at thee; and though, thou couldest well ward off a dart—­none ever better—­thou didst not see that of the king of terrors.  I will weep for thee, my brother, and I will cast forth my sorrows in despair for thy condition!  But I know that thou wilt receive no injustice whither thou art gone; ’Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ I leave thee to Him.  Alas! alas!  Sebituane.  I might have said more to him.  God forgive me.  Free me from blood-guiltiness.  If I had said more of death I might have been suspected as having foreseen the event, and as guilty of bewitching him.  I might have recommended Jesus and his great atonement more.  It is, however, very difficult to break through the thick crust of ignorance which envelops their minds.”

The death of Sebituane was a great blow in another sense.  The region over which his influence extended was immense, and he had promised to show it to Livingstone and to select a suitable locality for his residence.  This heathen chief would have given to Christ’s servant what the Boers refused him!  Livingstone would have had his wish—­an entirely new country to work upon, where the name of Christ had never yet been spoken.  So at least he thought.  Sebituane’s successor in the chiefdom was his daughter, Ma-mochisane.  From her he received liberty to visit any part of the country he chose.  While waiting for a reply (she was residing at a distance), he one day fell into a great danger from an elephant which had come on him unexpectedly.  “We were startled by his coming a little way in the direction in which we were standing, but he did not give us chase.  I have had many escapes.  We seem immortal till our work is done.”

Mr. Oswell and he then proceeded in a northeasterly direction, passing through the town of Linyanti, and on the 3d of August they came on the beautiful river at Sesheke: 

“We thanked God for permitting us to see this glorious river.  All we said to each other was ’How glorious! how magnificent! how beautiful!’...  In crossing, the waves lifted up the canoe and made it roll beautifully.  The scenery of the Firths of Forth and Clyde was brought vividly to my view, and had I been fond of indulging in sentimental effusions, my lachrymal apparatus seemed fully charged.  But then the old man who was conducting us across might have said, ’What on earth are you blubbering for?  Afraid of these crocodiles, eh?’ The little sentimentality which exceeded was forced to take its course down the inside of the nose.  We have other work in this world than indulging in sentimentality of the ‘Sonnet to the Moon’ variety.”

The river, which went here by the name of Sesheke, was found to be the Zambesi, which had not previously been known to exist in that region.  In writing about it to his brother Charles, he says, “It was the first river I ever saw.”  Its discovery in this locality constituted one of the great geographical feats with which the name of Livingstone is connected.  He heard of rapids above, and of great water-falls below; but it was reserved for him on a future visit to behold the great Victoria Falls, which in the popular imagination have filled a higher place than many of his more useful discoveries.