Meanwhile, Dr. Livingstone was busy with his pen.  A new energy had been imparted to him by the appalling facts now fully apparent, that his discoveries had only stimulated the activity of the slave-traders, that the Portuguese local authorities really promoted slave-trading, with its inevitable concomitant slave-hunting, and that the horror and desolation to which the country bore such frightful testimony was the result.  It seemed as if the duel he had fought with the Boers when they determined to close Africa, and he determined to open it, had now to be repeated with the Portuguese.  The attention of Dr. Livingstone is more and more concentrated on this terrible topic.  Dr. Kirk writes to him that when at Tette he had heard that the Portuguese Governor-General at Mozambique had instructed his brother, the Governor of that town, to act on the principle that the slave-trade, though prohibited on the ocean, was still lawful on the land, and that any persons interfering with slave-traders, by liberating their slaves, would be counted robbers.  An energetic despatch to Earl Russell, then Foreign Secretary, calls attention to this outrage.

A few days after, a strong but polite letter is sent to the Governor of Tette, calling attention to the forays of a man named Belshore, in the Chibisa country, and entreating him to stop them.  About the same time he writes to the Governor-General of Mozambique in reply to a paper by the Viscount de Sa da Bandeira, published in the Almanac by the Government press, in which the common charge was made against him of arrogating to himself the glory of discoveries which belonged to Senhor Candido and other Portuguese.  He affirms that before publishing his book he examined all Portuguese books of travels he could find; that he had actually shown Senhor Candido to have been a discoverer before any Portuguese hinted that he was such; that the lake which Candido spoke of as northwest of Tette could not be Nyassa, which was northeast of it; that he did full justice to all the Portuguese explorers, and that what he claimed as own discoveries were certainly not the discoveries of the Portuguese.  A few days after, he writes to Mr. Layard, then our Portuguese Minister, and comments on the map published by the Viscount as representing Portuguese geography,—­pointing out such blunders as that which made the Zambesi enter the sea at Quilimane, proving that by their map the Portuguese claimed territory that was certainly not theirs; adverting to their utter ignorance of the Victoria Falls, the most remarkable phenomenon in Africa; affirming that many so-called discoveries were mere vague rumors, heard by travelers; and showing the use that had been made of his own maps, the names being changed to suit the Portuguese orthography.

Livingstone had the satisfaction of knowing that his account of the trip to Lake Nyassa had excited much interest in the Cabinet at home, and that a strong remonstrance had been addressed to the Portuguese Government against slave-hunting.  But it does not appear that this led to any improvement at the time.