Dr. Livingstone had to be carried over the rivers on the
back of one of his men, in the fashion so graphically depicted on the
cover of the _Last Journals_. The stretches of sponge that came before
and after the rivers, with their long grass and elephant-holes, were
scarcely less trying. The inhabitants were, commonly, most unfriendly to
the party; they refused them food, and, whenever they could, deceived
them as to the way. Hunger bore down on the party with its bitter
gnawing. Once a mass of furious ants attacked the Doctor by night,
driving him in despair from hut to hut. Any frame but one of Iron must
have succumbed to a single month of such a life, and before a week was
out, any body of men, not held together by a power of discipline and a
charm of affection unexampled in the history of difficult expeditions,
would have been scattered to the four winds. Livingstone's own
sufferings were beyond all previous example.
About this time he began an undated letter--his last--to his old friends
Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr.
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