the homely comforts of the kraal. Not that this is to be wondered at. There is nothing so delightful as fresh air and liberty. It is a grand thing to be able to live in a country where one is secure from the tyranny of social observances, and can enjoy freedom without being compelled to wield the franchise in defence of it; where whatever is not suggested by taste is not dictated by necessity; where one is not obliged to wear tight boots, or make morning calls, or go out to evening parties, or read newspapers, or answer letters; where one can return to the primitive simplicity and (if desired) to the primitive nakedness of man; where the silvered surface of the mountain stream is the traveller's looking-glass, and the forest leaf his pocket-handkerchief; where he eats only when hungry (and not always then); where the wide earth is his couch to-night, and to-morrow may be his grave, and the round stone, now his pillow, may become his tomb-stone, and the gray fever-mists which are now his bed-curtains may be his shroud in disguise. Well, Dame Nature treats us badly now and then. Sometimes she makes it too hot for us, and sometimes too cold; sometimes too dry, and sometimes too damp; she blows her dust into our eyes, entangles us with her thorns, wearies us with her mountains, and half drowns us in her floods; burns us, freezes us, starves us, pinches us, poisons us, and sooner or later murders us outright; but then what joys she reveals to us if we desert the strong-holds of civilization, and let her take us all up in her arms! It is not always that her features are dark and convulsed with rage, that blue lightning darts from her eyes and that thunder rolls from her voice, that venom falls upon us from her lips, and that she grips us tightly in her awful grasp. No; often when we have closed our eyes, and are passively awaiting death, we feel those arms relax, and a soft, warm bosom palpitates beneath us, and pours its sweet intoxicating juices through our veins; and from her eyes, like golden suns, stream down upon us rays of

maternal love; and as we are borne along with an undulating motion, her voice murmurs music in our ears, her locks of hair are flowers which perfume existence, and within us we feel the vibrations of a mighty soul.

It is a glorious and awful thing to be alone in the desert, a speck in that mighty solitude, a spark in the abyss. Behind the traveller is the memory of past dangers, before him is the absolute unknown. Every step is a novelty, a sensation; the summit of every eminence may disclose to him a prodigy; and all the while his mind is caressing this one idea: "I am the first white man who has trodden on this land, who breathes this air. I can call that mountain after anybody I choose: it belongs to me. The Geographical Society will give me a gold medal; I shall have to make a speech; my name will be printed in all the maps ";—and so on.

Well, I presume that this species of ambition is as good as any other, and it does not appear to be cursed with satiety as soon as the others are. No wonder that Livingstone loves the wilderness. It is more remarkable that he should love the savage, whom Sir Samuel cordially detests. But this, perhaps, can be explained.

The Anglo-Saxon explorer enters Africa with his mind fixed upon one geographical point, towards which he strides, impatient of annoyance and chafing at the least delay. The natives of the country he regards simply as savage or domestic animals. If they belong to the camel species, he uses them; if they belong to the tiger species, he overawes them or avoids them; and if they belong to what he considers the monkey species, he despises and detests them, because he does not understand them. Revering honesty and. truth, he finds himself surrounded by dishonesty and lies; in every village he is the centre of intrigues; he is regarded as a bird of passage to be plucked; his dealings with the savage are those of buyer and seller, which are never of an elevating character, and in which the African certainly does not appear to an

But the missionary lives among them as a minister in his parish; he acquires their language, understands their methods of thought, becomes habituated to their constant duplicity, learns how to handle their stubborn, suspicious natures, sometimes how to win their poor little childish hearts, and sometimes, as in Dr. Livingstone's case, is won by them. It is evident from his last book that he loves the savage to distraction. He wishes to persuade us that the African, outside of Dahomey, never sacrifices anything more highly endowed with life than a flower or a shrub, and that his fetish-worship, which is no religion at all, is superior to the religion of Mohammed; and indignantly denies that the negro is being converted to Mohammedanism in parts of Africa which he has not visited. Of course his asseverations upon this point must be rejected, since they are not founded upon experience; and this charming confidence in the gentle African, which induces him to assert that the organized murders which prevail all over Northern Guinea are confined within the precincts of Dahomey, does more credit to his heart than to his head. But let us turn from what he thinks, to contemplate what he has done.

