Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/333

Rh and by the 21st of that month the traveller's diary recorded twenty dead and eighty-nine deserted, between the coast and Vinyata!

The expedition was then little more than half-way between Zanzibar and the southern end of the Victoria Nyanza. Could anything be more discouraging? And yet this was nothing to the trials which were subsequently encountered in the circumnavigation of the lakes, and the journey to the west coast. It was bad enough to put up with hunger and desertion, and to stave off fever and death in the plains; but when to all this was added the risk of shipwreck, and the frequent attacks of hostile, treacherous, and even cannibal tribes, it seems marvellous that a man should under- take to lead an expedition farther, and that anyone should be found willing to follow him. But the stern purpose had been registered ; the firm resolve taken to do, or die; and it would have been folly and weakness to have turned back, when half the journey was accomplished. So at least thought the leader of the expedition. The boat must be launched, the lakes explored, their extent deter- mined, their outlets discovered, and the source of the Nile placed beyond doubt. The devious course of the great river which Livingstone and Cameron saw flowing past them at Nyangwe, the westernmost point of the Arab traders from Zanzibar, must be traced, before any idea could be entertained of a return to Europe.

All this was done, and more too. Following westward the course of the Congo, now identified with the Lualaba, and named the Livingstone River, in honour of the great traveller who preceded him, Mr. Stanley crossed nine hundred miles of previously unexplored country, encountering unheard of dangers, in the shape of malaria, cataracts, and man-eating savages, to say nothing of mutiny amongst his own disheartened followers, until at length, having traversed the vast continent of Africa from east to west, he arrived on the shores of the Atlantic. Safe and sound, it may be said, but, alas ! how changed in health and appearance ! In a portrait taken in England a week before his departure, and forming the frontispiece to the first volume of the present work- he appears a young man with dark hair, in good health, and with a careless expression of countenance which betokens no acquaintance with hardship. In the frontispiece to the second volume we have a portrait of the man as he appeared on his return three years later, aged and careworn, with his hair prematurely