the woods, the fissures in the rocks, the course of the streams, the
composition of the minerals and gravels, and a thousand other phenomena,
are carefully observed and chronicled. The crowned cranes beginning to
pair, the flocks of spurwinged geese, the habits of the ostrich, the
nests of bee-eaters, pass under review in rapid succession. His sphere
of observation ranges from the structure of the great continent itself
to the serrated bone of the konokono, or the mandible of the ant.

Leaving Sesheke on the 17th September, they reached Tette on the 23d
November, 1860, whence they started for Kongone with the unfortunate
"Ma-Robert." But the days of that asthmatic old lady were numbered. On
the 21st December she grounded on a sand-bank, and could not get off. A
few days before this catastrophe Livingstone writes to Mr. Young:

"_Lupata, 4th Dec_., 1860.--Many thanks for all you have been
doing about the steamer and everything else. You seem to have
gone about matters in a most business-like manner, and once
for all I assure you I am deeply grateful.

"We are now on our way down to the sea, in hopes of meeting
the new steamer for which you and other friends exerted
yourselves so zealously. We are in the old 'Asthmatic,'
though we gave her up before leaving in May last. Our
engineer has been doctoring her bottom with fat and patches,
and pronounced it safe to go down the river by dropping
slowly. Every day a new leak bursts out, and he is in
plastering and scoring, the pump going constantly. I would
not have ventured again, but our whaler is as bad,--all eaten
by the teredo,--so I thought it as well to take both, and
stick to that which swims longest. You can put your thumb
through either of them; they never can move again; I never
expected to find either afloat, but the engineer had nothing
else to do, and it saves us from buying dear canoes from the
Portuguese.

"_20th Dec._--One day, above Senna, the 'Ma-Robert' stuck on
a sand-bank and filled, so we had to go ashore and leave
her."

The correspondence of this year indicates a growing delight at the
prospect of the Universities Mission. It was this, indeed, mainly that
kept up his spirits under the depression caused by the failure of the
"Ma-Robert," and other mishaps of the Expedition, the endless delays and
worries that had resulted from that cause, a