Had the natives not assisted him, he must have despaired of ever being able to penetrate the wild and unexplored interior which he was now about to tread.  “Fortunately,” as the Doctor says with unction, “I was in a country now, after leaving the shores of Nyassa, which the foot of the slave-trader has not trod; it was a new and virgin land, and of course, as I have always found in such cases, the natives were really good and hospitable, and for very small portions of cloth my baggage was conveyed from village to village by them.”  In many other ways the traveller, in his extremity, was kindly treated by the yet unsophisticated and innocent natives.

On leaving this hospitable region in the early part of December, 1866, the Doctor entered a country where the Mazitu had exercised their customary marauding propensities.  The land was swept clean of provisions and cattle, and the people had emigrated to other countries, beyond the bounds of those ferocious plunderers.  Again the Expedition was besieged by pinching hunger from which they suffered; they had recourse to the wild fruits which some parts of the country furnished.  At intervals the condition of the hard-pressed band was made worse by the heartless desertion of some of its members, who more than once departed with the Doctor’s personal kit, changes of clothes, linen, &c.  With more or less misfortunes constantly dogging his footsteps, he traversed in safety the countries of the Babisa, Bobemba, Barungu, Ba-ulungu, and Lunda.

In the country of Lunda lives the famous Cazembe, who was first made known to Europeans by Dr. Lacerda, the Portuguese traveller.  Cazembe is a most intelligent prince; he is a tall, stalwart man, who wears a peculiar kind of dress, made of crimson print, in the form of a prodigious kilt.  In this state dress, King Cazembe received Dr. Livingstone, surrounded by his chiefs and body-guards.  A chief, who had been deputed by the King and elders to discover all about the white man, then stood up before the assembly, and in a loud voice gave the result of the inquiry he had instituted.  He had heard that the white man had come to look for waters, for rivers, and seas; though he could not understand what the white man could want with such things, he had no doubt that the object was good.  Then Cazembe asked what the Doctor proposed doing, and where he thought of going.  The Doctor replied that he had thought of proceeding south, as he had heard of lakes and rivers being in that direction.  Cazembe asked, “What can you want to go there for?  The water is close here.  There is plenty of large water in this neighbourhood.”  Before breaking up the assembly, Cazembe gave orders to let the white man go where he would through his country undisturbed and unmolested.  He was the first Englishman he had seen, he said, and he liked him.