months. They were
received as men risen from the dead, for the diviners had declared that
they had perished long ago. The returned adventurers were the lions of
the day. They strutted around in their gay European suits, with their
guns over their shoulders, to the abounding admiration of the women and
children, calling themselves Livingstone's "braves", who had gone over
the whole world, turning back only when there was no more land. To be
sure they returned about as poor as they went, for their gun and their
one suit of red and white cotton were all that they had saved, every
thing else having been expended during their long journey. "But never
mind," they said; "we have not gone in vain, you have opened a path for
us."

There was one serious drawback from their happiness. Some of their
wives, like those of the companions of Ulysses of old, wearied by their
long absence, had married other husbands. They took this misfortune much
to heart. "Wives," said one of the bereaved husbands, "are as plenty as
grass--I can get another; but," he added bitterly, "if I had that fellow
I would slit his ears for him." Livingstone did the best he could for
them. He induced the chiefs to compel the men who had taken the only
wife of any one to give her up to her former husband. Those--and they
were the majority--who had still a number left, he consoled by telling
them that they had quite as many as was good for them--more than he
himself had. So, undeterred by this single untoward result of their
experiment, the adventurers one and all set about gathering ivory for
another adventure to the west.

Livingstone had satisfied himself that the great River Leeambye, up
which he had paddled so many miles on his way to the west, was identical
with the Zambesi, which he had discovered four years previously. The two
names are indeed the same, both meaning simply "The River", in different
dialects spoken on its banks. This great river is an object of wonder to
the natives. They have a song which runs,

"The Leeambye! Nobody knows
Whence it comes, and whither it goes."

Livingstone had pursued it far up toward its source, and knew whence it
came; and now he resolved to follow it down to the sea, trusting that
it would furnish a water communication into the very heart of the
continent.

It was now October--the close of the hot season. The thermometer stood
at 100 Deg. in the shade; in the sun it sometimes rose to 130 Deg.
During the da