or ages (Malachite). I
have still a seriously long task before me. My letters have
been delayed inexplicably, so I don't know my affairs. If I
have a salary I don't know it, though the _Daily Telegraph_
abused me for receiving it when I had none. Of this alone I
am sure--my friends will all wish me to make a complete work
of it before I leave, and in their wish I join. And it is
better to go in now than to do it in vain afterward."

"I have still a seriously long task before me." Yet he had lately been
worse in health and weaker than he had ever been; he was much poorer
than he expected to be, and the difficulties had proved far beyond any
he had hitherto experienced. But so far from thinking of taking things
more easily than before, he actually enlarges his programme, and
resolves to "finish up by going round outside and south of all the
sources." His spirit seems only to rise as difficulties are multiplied.

He writes to his daughter Agnes at the same time: "You remark that you
think you could have traveled as well as Mrs. Baker, and I think so too.
Your mamma was famous for roughing it in the bush, and was never a
trouble." The allusion carries him to old days--their travels to Lake
'Ngami, Mrs. Livingstone's death, the Helmores, the Bishop, Thornton.
Then he speaks of recent troubles and difficulties, his attack of
pneumonia, from which he had not expected to recover, his annoyances
with his men, so unlike the old Makololo, the loss of his letters and
boxes, with the exception of two from an unknown donor that contained
the _Saturday Review_ and his old friend _Punch_ for 1868. Then he goes
over African travelers and their achievements, real and supposed. He
returns again to the achievements of ladies, and praises Miss Tinne and
other women. "The death-knell of American slavery was rung by a woman's
hand. We great he-beasts say Mrs. Stowe exaggerated. From what I have
seen of slavery I say exaggeration is a simple impossibility. I go with
the sailor who, on seeing slave-traders, said: 'If the devil don't catch
these fellows, we might as well have no devil at all.'"

The year 1870 was begun with the prayer that in the course of it he
might be able to complete his enterprise, and retire through the Basango
before the end of it. In February he hears with gratitude of Mr. E.D.
Young's Search Expedition up the Shire and Nyassa. In setting out anew
he takes a more northerly course, pro