David Livingstone was born of poor parents, but like most Scotchmen can boast of remote ancestors, and a family history pregnant with traditions. At the age of ten he was put into a factory as a piecer, and bought Ruddiman's "Rudiments of Latin" out of his first week's wages. He pursued the study of that language for many years afterwards at a night-school, between the hours of eight and ten, and on his return home would pore over his dic

tionary and grammar till his mother snatched the books out of his hands, and packed this intellectual debauchee off to bed. In this way he learned to read Horace, Virgil, and other authors whose merits are not appreciated by the ordinary school-boy. Indeed, it is much to Livingstone's credit that at an age when most puerile stomachs reject all mental food in favor of short-bread, toffee, oatmeal cakes, and other Caledonian delicacies, he should have devoured everything in the shape of literature (excepting novels) that he could find. Scientific works and books of travel, he tells us, were his chief delight; but his father, conceiving the former to be hostile to religion, attempted to substitute for them "The Cloud of Witnesses," Boston's "Fourfold State," and other excellent but somewhat indi

gestible productions. Young Livingstone appears to have taken these condiments with reluctance; and when ordered to read Wilberforce's "Practical Christianity," he became desperate, rebelled outright, and was soundly thrashed for his lack of filial obedience and literary taste. However, the works of Dr. Thomas Dick having afterwards fallen into his hands, he was induced to come to terms with theology, and finally determined to go as a missionary to China. With a wisdom which every missionary would do well to emulate, he began at once to study medicine, scoured the country with Culpepper's "Herbal" under his arm, searching for simples, and used to read while at work in the factory, placing his book upon a portion of the spinning-jenny. Thus he acquired that power of abstracting his mind in the midst of uproar, which he found of use afterwards when studying native languages in an African village, where all is tam-tam-beating, conch-blowing, and general conversation in a tone of voice equal in force and volume to a European shriek. The money which he earned by cotton-spinning in the summer enabled him to attend medical, Greek, and divinity classes at Glasgow in the winter. Having been admitted as a Licentiate of the Faculty

He started for Africa in 1840, and remained there till 1856. He took up his abode in the far interior, married Moffatt's daughter, and labored for many years as a missionary among the Caffres. He made, also, in virtue of his vocation, several important journeys, sometimes accompanied by Mr. Oswell, who has modestly concealed his adventures from the world, but who is known to be the greatest of all elephant-hunters, and who was with Dr. Livingstone when Lake Ngami was discovered.

But Livingstone, like many other men, owes his renown to a misfortune. A dispute arose between the natives and the Dutch Boers; it soon flamed into a kind of war. The Doctor, of course, took the part of his parishioners, and the Boers, in order to drive him out of the country, destroyed his house and property. Livingstone returned home from a journey to find the house which he had built with his own hands in ashes, and the lexicons and dictionaries which had been the companions of his boyhood scattered and torn. He mourned over this ruin awhile, but consoled himself with the thought that he was now tree. They want to shut the country, I will open it," said he, He ginded up his leis, sung (or might have done so the Nan, de dimittis, and disappeared into toe wilderness.

On the western coast of Africa, somewhat less than a thousand miles above the Cape, is a large and ancient city, San Paolo de Loanda. It is the me tropolis of Angola, a Portuguese provinon and ranks next only to Goa in im Artance and Frior to the discovery of Fat was resorted to ly the ache adventurers of Forte Armed wondrous explxts

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When the New World came into fashion, Angola was made use of simply as a slave-mine, Loanda as its port; and since the abolition of that "engaging pursuit," the great city has been crumbling slowly away. It has still its governor's and its bishop's palace; but its harbor is empty, its College of the Jesuits has been converted into an ox-stable, and the province has been made a penal settlement.

