The Press.
London, England, 1857-12-19 00:00:00

sulk. " Much greater influence," writes Dr.
" Livingstone, " will be gained by studying how
" you may induce them to act rightly with the
"impression that they are doing it of their own
"free will." Then, again, purity of life and
intention is a grand assistance. Nobody will
detect you sooner in the practice of any little
pet sin than an untutored savage. The acts
of a stranger, Dr. Livingstone tells us, as
one result of his experience, "are keenly sera-
" tinised by both young and old, and seldom
" is the judgment pronounced, even by the
" heathen, unfair or uncharitable. I have
" heard women speaking in admiration of a
" white man, because he was pure, and never
" was guilty of any secret immorality. Had
" he been, they would have known it, and, un-
" tutored heathen though they he, would have
" despised him in consequence. Secret vice
" becomes known throughout the tribe; and
" while one unacquainted with the language
" may imagine a peccadillo to be hidden, it
"is as patent to all as it would be in
" London had he a placard on his hack."
The great difficulty with respect to the con-
version of these people lies, we suspect, in
making the subject of Christianity plain to
their minds without alarming their super-
stitions. If you frighten them with terri-
ble pictures of the punishments in store for
depravity and guilt, they dream of it at night,
wake in a fright full of the Destroying Angel,
and never come to prayers or religious service
again. The religious influence on such people
requires the nicest tact in its application. A
great aid is medical knowledge. Perhaps it is
not unreasonable to attribute much of Dr.
Livingstone's influence to this acquirement.
He delivered the women, cut off tumours
from the men, and looked after the general
health of his friends with such success
that his fame spread throughout the country,
and anxious patients came to him from afar.
Then, when he had relieved the untutored
savage from excruciating pain, or saved the
life of his wife or child, or effected a cure, the
mind of the patient was more impressible, and
more readily believed the words of one who
possessed such knowledge and unrivalled skill.
In all matters of trade as well as of religion
Dr. Livingstone recommends a judicious
liberality. The natives know the value of
buttons and beads, and estimate at its right
worth such a gift from a man who has ex-
perienced kindness and food and shelter at
their hands. " How some men," says Dr.
Livingstone, " can offer three buttons is to me
" incomprehensible." One European having
presented an old gun to a chief, furnished the
standing joke among the tribe, " The white
" man who made a present of a gnu that was
" new when his grandfather was sucking his
" great-grandmother."

We have left ourselves scarcely room to
allude to the many anecdotes of -wild animals,
or of the discoveries of Dr. Livingstone in the
flora ana fauna of Africa, or of his admirable
deductions from natural phenomena of the
physical constructure of Africa. As we pointed
out in our previous notice, he agrees with Sir R.
Murchison in believing Central Africa to form
a vast lacustrine level. When he reached
Lake Dilolo he found, upon native testimony,
that its waters flowed both to the east and
west, thus giving a portion of its waters to the
Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and forming the
actual watershed between the river systems
that flow east and west :

I state the fact exacqy as it opened to my own mind ; for
it was only now that I apprehended the true form of thu
river systems and continent. I had seen the various rivers
of this country on the western side flowing from the sub-
tending ridges into the centre, and had received informa-
tion from natives and Arabs that most of the rivers on the
eastern side of the same great region took a somewhat
similar course from an elevated ridge there, and that all
united in two main drains, the one flowing to the N. and
the other to the 5.., and that the northern drain found its
way out by the Congo to the W., and the southern by the
Zambesi to the E. I was thus on the watershed, or
highest point, of these two great systems, hot still not
more than 4,000 feet above the level of the sea, and 1,000
feet lower than the top of the western ridge we had already
crossed ; yet, instead of lofty snow-clad mountains ap-
pearing to verify the conjectures of the speculative, we
had extensive plains, over which one may travel a month
without seeing anything higher than an ant-hill or a tree.
Of the flora we can only say that with the assist-
ance of Sir W. Hooker the trees and plants arc
classified with care, and among the latter