Letter to Horace Waller
David Livingstone

Date of composition: 5 February 1871
Place of composition: Bambarre
Repository: Peter Beard Studio, New York City, United States
Shelfmark: [none]
Clendennen & Cunningham number(s): Letters, 1963
Digital edition and date: Livingstone Online, 2016
Publisher: University of Maryland Libraries, College Park, MD, USA
Project id: liv_002564
TEI encoding: Adrian S. Wisnicki, Jeff Drouin, Debbie Harrison, Elizabeth McAulay, Kate Simpson

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Bambarre = Manyema 5 Feb 1871

My Dear Waller - I yesterday recieved gladly your 3
letters of Octr Novr Decr 1869 You repeat the dose which
is like to break my heart - You "gave Kirk all the news and
5he would impart them to me" but he had other matters to
attend to and as usual I have to whistle for news - I am
the man with too many friends - Oh says Muff No 1 such
a nice book has come out - I would send it but you have so
many friends I am sure that someone must have sent it
10already - N2 says I would have given you the news but
you have so many friends &c &c - No 3 says our large
national educational establishment in which I have the
honour to free a chair ought to help if not take on them
the education of your children - I would do it myself but
15you have so many friends &c - The upshot is I recieve nothing

Two great friends removed my three boys at my expense
and against my wish from a healthy school in England
to an abominable "Do the boys Hall" in Scotland & they were
all home sick three months afterwards - ! I am glad of
20all you told me when you forgot the idea of others telling
me and wrote naturally as a married man ought to do
I did not know of Young s trip up after me nor of Musa s
lies till now - The successful laying of the Atlantic cable
I Enferred from my Canadian brother saying "last cable
25news told us you were alive & we put off our mourning"
I infer that a new Government or ministry is in
power because you speak of John Bright & Duke Argyll
as ministers - Well I am off in a few days to finish
with the help of the Almighty new explorations - Ten
30men here come from Kirk who like the good fellow
that he is worked unweariedly to get them & goods off in
the midst of disease and death – one gang of porters died
quite off and five of my men perished by cholera - We get that
from Mecca - letters preceded it thence saying it was coming -
35We do nothing to stop its hatching in Mecca Medina & Judda
which annually become vast cesspools of abomination
because the new political economy says let everything alone
Formerly it went along shore now it comes inland - In our
small camp here we lost 30 & how many Manyema no one
40knows - All the able bodied all off ivory collecting - if it had
continued three instead of two months the camp would have
been desolate - Fowls & goats fell first then cattled shivered
and died & then men. I quite expect to hear that it went to the
Cape - I got the copy of the Standard you sent - I have not seen
45the "Times" for an age - I differ from you for I am proud
of our great Paper and only sorry when it admits the babble
of the clubs - Jupiter must be nodding when he admits Cooley s
ill natured twaddle as "geography". I would not answer him
why he boldly challenged me to argue the point whether the great
50 Zambesi above the falls were a river - He maintained that it
was "an undeveloped river" that went under the ground of
the Kalahari and was lost, and in what he called a map
put it down as ending in a pothook - doubtless meaning
if the "learned" the "erudite" Cooley could be so low as use a
55hieroglyphic to say "here it hooks it" - that shut me up from
answering for ever - My work leads me down Lualaba
in canoes till it touches the head of the Nile probably near
the Eastern arm followed down by Speke Grant & Baker
then double back up the Western line of drainage to the
60fountains on the Watershed - on return I shall not
go down the Western arm of the loop formed by the end
of Baker s water and it - the Northern part of which
again [ ]r Bakar i[ ] a liar o[ ] I am - This is

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still unknown in fact it is Cooleography & not to
be made public - I propose to go up the lower lower Tanganyika
or Uerere or lower Tanganyika Albert Nyanza
and on to Ujiji & Zanzibar I do not know Baker s
5plan and in my ignorance fear that conquering the
small headmen all along the Nile is doing on a large scale
what slavetraders now do on small one - commit
many murders to punish a few robbers and make
the whole population Turkish slaves – I know of no
10large chief in all this region Every village is independent
and no glory can arise from enslaving these in detail
but I dont know
the Egyptian ex
peditions under
15the French were
as bloody as if
conducted by
Manyema –

My packet of 40
20letters is I fear
destroyed The
governor the alleged
culprit complains
that he conducted the
25expedition of Burton
from Zanzibar
to Ujiji & thence
to Uvira and
back to Zanzibar
30deal of wrangling
and was left un-
-paid till the Indian
Government or
that of Bombay sent
35him a 1000 dollars
He was soured at
all Englishmen –
placed my goods
under his man
40 Musa bin Salim
who stopped the
porters ten days
while he plundered
& went off to Karagwe
45to buy ivory for
his master - He
wished that no
evidence should
go to the coast -
50my packet con-
tained evidence &
I conjectured it was
destroyed - His agent at Ujiji sent back the
packet after had paid for it because "he did
55not know the contents" I regret the loss of copies
of all my astronomical observations and [ ]
Despatch supplementary to that from Bangw[ ]
but I have copies at Ujiji - The gross carelessness of
60the council in allowing Arrowsmith to take away my
imperfect sketches made solely to oblige them by the earliest
information while my work went to the Cape and then my
good friend Arrowsmith glorifying himself by sending the
errors easily detected to Germany & India made me
65resolve to take care of them myself and at the risk of losing
them altogether - My kind love to your wife I am glad she has taken you & under her wing
and my blessing on you both David Livingstone

