“I cannot perform impossibilities,” said Livingstone; but few men could come so near doing it.  His activity of mind and body at this outskirt of civilization was wonderful.  A Jack-of-all-trades, he is building houses and schools, cultivating gardens, scheming in every manner of way how to get water, which in the remarkable drought of the season becomes scarcer and scarcer; as a missionary he is holding meetings every other night, preaching on Sundays, and taking such other opportunities as he can find to gain the people to Christ; as a medical man he is dealing with the more difficult cases of disease, those which baffle the native doctors; as a man of science he is taking observations, collecting specimens, thinking out geographical, geological, meteorological, and other problems bearing on the structure and condition of the continent; as a missionary statesman he is planning how the actual force might be disposed of to most advantage, and is looking round in this direction and in that, over hundreds of miles, for openings for native agents; and to promote these objects he is writing long letters to the Directors, to the Missionary Chronicle to the British Banner, to private friends, to any one likely to take an interest in his plans.

But this does not exhaust his labors.  He is deeply interested in philological studies, and is writing on the Sichuana language: 

“I have been hatching a grammar of the Sichuana language,” he writes to Mr. Watt.  “It is different in structure from any other language, except the ancient Egyptian.  Most of the changes are effected by means of prefixes or affixes, the radical remaining unchanged.  Attempts have been made to form grammars, but all have gone on the principle of establishing a resemblance between Sichuana, Latin, and Greek; mine is on the principle of analysing the language without reference to any others.  Grammatical terms are only used when I cannot express my meaning in any other way.  The analysis renders the whole language very simple, and I believe the principle elicited extends to most of the languages between this and Egypt.  I wish to know whether I could get 20 or 30 copies printed for private distribution at an expense not beyond my means.  It would be a mere tract, and about the size of this letter when folded, 40 or 50 pages perhaps[28].  Will you ascertain the cost, and tell me whether, in the event of my continuing hot on the subject half a year hence, you would be the corrector of the press?...  Will you examine catalogues to find whether there is any dictionary of ancient Egyptian within my means, so that I might purchase and compare?  I should not grudge two or three pounds for it.  Professor Vater has written on it, but I do not know what dictionary he consulted.  One Tattam has written a Coptic grammar; perhaps that has a vocabulary, and might serve my purpose.  I see Tattam advertised by John Russell Smith, 4 Old Compton Street, Soho, London,—­’Tattam (H.), Lexicon Egyptiaco-Latinum e veteribus linguae Egyptiacae monumentis; thick 8vo, bds., 10s., Oxf., 1835.’  Will you purchase the above for me?”

[Footnote 28:  This gives a correct idea of the length of many of his letters.]