l of a Portuguese sergeant freed the
travelers from their troubles. The river was crossed, and once on
Portuguese territory their difficulties were over.

At Cassange, the frontier settlement, they sold Sekeletu's ivory. The
Makololo, who had been accustomed to give two tusks for one gun,
were delighted at the prices they obtained. For one tusk they got two
muskets, three kegs of powder, large bunches of beads, and calico and
baize enough to clothe all the party.

On the 31st of May, after more than six months' travel, Livingstone and
his companions reached the Portuguese sea-port of Loanda. The Makololo
were lost in wonder when they first caught sight of the sea. "We marched
along," they said, "believing that what the ancients had told us was
true, that the world has no end; but all at once the world said to us,
I am finished, there is no more of me." Still greater was their wonder
when they beheld the large stone houses of the town. "These are not
huts," they said, "but mountains with caves in them." Livingstone had in
vain tried to make them comprehend a house of two stories. They knew of
no dwellings except their own conical huts, made of poles stuck into the
ground, and could not conceive how one hut could be built on the top of
another, or how people could live in the upper story, with the pointed
roof of the lower one sticking up in the middle of the floor. The
vessels in the harbor were, they said, not canoes, but towns, into which
one must climb by a rope.

At Loanda Livingstone was attacked by a fever, which reduced him to
a skeleton, and for a while rendered him unable to attend to his
companions. But they managed very well alone. Some went to the forest,
cut firewood, and brought it to town for sale; others unloaded a
coal-vessel in the harbor, at the magnificent wages of a sixpence a day.
The proceeds of their labor were shrewdly invested in cloth and beads
which they would take home with them in confirmation of the astounding
stories they would have to tell; "for," said they, "in coming to the
white man's country, we have accomplished what no other people in the
world could have done; we are the true ancients, who can tell wonderful
things."

The two years, at the close of which Livingstone had promised to rejoin
his family, had almost expired, and he was offered a passage home
from Loanda. But the great object of his expedition was only partially
attained. Though he had reached the west coast in safet