ootsteps of Livingstone--"a Scotsman and a
Christian"--making for the heart of Africa and "ready to turn his hand
to anything" for the sake of Him who as

"... the Carpenter of Nazareth
Made common things for God."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 49: "What is the minister gazing at, with his son Alec, in
the dust of the road?"]

[Footnote 50: See Chapter XV.]

[Footnote 51: December 12, 1875.]

[Footnote 52: May 1, 1873.]

CHAPTER XIX

THE ROADMAKER

_Alexander Mackay_

(Date, 1878)

After many months of delay at Zanzibar, Mackay with his companions
and bearers started on his tramp of hundreds of miles along narrow
footpaths, often through swamps, delayed by fierce greedy chiefs who
demanded many cloths before they would let the travellers pass. One
of the little band of missionaries had already died of fever. When
hundreds of miles from the coast, Mackay was stricken with fever
and nearly died. His companions sent him back to the coast again to
recover, and they themselves went on and put together the _Daisy_, the
boat which the bearers had carried in sections on their heads, on the
shore of Victoria Nyanza. So Mackay, racked with fever, was carried
back by his Africans over the weary miles through swamp and forest to
the coast. At last he was well again, and with infinite labour he cut
a great wagon road for 230 miles to Mpapwa. With pick and shovel, axe
and saw, they cleared the road of trees for a hundred days.

Mackay wrote home as he sat at night tired by the side of his
half-made road, "This will certainly yet be a highway for the King
Himself; and all that pass this way will come to know His Name."

At length, after triumphing by sheer skill and will over a thousand
difficulties, Mackay reached the southern shore of Victoria Nyanza at
Kagei, to find that his surviving companions had gone on to Uganda in
an Arab sailing-dhow, leaving on the shore the _Daisy_, which had been
too small to carry them.

On the beach by the side of that great inland sea, Victoria Nyanza, in
the heart of Africa, Mackay found the now broken and leaking _Daisy_.
Her cedar planks were twisted and had warped in the blazing sun till
every seam gaped. A hippopotamus had crunched her bow between his
terrible jaws. Many of her timbers had crumbled before the still
greater foe of the African boat-builder--the white ant.

Now, under her shadow lay the man "who could turn his hand to
anything," on his back with hammer and