The Governor's statement may be untrue for he is
70an ill conditioned Arab and lying is no sin to such
A. then charged Mr Murray & me £300 with the reason
for the overcharge had to alter all his work on
recieving later information which later
information was the only thing we employed
75him upon - He employed himself on Kirk's
and my imperfect sketches He ought to
refund or leave the council

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PS. to Waller - It is not worth while noticing anything fr[ ]
Burton any more than from Cooley – they make statements only [ ]
lug themselves forward to the public - For your private information
I tell you that my party consisted of fifteen Muhamadans
5six pagan Hindoos six christians & four Heathen - the Moslems
were by far the worst in every respect - The christians had the mis
fortune to have been born slaves in their own tribes & had recieved the
worst training in the world from Moslem slavetraders but behaved
better than the Moslems till we came into close contact with Moslems
10again - the Heathen had been in the Portuguese service and were
infinitely inferior to heathen Makololo in consequence - I have
heard gentlemen from India speak of native christians with
contempt because they had never seen any save the vile
scum that hangs about camps which may be called moral
15cess pools - I have seen the native christians in India which
these silly gentlemen pretend to describe and they are as different
from the "Masters caste" men who say "I drink brandy" as one
can concieve - I have travelled with all sorts of Africans
and I can without hesitation assert that the native Christians
20are out of sight better than either Moslems or heathen - only
let them understand thoroughly that they are servants and
must work as hard as slaves - They are not gentlemen and
you will have trustworthy & generally truthful attendants -
The trouble you will have with them is just what all have with
25English servants and every other - I am to be judged by the work done -

I am truly thankful that there is some prospect of the
suppression of the East African slave trade as carried on
by the Sultans subjects - I have heard but little of the details
but I believe a great deal is owing to the exertions of our
30friend Kirk on whom for his share may Heavens
rich blessing descend - the sights I have in this journey
seen of slaving make my blood run cold and I am not
easily moved or very Sentimental - I cannot call the Arabs
cruel - but ^ it is the trade that is cruel and certainly is vil[ ] few are like those wretches the Kilwa traders
35or the atrocious Portuguese of Tette whose murder and
arson you witnessed - But it is an awful traffic and
can be congenial only to the Devil and his angels - If our
statesmen stop the frightful waste of human life in this
region and mitigate the vast amount of human woe
40that accompanies it they will do good on the large scale
and cause joy in Heaven - The whole horrible system
North of Rovuma & Cape Delgado is to support the Sultan
of Zanzibar who is said to be by no means very greedy
of money save to uphold his little court & attendants -
45The system South of a point South of Cape Delgado for
that is the boundary claimed by the ^ Portuguese Arabs is kept up
not to injure the rights of the crown of Portugal " so said
one not supposed capable of abetting an atrocity and
the Governors D'Almrida destroyed our work & people
50unchecked - The most startling disease I have seen among
slaves is not earth or clay eating which too is a disease
per se but what really seems to be brokenheartedness
It does not attack those who have been slaves in their own
land but those who have been free - I saw a party taken
55across Lualaba by a slaver and when they saw this mighty
river roll between them and home they seemed to lose all
heart - Twenty one who were then considered safe were
unchained all scuttled off to the mountains but eight
still in the chain and in good health died in three days

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[ ]hen asked why they did not eat but lay pictures of
abject misery they pointed to the heart as the seat
of pain - they point to that organ correctly though
many think that the heart is under the upper part
5of the sternum or breastbone - I saw many others
die - some were kindly carried and on expiring were
laid down on the side of the path - The masters wondering
why they died and had plenty to eat - I once saw a party
in the slave yoke singing merrily & thought my
10these fellows have taken to it kindly - they must belong
to the class to whom
slavery is the
natural state
for which they
15were born - I
asked the cause
of their mirth &
was told that
they laughed at
20the idea "of coming
back after death
and haunting &
killing those who
had sold them"
25Some of the words
I had to enquire
the meaning of the
word to "haunt and
kill by spirit power"

30

[ ]hen it was "oh you
sent me off to
Manga but the
yoke is off when
I die and back
35I shall come to
haunt and to kill
you" Then all
joined in the
chorus which was
40the name of each
vendor as if it
were "oh Johnny
Smith Oh Johnny Smith Oh Oh"
It told not of fun but of the bitterness and tears
45of such as were oppressed ^ and on the site of the oppression there was power and they had
no comforter - "There be higher than they."

I am terribly knocked
up but this is for your own eye only
in my second childhood a dreadful
50old fogie – doubtful if I live to see you
again - I stick to my work in spite of
everything because most of my friends
will say as my good daughter does - "much as I wish to have
55you home I would rather that you finish your work to your
own satisfaction than come merely to gratify me" there’s a good
brave girl I guess - a chip of the old block and no
mistake David Livingstone {figure}

News came lately to Ujiji that a large body of Turks (Egyptians?)
60came and attacked Sunna - They were repulsed and fled in disorder
Sunna is Speke s Muza with his fathers name - can this be Sam Baker or De Bono?

Baker does not seem to be aware how
often the Portuguese have tried the conquering
65plan and always failed - more signally
in the West perhaps than the East but it may
be different with him and though I dont
know his plan I hope he may do good
on the Zambesi the natives to a man were
70most friendly - the Portuguese instructed from
Lisbon were civil but hated us & the expedition
with Baker the Turks will be as friendly as the
Zambesi natives to us - but I fear that the
common people will be like our Portuguese
75But for cannon Sunna could conquer Egypt
far more easily than 3000 troops could injure
him - 100 000 warriers though an exaggeration means something great

Revise Nov 23/69
for Dr Livingstone Interior of Africa
80
Uncorrected