In The Zambesi and its Tributaries this journey to the Makololo country and back occupies one-third of the volume, though it did not lead to any very special results.  But it enabled Dr. Livingstone to make great additions to his knowledge both of the people and the country.  His observations are recorded with the utmost care, for though he might not be able to turn them to immediate use, it was likely, and even certain, that they would be useful some day.  Indeed, the spirit of faith is apparent in the whole narrative, as if he could not pass over even the most insignificant details.  The fish in the rivers, the wild animals in the woods, the fissures in the rocks, the course of the streams, the composition of the minerals and gravels, and a thousand other phenomena, are carefully observed and chronicled.  The crowned cranes beginning to pair, the flocks of spurwinged geese, the habits of the ostrich, the nests of bee-eaters, pass under review in rapid succession.  His sphere of observation ranges from the structure of the great continent itself to the serrated bone of the konokono, or the mandible of the ant.

Leaving Sesheke on the 17th September, they reached Tette on the 23d November, 1860, whence they started for Kongone with the unfortunate “Ma-Robert.”  But the days of that asthmatic old lady were numbered.  On the 21st December she grounded on a sand-bank, and could not get off.  A few days before this catastrophe Livingstone writes to Mr. Young: 

“Lupata, 4th Dec., 1860.—­Many thanks for all you have been doing about the steamer and everything else.  You seem to have gone about matters in a most business-like manner, and once for all I assure you I am deeply grateful.

“We are now on our way down to the sea, in hopes of meeting the new steamer for which you and other friends exerted yourselves so zealously.  We are in the old ‘Asthmatic,’ though we gave her up before leaving in May last.  Our engineer has been doctoring her bottom with fat and patches, and pronounced it safe to go down the river by dropping slowly.  Every day a new leak bursts out, and he is in plastering and scoring, the pump going constantly.  I would not have ventured again, but our whaler is as bad,—­all eaten by the teredo,—­so I thought it as well to take both, and stick to that which swims longest.  You can put your thumb through either of them; they never can move again; I never expected to find either afloat, but the engineer had nothing else to do, and it saves us from buying dear canoes from the Portuguese.

     “20th Dec.—­One day, above Senna, the ‘Ma-Robert’ stuck on
     a sand-bank and filled, so we had to go ashore and leave
     her.”

The correspondence of this year indicates a growing delight at the prospect of the Universities Mission.  It was this, indeed, mainly that kept up his spirits under the depression caused by the failure of the “Ma-Robert,” and other mishaps of the Expedition, the endless delays and worries that had resulted from that cause, and the manner in which both the Portuguese and the French were counter-working him by encouraging the slave-trade.  While professedly encouraging emigration, the French were really extending slavery.