Transcription of Fragment of 1870 Field Diary
David Livingstone, Agnes Livingstone

Date of composition: 16 October 1870
Place of composition: Bambarre
Repository: Bodleian Library. Weston Library, Oxford, United Kingdom
Shelfmark: MSS. Afr. 16 (Box 6)
Clendennen & Cunningham number(s): Field Diaries, 037
Digital edition and date: Livingstone Online, 2016
Publisher: University of Maryland Libraries, College Park, MD, USA
Project id: liv_000213
TEI encoding: Adrian S. Wisnicki, Megan Ward, Heather F. Ball, Ashanka Kumari, Erin Cheatham, Alexander Munson

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16th Octr 1870 - Moenemgoi
the chief came to tell me that Monamyembo
had sent five goats to Lohombo to get a charm
5to kill him. "Would the English and Kolokolo
(Muhamad) allow him to be killed while
they were here?" I said that it was a false
report but he believes it firmly. Monamyembo
sent his son to assure us that he was
10slandered, but thus quarrels and bloodshed
feuds arise. The great want of the Manyema
is national life. Of this they have none.
Each headman is independent of every other.
Of industry they have no lack, and the villagers
15are orderly towards each other, but they go
no further. If a man of another district ventures
among them it is at his peril. He is not
regarded with more favour as a Manyema
than one of a herd of buffaloes is by the
20rest. He is almost sure to be killed.
Moenekus had more wisdom than his
countrymen. His eldest son went over to
Monamyembo's who was subject to the father
was killed by five spear wounds. The old
25chief went and asked "Who had kllled slain
his son"? "None knew, perhaps the Bahombo.
he went thither - They denied it - Then they
said "Perhaps Monamdenda" - he denied.
question repeated, received same answer -
30"didn't know." The old man ^ then died - This, [liv_000213_0030]
8. 15
though he was heartbroken was called witch-
craft by Monamyembo. Eleven people were
murdered, and after this cruel man was
5punished he sent a goat with the confession
that he had killed Moenekus' son. This
son had some of the father's [ ] wisdom.
The others he never could get to act like men
of sense.

10

The sites chosen for some of the most signal
Grecian oracles were marked by the rushing
forth of a living spring from the recesses of
the native rocks of Greece, the Castalian
springs at Delphi, the rushing stream of
15the Hercynia at Lebadea. It was felt that
nothing could so well express the Divine voice
speaking from the hidden abysses of the
unseen world as those inarticulate but lively
ebullitions of the life giving element from its
20unknown mysterious sources. The prophetic
utterances in the remoter East were the
bubbling, teeming springs of life in those hard
primitive rocks, in those dry parched levels.
"My heart is inditing" - is bursting, bubbling
25over with a good matter. This image would be
drawn from the abundant crystal fountains
which all along the valley of the Jordan pour
forth their full grown streams, - scattering
fertility and verdure as they flow over the
30rough ground, - "boiling or bubbling over" of
the "Divine fountain of Inspiration within
the Soul."

"The words of Judgment bursting out one by
one, slowly, heavily, condensed, abrupt from
35the prophet's heavy and shrinking soul; each [liv_000213_0031]
sentence wrung forth with a groan, as though
he had anew to take breath before he uttered a
renewed woe; each word forming a whole for
itself, like one heavy toll of a funeral knell."
5(Pusey) - - (Jowett) "At the time when our
Saviour came into the world the Greek language
was in a state of degeneracy & decay. But that
degeneracy may be ranked among the causes
that fanned the growth of Christianity. It was
10a preparation for the Gospel, the decaying soil
in which the new elements of life were to come
forth, the one common speech of the then
civilized nations of the world. The definiteness
of earlier forms of human speech would have
15imposed a limit on the freedom of the Gospel.
A religion which was to be universal required
that the division of languages, no less than
of nations should be broken down. It pleased
God through broken and hestitating forms of
20speech to reveal the universal truth for which
the Greek of Plato would have been no fitting temple". -

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