passed for the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade, and by
the standard of the high character of our own public men, it cannot be
considered weakness to have believed in the sincerity of the anxiety to
aid our enterprise, professed by the Lisbon Ministry. We hoped to
benefit both Portuguese and Africans by introducing free-trade and
Christianity. Our allies, unfortunately, cannot see the slightest
benefit in any measure that does not imply raising themselves up by
thrusting others down. The official paper of the Lisbon Government has
since let us know "that their policy was directed to frustrating the
grasping designs of the British Government to the dominion of Eastern
Africa." We, who were on the spot, and behind the scenes, knew that
feelings of private benevolence had the chief share in the operations
undertaken for introducing the reign of peace and good will on the Lakes
and central regions, which for ages have been the abodes of violence and
bloodshed. But that great change was not to be accomplished. The narrow-
minded would ascribe all that was attempted to the grasping propensity of
the English. But the motives that actuate many in England, both in
public and private life, are much more noble than the world gives them
credit for.

Seeing, then, that we were not yet arrived at "the good time coming," and
that it was quite impossible to take the "Pioneer" down to the sea till
the floods of December, we made arrangements to screw the "Lady Nyassa"
together; and, in order to improve the time intervening, we resolved to
carry a boat past the Cataracts a second time, sail along the eastern
shore of the Lake, and round the northern end, and also collect data by
which to verify the information collected by Colonel Rigby, that the
19,000 slaves, who go through the Custom-house of Zanzibar annually, are
chiefly drawn from Lake Nyassa and the Valley of the Shire.

Our party consisted of twenty natives, some of whom were Johanna men, and
were supposed to be capable of managing the six oxen which drew the small
wagon with a boat on it. A team of twelve Cape oxen, with a Hottentot
driver and leader, would have taken the wagon over the country we had to
pass through with the greatest ease; but no sooner did we get beyond the
part of the road already made, than our drivers encountered obstructions
in the way of trees and gullies, which it would have been a waste of time
to have overcome by felling timber and ha