ter. Then the mosquitoes were always troublesome, and frequently
even the slow progress they were making would be interrupted by the
death of one of the bullocks, killed by the deadly tsetse. At other
times they would halt before a dense bunch of trees, and would have to
stop until a clearing had been cut through.

Such was the life of Mrs. Livingstone during her first years in Africa.
For a time, following this, she lived in England with her children, and
had there to endure sufferings greater than any she had shared with her
husband, for during most of her time at home Livingstone was cut off
from the world in the middle of Africa. When he reached the coast once
more she went back to him, unable to endure the separation longer.

But, soon after landing, her health gave way. At the end of April her
condition was hopeless; she lay upon "a rude bed formed of boxes, but
covered with a soft mattress," and thus, her husband beside her, she
died in the heart of the great continent for which she and those most
dear to her had spent themselves.

[Sidenote: Lady Baker]

An even greater African explorer than Mrs. Livingstone was Lady Baker,
wife of Sir Samuel Baker. She was a Hungarian, and married Baker in
1860, when he had already done some colonisation work by settling a
number of Englishmen in Ceylon. In the year following their marriage,
the Bakers went to Egypt, determined to clear up that greatest of all
mysteries to African explorers--the secret of the Nile sources. Arrived
at Khartoum, they fitted out an expedition and set off up the river with
twenty-nine camels.

One day, as they pushed on slowly in that silent, burning land, they
heard that white men were approaching; and sure enough, there soon
appeared before them the figures of Speke and Grant, two well-known
explorers who had gone out a year before and whom many feared to have
been lost. These men had found the source of the Nile in the Victoria
Nyanza. But they told the Bakers a wonderful story of how they had heard
rumours from time to time of the existence of another lake into which
the Nile was said to flow.

The minds of Baker and his wife were fired to emulation. Parting from
their newly-met countrymen, they pressed onwards and southwards. They
had to go a long distance out of their way to avoid the slave-traders
who were determined to wreck their plans if they could.

"We have heard a good deal recently of lady travellers in Africa," said
the _Time