number of subjects and was richer in cattle than any chief in
that part of Africa.

The rivers and swamps, however, of the region produced fever, which had
proved fatal to many of his people. He had long been anxious for
intercourse with Europeans, and showed every wish to encourage those who
now visited him to remain in his territory.

Unhappily, a few days after the arrival of his guests the chief was
attacked with inflammation of the lungs, originating in an old wound,
and, having listened to the gospel message delivered by the doctor, he
in a short time breathed his last.

Dr Livingstone says that he was decidedly the best specimen of a native
chief he had ever met. His followers expressed the hope that the
English would be as friendly to his children as they intended to have
been to himself.

The chieftainship devolved at his death on a daughter, who gave the
visitors leave to travel through any part of the country they chose.
They accordingly set out, and traversing a level district covered with
wild date-trees, and here and there large patches of swamp, for a
distance of a hundred and thirty miles to the north-east, they reached
the banks of the Zambesi, in the centre of the continent.

From the prevalence of the _tsetse_, and the periodical rise of its
numerous streams causing malaria, Dr Livingstone was compelled to
abandon the intention he had formed of removing his own people thither
that they might be out of the reach of their savage neighbours, the
Dutch boers. It was, however, he at once saw, the key of Southern and
Central Africa.

The magnificent stream, on the bank of which he now stood, flows
hundreds of miles east to the Indian Ocean--a mighty artery supplying
life to the teeming population of that part of Africa. He therefore
determined to send his wife and children to England, and to return
himself and spend two or three years in the new region he had
discovered, in the hopes of evangelising the people and putting a stop
to the trade in slaves, which had already been commenced even thus far
from the coast.

He accordingly returned to Kolobeng, and then set out with his family a
journey of a thousand miles, to Cape Town. Having seen them on board a
homeward-bound ship, he again turned his face northward, June, 1852.

Having reached Kuruman, he was there detained by the breaking of a
wagon-wheel. During that time the Dutch Boers attacked his friends, the
Fakwains, carrying off a numbe