glish girl.

(_Continued on page 270._)

[Illustration: "M. Matou was bowing in front of her."]

[Illustration: "He sat silent, waiting for the reply."]

STORIES FROM AFRICA.

IX.--THE MAN WHO NEVER MADE A SACRIFICE.

[Illustration]

Although the travellers' tales from Africa are so numerous and so
interesting that the difficulty is not to find them, but to choose among
them, there is one traveller who stands out head and shoulders above all
the rest. And though his name be 'familiar in our mouths as household
words,' we cannot speak of the heroes of Africa and leave it out. Yet,
strange to say, though there is no life-story more enthralling than that
of David Livingstone, it is less easy to find thrilling adventures in
his account of his own travels than in the journals of most explorers.
For the man whose heroism has helped so many was never a hero in his own
estimation. It is of his work, his beautiful surroundings, the poor
people he sought to help, the crying evils of the slave-trade that he
writes. He really meant what he said so simply in the Senate House at
Cambridge, 'I never made a _sacrifice_.' To be permitted to do such work
for his Master was, to him, reward enough. If it meant sickness,
suffering, separation from those he loved, and death at last alone in
the wilderness, these were just the incidents of no sacrifice, nothing
to boast of or to magnify him in the eyes of his fellow-men. Yet, even
from his own matter-of-fact account, we can see how, again and again,
his cool courage saved his own life and the lives of the men who
followed him.

During his great journey to the West Coast, Livingstone found himself in
the village of the Chiboque tribe, where the chief sent to him a demand
for tribute, in the form of a man, an ox, a gun, or some cloth or
powder. All the fighting strength of the village surrounded the
travellers--grim-looking warriors, whose naturally plain cast of
countenance was not improved by the prevailing fashion of filing their
teeth to a point. Livingstone overheard the sinister remark, 'They have
only five guns,' as if the Chiboque chief were quite prepared to measure
forces with the strangers. The Englishman knew his own followers to be
loyal, and by no means disinclined for a fight, and they would, he
believed, be a match for their assailants, but he was most anxious to
avoid bloodshed, and not to risk his character as a messenger of peace.

Accordingly, he sat down