Scotland/Scots > Last years of Livingstone

THE LAST YEARS OF LIVINGSTONE.
137
Having now been some six years out of the world, and
most of my friends having apparently determined by their
silence to impress me with the truth of the adage, “ Out
of sight out of mind,” the dark scenes of the slave trade
had a most distressing and depressing influence. The
power of the Prince of Darkness seemed enormous. It
was only with a heavy heart I said, “ Thy kingdom come! ”
In one point of view the evils that brood over this beau¬
tiful country are insuperable. When I dropped among
the Makololo and others in the Central region, I saw a fair
prospect of the regeneration of Africa. More could have
been done in the Makololo country than was done by St.
Patrick in Ireland. But I did not know that I was sur¬
rounded by the Portuguese slave trade—a blight like a
curse from heaven that proved a barrier to all improve¬
ment. Now I am not so hopeful. I don’t know how the
wrong will become right. But the great and loving
Father of all knows, and He will do it according to His
infinite wisdom.
A batch of New York Herald newspapers of 1871 has
lately made the horizon clear up a little. Commercial
enterprise, it seems, is daily bringing people geographi¬
cally remote into close connection. The tendency of hea¬
thenism is towards isolation. In the Manyuema country
it keeps the inhabitants of one village apart from every
other, except as was the case with our remote ancestors,
when they went to fight. The head man of a hamlet of
half a dozen houses walks unarmed around his plantation,
with a long staff, carrying some potent charm on each