other were incredible. In very wantonness, when they met they would pelt
each other with curses, and then perhaps burst into a fit of laughter.
The women, like the men, went about in almost total nudity, and seemed
to know no shame. So reckless were the chiefs of human life, that a man
might be put to death for a single distasteful word; yet sometimes there
were exhibitions of very tender feeling. The headman of a village once
showed him, with much apparent feeling, the burnt house of a child of
his, adding,--"She perished in it, and we have all removed from our own
huts and built here round her, in order to weep over her grave." From
some of the people he received great kindness; others were quite
different. Their character, in short, was a riddle, and would need to be
studied more. But the prevalent aspect of things was both distressing
and depressing. If he had thought of it continually, he would have
become the victim of melancholy. It was a characteristic of his large
and buoyant nature, that, besides having the resource of spiritual
thought, he was able to make use of another divine corrective to such a
tendency, to find delightful recreation in science, and especially in
natural history, and by this means turn the mind away for a time from
the dark scenes of man's depravity.

The people all seemed to recognize a Supreme Being; but it was only
occasionally, in times of distress, that they paid Him homage. They had
no love for Him like that of Christians for Jesus--only terror. Some of
them, who were true negroes, had images, simple but grotesque. Their
strongest belief was in the power of medicines acting as charms. They
fully recognized the existence of the soul after death. Some of them
believed in the metamorphosis of certain persons into alligators or
hippopotamuses, or into lions. This belief could not be shaken by any
arguments--at least on the part of man. The negroes proper interested
him greatly; they were numerous, prolific, and could not be extirpated.
He almost regretted that Mr. Moffat had translated the Bible into
Sichuana. That language might die out; but the negro might sing, "Men
may come and men may go, but I go on for ever."

The incessant attacks of fever from which Livingstone suffered in this
journey, the continual rain occurring at that season of the year, the
return of the affection of the throat for which he had got his uvula
excised, and the difficulty of speaking to tribes using differen