amed the Young River, to
commemorate his early instructor in chemistry and life-long friend,
James Young. "He has shed pure white light in many lowly cottages and in
some rich palaces. I, too, have shed light of another kind, and am fain
to believe that I have performed a small part in the grand revolution
which our Maker has been for ages carrying on, by multitudes of
conscious and many unconscious agents, all over the world[69]."

[Footnote 69: See _Last Journals_. vol. ii. pp 65, 66.]

He is by no means unaware that death may be in the cup. But, fortified
as he was by an unalterable conviction that he was in the line of duty,
the thought of death had no influence to turn him either to the right
hand or to the left. For the first three years he had a strong
presentiment that he would fall. But it had passed away as he came near
the end, and now he prayed God that when he retired it might be to his
native home.

Probably no human being was ever in circumstances parallel to those in
which Livingstone now stood. Years had passed since he had heard from
home. The sound of his mother-tongue came to him only in the broken
sentences of Chuma or Susi or his other attendants, or in the echoes of
his own voice as he poured it out in prayer, or in some cry of
home-sickness that could not be kept in. In long pain and sickness there
had been neither wife nor child nor brother to cheer him with sympathy,
or lighten his dull hut with a smile. He had been baffled and tantalized
beyond description in his efforts to complete the little bit of
exploration which was yet necessary to finish his task. His soul was
vexed for the frightful exhibitions of wickedness around him, where "man
to man," instead of brothers, were worse than wolves and tigers to each
other. During all his past life he had been sowing his seed weeping, but
so far was he from bringing back his sheaves rejoicing, that the longer
he lived the more cause there seemed for his tears. He had not yet seen
of the travail of his soul. In opening Africa he had seemed to open it
for brutal slave-traders, and in the only instance in which he had yet
brought to it the feet of men "beautiful upon the mountains, publishing
peace," disaster had befallen, and an incompetent leader had broken up
the enterprise. Yet, apart from his sense of duty, there was no
necessity for his remaining there. He was offering himself a
freewill-offering, a living sacrifice. What could have sustained hi