm makes his way fortitude, the simple frankness, and maidenly into the house and entreats her to fly with him. honour of Nina Balatka were the attributes of She does so. "After to-morrow we will be as a creation which might have arisen in the mind happy as the day is long,' said Ludovic, as he of a male artist; but Linda Tressel seems to us pressed his companion close to his side. Linda to be altogether a woman's woman. But after told herself, but did not tell him, that she never having created such a beautiful character as could be happy again." Circumstances save Linda Tressel, could a woman have had the her from the ordinary consequences of such a hardness of heart-the coldness of artistic self-step, and she is taken home again by her aunt; possession to give her a miserable and totally but Linda ever afterwards considers herself a unmerited death? Surely it was a woman who castaway, and avoids, even while she loves, the gave birth to Linda Tressel, and a man who man who was selfish or thoughtless enough to killed her. Leaving these considerations aside, disgrace her in her own eyes. She is again we find "Linda Tressel" to be quite as good a goaded into promising to marry Peter Steinmare; story as "Nina Balatka," if there is in it a partly to free herself from her aunt's importuslight trace of self-consciousness which we did nities, and partly because she thinks it to be her not remark in the former work. There is the same duty. But the nearer the wedding-day apsimple style, quaint and studied, the same mi-proaches, the more sullen and silent does she be nute knowledge of Nurnberg that we saw exhibited in the case of Prague; the same tender, sensitive representations of the moods and feelings of a tender and sensitive girl. Linda Tressel lives with her aunt, Madame Staubach, a wellmeaning, rigidly pious and bigoted woman. The natural impulses of the girl are kept in check by the austere tuition of the aunt, who regards all amusement with the angry eye of a Scotch Calvinist of fifty years ago. They have a lodger, Peter Steinmarc, an elderly matter-offact, commonplace, and avaricious town-clerk, who wishes to marry Linda in order to possess come, until she really becomes half-mad. She runs away, for the last time, to a relative of hers in Cologne; and there the long mental tension is relaxed, the torture she has suffered bears its fruit, and she dies, without a word for Ludovic Valcarm, and with a message of forgiveness to the man who had ruined her life, the old townclerk. Such is an outline of one of the tenderest and truest pictures of life and character we have met with for many a day. Fiction is not quite dead among us so long as books like Linda Tressel" are written, and read, and treasured. JUST PUBLISHED AT THIS OFFICE : LINDA TRESSEL, by the Author of Nina Balatka. Price 38 cts. ALL FOR GREED, by the BARONESS BLAZE DE BURY. Price 38 cts. LATELY PUBLISHED: THE BROWNLOWS, by MRS. OLIPHANT. 38 cts. THE TENANTS OF MALORY, by J. S. LE FANU. 50 cts. PREPARING FOR PUBLICATION AT THIS OFFICE: GRACE OWEN'S ENGAGEMENT. THE BRAMLEIGHS OF BISHOP'S FOLLY, by CHARLES LEVER. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. 164 FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS. For 6 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in numbers, price $10. |