Four days they stopped with Cypriano, who treated them royally, killing an ox and stripping his garden to feast them, and sending them on to Cassange with provisions of meal ground by his mother and her maids.  “I carried letters from the Chevalier du Prat of Cape Town, but I am inclined to believe that my friend Cypriano was influenced by feelings of genuine kindness excited by my wretched appearance.”

At Cassange they were again most hospitably treated, and here, before starting for Loanda, three hundred miles, they disposed of Sekeletu’s tusks, which sold for much higher prices than those given by Cape traders.  “Two muskets, three small barrels of powder, and English calico and baize enough to clothe my whole party, with large bunches of beads, were given for one tusk, to the great delight of my Makololos, who had been used to get only one gun for two tusks.  With another tusk we purchased calico—­the chief currency here—­to pay our way to the coast.  The remaining two were sold for money to purchase a horse for Sekeletu at Loanda.”  Livingstone was much struck both by the country he passed through and the terms on which the Portuguese lived with the natives.  Most of them had families by native women, who were treated as European children and provided for by their fathers.  Half-caste clerks sat at table with the whites, and he came to the conclusion that “nowhere in Africa is there so much good-will between Europeans and natives as here.”

The dizziness produced by his twenty-seven attacks of fever on the road made it all he could do to stick on Sindbad, who managed to give him a last ducking in the Lombe.  “The weakening effects of the fever were most extraordinary.  For instance, in attempting to take lunar observations I could not avoid confusion of time and distance, neither could I hold the instrument steady, nor perform a simple calculation.”  He rallied a little in crossing a mountain range.  As they drew near Loanda the hearts of his men began to fail, and they hinted their doubts to him.  “If you suspect me you can return,” he told them, “for I am as ignorant of Loanda as you; but nothing will happen to you but what happens to me.  We have stood by one another hitherto, and will do so till the last.”

The first view of the sea staggered the Makololo.  “We were marching along with our father,” they said, “believing what the ancients had told us, that the world had no end; but all at once the world said to us:  ’I am finished; there is no more for me.’”

The fever had produced chronic dysentery, which was so depressing that Livingstone entered Loanda in deep melancholy, doubting the reception he might get from the one English gentleman, Mr. Gabriel, the commissioner for the suppression of the slave-trade.  He was soon undeceived.  Mr. Gabriel received him most kindly, and, seeing the condition he was in, gave up to him his own bed.  “Never shall I forget the luxurious pleasure I enjoyed in feeling myself again on a good English bed after six months’ sleeping on the ground.  I was soon asleep; and Mr. Gabriel coming in almost immediately after, rejoiced in the soundness of my repose.”