Now it happened that her Britannic Majesty's Consul for Loanda, Mr. Gabriel, on returning home from a walk one day, found a short, swarthy man pacing up and down his piazza, in apparently an anxious frame of mind. He was dressed in an old pea-jacket, and was not particularly clean. The “distressed British sailor" is a phenomenon not entirely unknown to consuls, and this appeared a most transparent case. Mr. Gabriel inquired his busi

ness.

"Well, I have just come up from the Cape of Good Hope," said the stranger.

Mr. Gabriel looked puzzled, perhaps a little incredulous. "I was not aware," said he, " that any vessel from the Cape had come into port to-day."

"No," said the other, dryly. "I came ¿y land”

At these words, as when the magic charm is pronounced in the fairy tales, the dirty rags fell off, and disclosed, not precisely a beautiful princess, but the famous Dr. Livingstone, rumors of whom, sometimes ominous and always vague, had occasionally floated to San Paolo de Loanda.

Mr. Gabriel maintained him and his twenty-seven Makelcio for seven months. Poor Gabriel! He was a generous, warm-hearted man, and was carried of by the African climate, after resisting it for many years. His last Geed of kindness to a stranded traveller was extended to the present writer, who paid him a rist #COLE credentia's of any khi md with the sum of three and stirence in his possession. But be was welcomed, 20ER

ished luxuriously, and royally accommodated with the sinews of travel. Mr. Gabriel was not one of those who are hospitable only to celebrities.

Dr. Livingstone, in spite of continued ill-health, was determined to redeem the promise which he had made of restoring his faithful companions to their homes. On September 20, 1854, he started from Loanda, and performed the unparalleled feat of crossing the continent of Africa from the western to the eastern shore.

The Portuguese of Lisbon have attempted to depreciate this achievement, which, however, dazzled the Portuguese of Angola and the Mozambique. When travelling in the former country, the planters chattered to me about the stupendous man who had ridden all that way upon an ox, and without any umbrella. One gentleman showed me the result of an astronomical observation which the Doctor had marked on the wooden floor with a hot poker. A large family of mulatto children clustered round these hieroglyphics, which they regarded with great reverence; and the name of Livingstone, which they cannot pronounce, will go down among them mangled to posterity.

When he went to Africa the second time, it was no longer as an obscure missionary, but as an emissary of the British government, and distinguished men crowded to the quay to shake hands with him before he sailed. A steamer was placed under his command; he was directed to explore the Zambesi, and, if possible, to establish the nucleus of a settlement upon its shores. The Church of England mission, too, attracted by his glowing descriptions of Eastern Africa, and assured of its healthiness, sent out many able and enthusiastic men. The fate of that mission is well known; an account of its martyrdoms has just been published; and although its author, the Rev. Mr. Rowley, brings no charge against Dr. Livingstone, it is impossible to absolve him entirely from blame. As for his expedition, some important geographical discoveries were made,

especially those of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa; and owing to the exertions of Dr. Kirk the Kew Gardens have been enriched with a fine collection. But in all important matters, the Zambesi, as Dr. Livingstone ought to have known before he went there, is navigable only for a short distance, and its shores are too unhealthy for purposes of settlement. If the expedition had a political purpose, and there is no doubt that Great Britain wants another point d'appui in Eastern Africa, it failed. The book also failed. It was necessarily inferior to his first; it was tarnished by several sectarian personalities; and in fact it was thrown completely into the shade by the Nile discoveries.

But it must always be remembered that Baker and Speke are mere triflers in Africa, compared with Livingstone. He is the father of African travel; and, having remained in England only long enough to write his book, he has gone out again, this time alone, to explore the country south of the Nyanzas. He has been appointed by the government to what is called a roving consulate, that is to say, he is H. B. M. Consul for Central Africa, and can go to any part of it he pleases.

