The Rev. Dugald C. Boyd, of Bombay (now of Portsoy, Banffshire), an intimate friend of Dr. Stewart, of Lovedale, writing to a correspondent on 10th October, 1865, says: 

“Yesterday evening I had the pleasure of meeting Livingstone at dinner in a very quiet way....  It was an exceedingly pleasant evening.  Dr. Wilson was in great ‘fig,’ and Livingstone was, though quiet, very communicative, and greatly disposed to talk about Africa....  I had known Mrs. Livingstone, and I had known Robert and Agnes, his son and daughter, and I had known Stewart.  He spoke very kindly of Stewart, and seems to hope that he may yet join him in Central Africa....  He is much stouter, better, and healthier-looking than he was last year....

“12_th October_.—­Livingstone was at the tamasha yesterday.  He was dressed very unlike a minister—­more like a post-captain or admiral.  He wore a blue dress-coat, trimmed with lace, and bearing a Government gilt button.  In his hand he carried a cocked hat.  At the Communion on Sunday (he sat on Dr. Wilson’s right hand, who sat on my right) he wore a blue surtout, with Government gilt buttons, and shepherd-tartan trousers; and he had a gold band round his cap[67].  I spent two hours In his society last evening at Dr. Wilson’s.  He was not very complimentary to Burton.  He is to lecture in public this evening.”

[Footnote 67:  Dr, Livingstone’s habit of dressing as a layman, and accepting the designation of David Livingstone, Esquire, as readily as that of the Rev. Dr. Livingstone, probably helped to propagate the idea that he had sunk the missionary in the explorer.  The truth, however, is, that from the first he wished to be a lay missionary, not under any Society, and it was only at the instigation of his friends that he accepted ordination.  He had an intense dislike of what was merely professional and conventional, and he thought that as a free-lance he would have more influence.  Whether in this he sufficiently appreciated the position and office of one set aside by the Church for the service of the gospel may be a question:  but there can be no question that he had the same view of the matter from first to last.  He would have worn a blue dress and gilt buttons, if it had been suitable, as readily as any other, at the most ardent period of his missionary life.  His heart was as truly that of a missionary under the Consul’s dress as it had ever been when he wore black, or whatever else he could get, in the wilds of Africa.  At the time of his encounter with the lion he wore a coat of tartan, and he thought that that material might have had some effect in preventing the usual irritating results of a lion’s bite.]

Another friend, Mr. Alexander Brown, now of Liverpool, sends a brief note of a very delightful excursion given by him, in honor of Livingstone, to the caves of Kennery or Kenhari, in the island of Salsette.  There was a pretty large party.  After leaving the railway station, they rode on ponies to the caves.