Though it was with all due deference to Dr. Livingstone’s vast experience as a traveller, I made bold to suggest the following courses to him, either of which he could adopt: 

Ist.  To go home, and take the rest he so well deserved and, as he appeared then, to be so much in need of.

2nd.  To proceed to Unyanyembe, receive his goods, and enlist pagazis sufficient to enable him to travel anywhere, either to Manyuema or Rua, and settle the Nile problem, which he said he was in a fair way of doing.

3rd.  To proceed to Unyanyembe, receive his caravan, enlist men, and try to join Sir Samuel Baker, either by going to Muanza, and sailing through Ukerewe or Victoria N’Yanza in my boats—­which I should put up—­to Mtesa’s palace at Uganda, thus passing by Mirambo and Swaruru of Usui, who would rob him if he took the usual caravan road to Uganda; thence from Mtesa to Kamrasi, King of Unyoro, where he would of course hear of the great white man who was said to be with a large force of men at Gondokoro.

4th.  To proceed to Unyanyembe, receive his caravan, enlist men, and return to Ujiji, and back to Manyuema by way of Uguhha.

5th.  To proceed by way of the Rusizi through Ruanda, and so on to Itara, Unyoro, and Baker.

For either course, whichever he thought most expedient, I and my men would assist him as escort and carriers, to the best of our ability.  If he should elect to go home, I informed him I should be proud to escort him, and consider myself subject to his commands—­travelling only when he desired, and camping only when he gave the word.

6th.  The last course which I suggested to him, was to permit me to escort him to Unyanyembe, where he could receive his own goods, and where I could deliver up to him a large supply of first-class cloth and beads, guns and ammunition, cooking utensils, clothing, boats, tents, &c., and where he could rest in a comfortable house, while I would hurry down to the coast, organise a new expedition composed of fifty or sixty faithful men, well armed, by whom I could send an additional supply of needful luxuries in the shape of creature comforts.

After long consideration, he resolved to adopt the last course, as it appeared to him to be the most feasible one, and the best, though he did not hesitate to comment upon the unaccountable apathy of his agent at Zanzibar, which had caused him so much trouble and vexation, and weary marching of hundreds of miles.

Our ship—­though nothing more than a cranky canoe hollowed out of a noble mvule tree of Ugoma—­was an African Argo bound on a nobler enterprise than its famous Grecian prototype.  We were bound upon no mercenary errand, after no Golden Fleece, but perhaps to discover a highway for commerce which should bring the ships of the Nile up to Ujiji, Usowa, and far Marungu.  We did not know what we might discover on our voyage to the northern head of the Tanganika; we supposed that we should find the Rusizi to be an effluent of the Tanganika, flowing down to the Albert or the Victoria N’Yanza.  We were told by natives and Arabs that the Rusizi ran out of the lake.