David Livingstone : his labours and his legacy . uman bones, forced the conviction upon us thatunless the slave trade—that monster iniquity whichhas so long brooded over Africa—is put down, lawfulcommerce cannot be established. While the Lady Nyassa was being taken to pieces,and a road alongside the Cataracts under construction,the Zambesi Expedition was recalled. This was anotherblow to Livingstones plans, though hardly to his hopes;he had long expected it. The grounds upon which therecall was issued were that the expedition had provedmore costly than had been estimated, and the returnwas not
David Livingstone : his labours and his legacy . uman bones, forced the conviction upon us thatunless the slave trade—that monster iniquity whichhas so long brooded over Africa—is put down, lawfulcommerce cannot be established. While the Lady Nyassa was being taken to pieces,and a road alongside the Cataracts under construction,the Zambesi Expedition was recalled. This was anotherblow to Livingstones plans, though hardly to his hopes;he had long expected it. The grounds upon which therecall was issued were that the expedition had provedmore costly than had been estimated, and the returnwas not adequate to the expense. At the bottom ofthis, the strained relations between the English andPortuguese Governments had a good deal of influencein the matter; and, although public feeling at home wasaroused on the slave-trading question, there was somecomplication, according to the diplomatists, in themanner in which the expedition was deahng or saidto be dealing with its practical solution. Of the value of the work of the expedition there. I04 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. could be no question, and a brief summary of itsmain achievements was given at the beginning of thischapter. Since then the great Nyassa Lake had beennavigated, and the possibihty of a water-route to itby the Rovuma negatived. The salubrity of the ele-vated country around the lake and the higher pointsalong the Shire valley, and not directly on the river,had been established, and the extreme fertility of thesoil proved beyond doubt. And last, and also first,the labours of the expedition had tracked the slaverto his inland haunts, laid bare the cruelties and evilswhich followed in his train, and pointed out the wayto diminish his influence and circumvent his doing all this, Livingstone and his companions hadproved to the natives that there were white men whoneither bought nor sold their fellow-creatures, and towhom the villainies of the slave trade were had gained for the name of the Enghsh
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectlivings, bookyear1894
