The “Pioneer” was detained for five weeks on a shoal twenty miles below Chibisa’s, and here the first death occurred—­the carpenter’s mate succumbed to fever.  It was extremely irksome to suffer this long detention, to think of fuel and provisions wasting, and salaries running on, without one particle of progress.  Livingstone was sensitive and anxious.  He speaks in his Journal of the difficulty of feeling resigned to the Divine will in all things, and of believing that all things work together for good to those that love God, He seems to have been troubled at what had been said in some quarters of his treatment of members of the Expedition.  In private letters, in the Cape papers, in the home papers, unfavorable representations of his conduct had been made.  In one case, a prosecution at law had been threatened.  On New Year’s Day, 1862, he entered in his Journal an elaborate minute, as if for future use, bearing on the conduct of the Expedition.  He refers to the difficulty to which civil expeditions are exposed, as compared with naval and military, in the matter of discipline, owing to the inferior authority and power of the chief.  In the countries visited there is no enlightened public opinion to support the commander, and newspapers at home are but too ready to believe in his tyranny, and make themselves the champions of any dawdling fellow who would fain be counted a victim of his despotism.  He enumerates the chief troubles to which his Expedition had been exposed from such causes.  Then he explains how, at the beginning, to prevent collision, he had made every man independent in his own department, wishing only, for himself, to be the means of making known to the world what each man had done.  His conclusion is a sad one, but it explains why in his last journeys he went alone:  he is convinced that if he had been by himself he would have accomplished more, and undoubtedly he would have received more of the approbation of his countrymen[62].

[Footnote 62:  Notwithstanding this expression of feeling, Dr. Livingstone was very sincere in his handsome acknowledgments, in the Introduction to The Zambesi and its Tributaries, of valuable services, especially from the members of the Expedition there named.]

At length the “Pioneer” was got off the bank, and on the 11th January, 1862, they entered the Zambesi.  They prided to the great Luabo mouth, as being more advantageous than the Kongone for a supply of wood.  They were a month behind their appointment, and no ship was to be seen.  The ship had been there, it turned out, on the 8th January, had looked eagerly for the “Pioneer,” had fancied it saw the black funnel and its smoke in the river, and being disappointed had made for Mozambique, been caught in a gale, and was unable to return for three weeks.  Livingstone’s letters show him a little out of sorts at the manifold obstructions that had always been making him “too late”—­“too late for Rovuma below, too late for Rovuma above,