"
Another delay was caused before they went inward, from their having to
wait for a season suitable for hunting, as the party had to be kept in
food. The mail from England had been lost, and they had the bitter
disappointment of losing a year's correspondence from home. The
following portions of a letter to the Secretary of the Committee for a
Universities Mission gives a view of the situation at this time:
"RIVER ZAMBESI, 26_th Jan._, 1860.
"The defects we have unfortunately experienced in the
'Ma-Robert,' or rather the 'Asthmatic,' are so numerous that
it would require a treatise as long as a lawyer's
specification of any simple subject to give you any idea of
them, and they have inflicted so much toil that a feeling of
sickness comes over me when I advert to them.
"No one will ever believe the toil we have been put to in
woodcutting. The quantity consumed is enormous, and we cannot
get sufficient for speed into the furnace. It was only a
dogged determination not to be beaten that carried me
through.
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