come at by fair means; the murder of his brother was a good excuse for plunder, murder, and capture.  Mpweto is suspected of harbouring them as living on the banks of the Lualaba, for they could not get over without assistance from his canoes and people.  Mpweto said, “Remove from me, and we shall see if they come this way.”  They are not willing to deliver fugitives up.  Syde senL for Elmas, the only thing of the Mullam or clerical order here, probably to ask if the Koran authorizes him to attack Mpweto.  Mullam will reply, “Yes, certainly.  If Mpweto won’t restore your slaves, take what you can by force.”  Syde’s bloodshed is now pretty large, and he is becoming afraid for his own life; if he ceases not, he will himself be caught some day.

Ill of fever two days.  Better and thankful.

[Whilst waiting to start for Ujiji, Livingstone was intently occupied on the great problem of the Nile and the important part he had taken so recently in solving it:  he writes at this date as follows:—­]

The discovery of the sources of the Nile is somewhat akin in importance to the discovery of the North-West Passage, which called forth, though in a minor degree, the energy, the perseverance, and the pluck of Englishmen, and anything that does that is beneficial to the nation and to its posterity.  The discovery of the sources of the Nile possesses, moreover, an element of interest which the North-West Passage never had.  The great men of antiquity have recorded their ardent desires to know the fountains of what Homer called “Egypt’s heaven-descended spring.” Sesostris, the first who in camp with his army made and distributed maps, not to Egyptians only, but to the Scythians, naturally wished to know the springs, says Eustathius, of the river on whose banks he flourished.  Alexander the Great, who founded a celebrated city at this river’s-mouth, looked up the stream with the same desire, and so did the Caesars.  The great Julius Caesar is made by Lucan to say that he would give up the civil war if he might but see the fountains of this far-famed river.  Nero Caesar sent two centurions to examine the “Caput Nili.”  They reported that they saw the river rushing with great force from two rocks, and beyond that it was lost in immense marshes.  This was probably “native information,” concerning the cataracts of the Nile and a long space above them, which had already been enlarged by others into two hills with sharp conical tops called Crophi and Mophi—­midway between which lay the fountains of the Nile—­fountains which it was impossible to fathom, and which gave forth half their water to Ethiopia in the south, and the other half to Egypt in the north:  that which these men failed to find, and that which many great minds in ancient times longed to know, has in this late age been brought to light by the patient toil and laborious perseverance of Englishmen.[66]

In laying a contribution to this discovery