“MANARA.”

This was Manara’s last letter to Mazzini; at that same Villa Spada the yearned-for bullet pierced his heroic heart.  Manara died as the barbarians entered Rome.

And here, to all appearances, is Garibaldi’s last letter written in Rome to Mazzini: 

“We have retaken our positions outside San Pancrazio.  Let General Rosselli send me orders; this is now no time for change.  Yours,

  “G.  GARIBALDI.”

No time for anything but one last desperate onslaught at the point of the bayonet, Garibaldi in the foremost ranks with sword unsheathed, while Medici from Villa Savorelli renewed the wonders of the Vascello.  Twice the assailants were driven back to their second lines; thrice they returned in overpowering numbers; but, gaining the gate, they were received with volleys of musketry from the barricades at the ingress to Villa Spada and Savorelli.  There fell the flower of the Lombards; boys of the “band of hope”; Garibaldi’s giant negro, faithful, brave Anghiar; six hundred added to the three thousand four hundred corpses on which the soldiers of La Grande Nation reconstructed the throne of the supreme Pontiff, and guarded it with their bayonets until the sword of their self-chosen master fell from his trembling hands at Sedan.

(1849) LIVINGSTONE’S AFRICAN DISCOVERIES, David Livinstone and Thomas
       Hughes

Although Africa, the second largest grand division of the earth, has figured in history from ancient times, still it has been rightly named, and until recently was called with good reason, the “Dark Continent.”  But though it has been thus designated, as the least known of the world’s grand divisions, the progress of discovery and settlement is rapidly dispelling the ignorance and mystery to which the designation was due.  The ancient seats of African civilization were confined to the northern parts of the continent.  The Phoenicians are said to have circumnavigated Africa as early as the seventh century before Christ.  In the middle of the fifteenth century of the present era the Portuguese explored much of the coastline, and in 1497 Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope.  But no modern explorations of the interior are known to have been made until the latter part of the eighteenth century.  Since James Bruce, the Scottish traveller, explored the Nile Valley in 1768, more than thirty others have distinguished themselves by their discoveries on the African continent.

None of Livingstone’s predecessors equalled the achievements of this Scottish missionary and explorer, who combined with his zeal in the cause of religion and humanity a spirit of investigation and adventure that made him also the servant of science, the “advance-agent” of discovery, settlement, and civilization.  These are at last bringing the “Dark Continent” into the light of a new day that begins to dawn in the remotest corners of the earth.