Wrote also to Thani for boat and crew to go down Tanganyika.

Syde bin Habib refused to allow his men to carry my letters to the coast; as he suspected that I would write about his doings in Rua.

27th April, 1869.—­Syde had three canoes smashed in coming up past Thembwe; the wind and waves drove them on the rocks, and two were totally destroyed:  they are heavy unmanageable craft, and at the mercy of any storm if they cannot get into a shut bay, behind the reeds and aquatic vegetation.  One of the wrecks is said to have been worth 200 dollars (40_l._).

The season called Masika commenced this month with the usual rolling thunder, and more rain than in the month preceding.

I have been busy writing letters home, and finished forty-two, which in some measure will make up for my long silence.  The Ujijians are unwilling to carry my letters, because, they say, Seyed Majid will order the bearer to return with others:  he may say, “You know where he is, go back to him,” but I suspect they fear my exposure of their ways more than anything else.[4]

16th May, 1869.—­Thani bin Suellim sent me a note yesterday to say that he would be here in two days, or say three; he seems the most active of the Ujijians, and I trust will help me to get a canoe and men.

The malachite at Katanga is loosened by fire, then dug out of four hills:  four manehs of the ore yield one maneh of copper, but those who cultivate the soil get more wealth than those who mine the copper.

[No change of purpose was allowed to grow out of sickness and disappointment.  Here and there, as in the words written on the next day, we find Livingstone again with his back turned to the coast and gazing towards the land of the Manyuema and the great rivers reported there.] 17th May, 1869.—­Syde bin Habib arrived to-day with his cargo of copper and slaves.  I have to change house again, and wish I were away, now that I am getting stronger.  Attendants arrive from Parra or Mparra.

[The old slave-dealer, whom he met at Casembe’s, and who seems to have been set at liberty through Livingstone’s instrumentality, arrives at Ujiji at last.]

18th May, 1869.—­Mohamad bin Saleh arrived to-day.  He left this when comparatively young, and is now well advanced in years.

The Bakatala at Lualaba West killed Salem bin Habib. Mem.—­Keep clear of them.  Makwamba is one of the chiefs of the rock-dwellers, Ngulu is another, and Masika-Kitobwe on to Baluba.  Sef attached Kilolo N’tambwe.

19th May, 1869.—­The emancipation of our West-Indian slaves was the work of but a small number of the people of England—­the philanthropists and all the more advanced thinkers of the age.  Numerically they were a very small minority of the population, and powerful only from the superior abilities of the leading men, and from having the right, the true, and just on their side.  Of the rest of the