“24_th June_.—­The medical education has led me to a continual tendency to suspend the judgment.  What a state of blessedness it would have been, had I possessed the dead certainty of the homoeopathic persuasion, and as soon as I found the Lakes Bangweolo, Moero, and Kamolondo, pouring out their waters down the great central valley, bellowed out, ‘Hurrah!  Eureka!’ and gone home in firm and honest belief that I had settled it, and no mistake.  Instead of that, I am even now not at all ‘cock-sure’ that I have not been following down what may after all be the Congo.”

We now know that this was just what he had been doing.  But we honor him all the more for the diffidence that would not adopt a conclusion while any part of the evidence was wanting, and that led him to encounter unexampled risks and hardships before he would affirm his favorite view as a fact.  The moral lesson thus enforced is invaluable.  We are almost thankful that Livingstone never got his doubts solved, it would have been such a disappointment; even had he known that in all time coming the great stream which had cast on him such a resistless spell would be known as the Livingstone River, and would perpetuate the memory of his life and his efforts for the good of Africa.

Occasionally his Journal gives a gleam, of humor:  “18_th June_.—­The Ptolemaic map defines people according to their food,—­the Elephantophagi, the Struthiophagi, the Ichthiophagi, and the Anthropophagi, If we followed the same sort of classification, our definition would be by the drink, thus:  the tribe of stout-guzzlers, the roaring potheen-fuddlers, the whisky-fishoid-drinkers, the vin-ordinaire bibbers, the lager-beer-swillers, and an outlying tribe of the brandy cocktail persuasion.”

Natural History furnishes an unfailing interest:  “19_th June_.—­Whydahs, though full-fledged, still gladly take a feed from their dam, putting down the breast to the ground, and cocking up the bill and chirruping in the most engaging manner and winning way they know.  She still gives them a little, but administers a friendly shove-off too.  They all pick up feathers or grass, and hop from side to side of their mates, as if saying, ‘Come, let us play at making little houses.’  The wagtail has shaken her young quite off, and has a new nest.  She warbles prettily, very much like a canary, and is extremely active in catching flies, but eats crumbs of bread-and-milk too.  Sun-birds visit the pomegranate flowers, and eat insects therein too, as well as nectar.  The young whydah birds crouch closely together at night for heat.  They look like a woolly ball on a branch.  By day they engage in pairing and coaxing each other.  They come to the same twig every night.  Like children, they try and lift heavy weights of feathers above their strength.”