It was unfortunate that the recall took place before he had been able to carry into effect his favorite scheme of placing a steamer on Lake Nyassa; nor could he do this now, although the vessel on which he had spent half his fortune lay at the Murchison Cataracts.  He had always cherished the hope that the Government would repay him at least a part of the outlay, which, instead of L3000, as he had intended, had mounted up to L6000.  He had very generously told Dr. Stewart that if this should be done, and if he should be willing to return from Scotland to labor on the shores of Nyassa, he would pay him his expenses out, and L150 yearly, so anxious was he that he should begin the work.  On the recall of the Expedition, without any allowance for the ship, or even mention of it, all these expectations and intentions came abruptly to an end.

At no previous time had Dr. Livingstone been under greater discouragements than now.  The Expedition had been recalled; his heart had not recovered from the desolation caused by the death of the Bishop and his brethren, as well as the Helmores in the Makololo country, and still more by the removal of Mrs. Livingstone, and the thought of his motherless children; the most heart-rending scenes had been witnessed everywhere in regions that a short time ago had been so bright; all his efforts to do good had been turned to evil, every new path he had opened having been seized as it were by the devil and turned to the most diabolical ends; his countrymen were nearly all away from him; the most depressing of diseases had produced its natural effect; he had had worries, delays, and disappointments about ships and boats of the most harrassing kind; and now the “Lady Nyassa” could not be floated in the waters of which he had fondly hoped to see her the angel and the queen.  It is hardly possible to exaggerate the noble quality of the heart that, undeterred by all these troubles, resolved to take this last chance of exploring the banks of Nyassa, although it could only be by the weary process of trudge, trudge, trudging; although hunger, if not starvation, blocked the path, and fever and dysentery flitted around it like imps of darkness; although tribes, demoralized by the slave-trade, might at any moment put an end to him and his enterprise;—­not to speak of the ordinary risks of travel, the difficulty of finding guides, the liability to bodily hurt, the scarcity of food, the perils from wild beasts by night Und by day,—­risks which no ordinary traveler could think of lightly, but which in Livingstone’s journeys drop out of sight, because they are so overtopped and dwarfed by risks that ordinary travelers never know.