Let us now turn to a man of very different intellectual calibre, though of less popular fame as an explorer. Captain Burton has earned a niche among the heroes of Central Africa by his journey to the Lake Regions, which cleared the path for the discovery of the sources of the Nile. But, as we shall see in turning over the leaves of his remarkable life, he has earned laurels not in one continent only, but in almost every region of the world, and in many different provinces of human knowledge.

Captain Burton claims descent from the celebrated author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy." He was educated on the Continent, which partly accounts for the cosmopolitan nature of his character. When old enough to go to Oxford, he matriculated at Trinity College, but soon grew weary of the dull routine of college discipline and study, "cut"

lectures, chapels, and halls, and plunged ardently into Cornelius Agrippa, and other writers on the art of magic, inspired by the same eccentric passion for the mysterious and unknown which carried him afterwards from the beaten tracks of life into the deserts of Africa and Arabia. He left Trinity, as may be supposed, without taking a degree, refused a commission in the Queen's, hungering not after garrison conquests, the bow-window of the "Rag," the "sweet shady side of Pall-Mall," and other fascinations of domestic military life, but accepted (in 1843) a commission in the Eighteenth Sepoy Regiment of the Bombay Presidency. With intervals of travel (from which emanated "Goa or the Blue Mountains," "The Unhappy Valley," and other books) he spent the first six years of his military career in Sinde, then a newly conquered Mohammedan province. He became a favorite of Sir Charles Napier, who gave him a staff appointment, and allowed him to roam over the new territory as canal engineer. During five years he spent his days and nights almost entirely among the natives, and at the end of that period was able to pass an examination in six Eastern languages. In 1849, an attack of rheumatic ophthalmia, the result of overwork, sent him home; he remained in Europe three years, absorbing civilizing influences. In 1852, his health being restored, he volunteered to explore the great unmapped waste of Eastern and Central Arabia. The Court of Directors refused, fearing that he would perish, like Stoddard Conolly and the brothers Wyburd, and that his friends would come with requisitions to trouble the peace and devour the patronage of the India House. However, they granted him a twelvemonth to perfect himself in the knowledge of the Oriental languages. He considered that he could do this best by performing the pilgrimage to Mecca in character, and, having disguised himself in England as the Sheikh Abdallah, embarked for Southampton in Peninsular and Oriental steamer. i.e passed a month at

Alexandria, practising as an Indian doctor; and as he not only possessed considerable knowledge of medicine, but was a potent Mesmerist, and could do the "magic-mirror business," he quickly established a thriving practice, and was offered by one old lady a hundred piastres (nearly one pound sterling) to remain at Alexandria, and superintend the restoration of her blind left eye.

It was not without difficulty, “involving much unclean dressing and expenditure of horrible English," that he obtained from the English Consul a certificate declaring him to be an IndoBritish subject named Abdallah, doctor by profession, and, "to judge from certain blanks in the document, not distinguished by any remarkable conformation of nose, mouth, or cheeks." For I should have explained that Nature had gifted him with a thoroughly Oriental face, as if by way of suggesting to him the enterprise in which he was now engaged. This, of course, combined with his intimate knowledge of Eastern languages and habits to facilitate matters immensely. "Golden locks, and blue eyes," he remarks, "however desirable per se, would have been sad obstacles to progress in swarthy Arabia."

Having purchased the necessaries for his pilgrimage, including a shroud, without which no good Mussulman undertakes any perilous journey, he went on to Cairo, (third-class in a little steamer, facetiously called the "Little Asthmatic,") where, in order to learn still more of native character, he set up a little shop in groceries and drugs, at an outlay of thirty shillings. His chief customers were little boys, who came, halfpence in hand, to buy, not gingerbread, as in the celebrated cent-shop in "The House of the Seven Gables," but sugar and pepper, its equivalent in Egypt. He then went through the ordeal of the Rhamadan (the terrible Mohammedan fast), but before starting for Mecca fell into the evil company of a military Albanian, with whom he drank of that which is forbidden, and scandalized the neighborhood.