25th and 26th April, 1872.—­A touch of fever from exposure.

27th April, 1872.—­Better, and thankful.  Zahor died of small-pox here, after collecting much ivory at Fipa and Urungu.  It is all taken up by Lewale.[18]

The rains seem nearly over, and are succeeded by very cold easterly winds; these cause fever by checking the perspiration, and are well known as eminently febrile.  The Arabs put the cause of the fever to the rains drying up.  In my experience it is most unhealthy during the rains if one gets wet; the chill is brought on, the bowels cease to act, and fever sets in.  Now it is the cold wind that operates, and possibly this is intensified by the malaria of the drying-up surface.  A chill from bathing on the 25th in cold water gave me a slight attack.

1st May, 1872.—­Unyanyembe:  bought a cow for 11 dotis of merikano (and 2 kanike for calf), she gives milk, and this makes me independent.

Headman of the Baganda from whom I bought it said, “I go off to pray.”  He has been taught by Arabs, and is the first proselyte they have gained.  Baker thinks that the first want of Africans is to teach them to want.  Interesting, seeing he was bored almost to death by Kamrasi wanting everything he had.

Bought three more cows and calves for milk, they give good quantity enough for me and mine, and are small shorthorns:  one has a hump—­two black with white spots and one white—­one black with white face:  the Baganda were well pleased with the prices given, and so am I. Finished a letter for the New York Herald, trying to enlist American zeal to stop the East Coast slave-trade:  I pray for a blessing on it from the All-Gracious. [Through a coincidence a singular interest attaches to this entry.  The concluding words of the letter he refers to are as follows:—­]

“All I can add in my loneliness is, may Heaven’s rich blessing come down on everyone, American, English, or Turk, who will help to heal the open sore of the world.”

[It was felt that nothing could more palpably represent the man, and this quotation has consequently been inscribed upon the tablet erected to his memory near his grave in Westminster Abbey.  It was noticed some time after selecting it that Livingstone wrote these words exactly one year before his death, which, as we shall see, took place on the 1st May, 1873.]

3rd May, 1872.—­The entire population of Unyanyembe called Arab is eighty males, many of these are country born, and are known by the paucity of beard and bridgeless noses, as compared with men from Muscat; the Muscatees are more honourable than the mainlanders, and more brave—­altogether better looking and better everyway.