The Sun.
London, England, 1869-12-13 00:00:00

DR. LIVINGSTONE'S LETTER.

A telegram received a few weeks since by the Foreign
Office stated that a letter had been received by Dr. John
Kirk, her Majesty's Consul at Zanzibar, dated Ujiji, May
30th, 1869. That letter is now to hand. The epistle
is, as above stated, dated " Ujiji, 30th May, 1869,"
and is addressed to •`My dear Dr. Kirk." This note,"
the letter commences, " goes by Musa Kamaals,
who was employed by Koarji to drive the buffa-
loes hither, but by overdriving them unmercifully in the
sun and tying them up to save trouble in herding, they
all died before he got to Unyanyembe. He witnessed
the plundering of my goods and got a share of them, and
I have given him beads and cloth sufficient to buy
provisions for himself in the way back to Zanzibar. He
has done nothing here. Ho neither went near the goods
here nor tried to prevent their being stolen in the way.
I suppose that pay for four months in coining, other fcur
of rest, and four in going back would be ample, but I
leave this to your decision. I could not employ him to
carry my mail back, nor can I say anything to him, for
he at once goes to the Ujijans and gives his own versionof
all he hears. Ho is untruthful and ill-conditioned, and
would hand off the mail to any one who wished to destroy
it. The poople here are like the Kilwa traders, haters
of the English. Those Zanzibar men whom I met be-
tween this and Nyassa were gentlemen, and traded
with honour. Here, as in the haunts of the Kilwa hordes,
slaving is a series of forays, and they dread exposure by
my letters. No one will take charge of them. I have
got Thani bin Suellim to take a mail privately for trans-
mission to Unyanyembe. It contains a cheque on Ritchie,
Steuart, and Co., of Bombay, for 2,000 Rs., and some
forty letters written durifig my slow recovery. I fear it may
never reach you. A party was sent to the coast two months
ago. One man volunteered to to take a letter secretly,but his
master warned them all not to do so, because I might write
something he did not like. He went out with the
party and gave orders to the headman to destroy any
letter he might detect on the way. Thus, though lam
good friends outwardly with them all, I can get no
assistance in procuring carriers, and, as you will see if
the mail comes to hand, I sent to Zanzibar for fifteen
good boatmen to act as carriers if required, eighty pieces
of meritrano, forty ditto of kinitra, twelve farasalas of
the beds called jamsain, shoes, kc., and I have written
to Seyd Majid begging two of his guards to see to
the safety of the goods here -into Thani bin Suellim's
hands, or into those of Mohammed bin Sahib. As to
the work to be done by me, it is only to connect the
sources which I have discovered from 500 to 7001 miles
south of Speke and Baker's with their Nile. The volume
of water which flows north from latitude 120 south is so
large, I suspect that I have been working at the sources
of the Cango, as well as those 'of the Nile. I have to go
down the eastern line of drainage to Baker's turning point.
Tanganyika, Nyige Chowambe (Baker's?) are one water,
and the head of it is 300 miles south of this. The western
and central lines of drainage converge into an unvisited
lake west or south-west of this. The outflow of this,
whether to Cango or Nile, I have to ascertain. The people of
this, called Manyema, are cannibals, if Arabs speak truly. I
may have to go there first, and down Tanganyika, if T come
out uneaten, and find my new squad from Zanzibar. I
earnestly hope that you will do what you can to help me
with the goods and men ; £4OO to be sent by Mr. Young
must surely have conic to you through Fleming and Co."
In a postscript the learned traveller says :—" A long box
paid for to Nijiji was left at Unyanyembe, and so with
other boxes."

Dr. Kirk comments upon this letter. It was-received at
Zanzibar October 2. " The requests made by Dr. Living-
stone in a previous communication that reached on the 7tb
ult. having been complied with; I shall lose no time in
supplying the things herein demanded. There will, how-
ever, be some difficulty in getting faithful men, as the
Arabs at Unyanyembe, being of the El Haothi tribe, art
by no means loyal subjects of Seyd Majid, and, as Dr. Living
stone tells us, still engaged in the slave trade."

AN ELECTRICAL INSECT,—It is reported, on
the authority of the late Major-General Davis of the Roya]
Artillery, that the Reduvius serratus, commonly known in
the West Indies as " the wheel bug," can, like the
Symnotus electricus, communicate an electric shock to the
person whose flesh it touches.
The Naval and Military Gazette mentions at
probable the abolition of the post of Military Secretary at
the Horse Guards, by which a saving to the country of
£2,240 a year will bo effected, and the public service will
be considerably expedited. The duties have been per-
formed by the civilian assistants in the Military Secretary's
office. In addition to the pay and allowances of the
Military Secretaryship, General Forster is in receipt of
£l,OOO a year, as colonel of the list Regiment, which was
bestowed upon him after he became Military Secretary.

A JUDGING CLERGYMAN.—A clergyman of a pro-
vincial town in Wfirtemberg has been making a fool of
himself much in the same way that Fournier, the French
pastor, did in Berlin some time ago. On the occasion of
the baptism of an illegitimate child, the godmother
appeared in church, according to the custom of the place,
adorned with the maiden wreath. This greatly
enraged the worthy pastor, and he at once ordered
the young woman to remoNe the obnoxious symboL
Not unnaturally she was equally offended at his order and
declined to obey, reminding the clergyman that she had
done nothing to merit such degradation. The reverend
gentleman, however, was inflexible and when words were
of no avail he made the congregation sing two more
verses of a hymn and went off in search of a
knife, with which himself to cut off the wreath. Un-
fortunately no knife was at hand, so that he was obliged
to apply to the offending maiden for one. She, however,
either could not, or would not, produce the
required instrument. At last a bread-knife was procured
from a house adjoining the church, and with this piece of
cutlery, in presence of the astonished congregation, the
unfortunate damsel was shorn of her wreath. The amiable
parson then proceeded to baptize the child, who fortu-
nately was not old enough to profit, as he might other-
, wise have done by the example shewn him of Christian
charity.

LETTER FROM SIR ISAAC NEWTON.—A hitherto
unpublished letter of Sir. Isaac Newton is printed in the
Academy. It was addressed to Dr. John North, who suc-
ceeded Dr. Barrow in the Mastership of Trinity College,
Cambridge. It was found a few weeks since among the
papers of Mr. F. North, M.P. for Hastings. Mr. North
being immediately descended from Roger North (the
author of the " Lives of the Norths," and brother
both of the Lord Keeper Guildford and of the Master of
Trinity) was great-great-great-nephew of the Dr. John
North to whom the letter in question was addressed. The
original is twice endorsed, first in the handwriting
of Roger North, Esq., of Rougham, son of the Hon. Roger
North, in the following words :—" Sr. Is : Newton to my
mild° John ;" and, secondly, in the handwriting of the late
Mr. F. North, M.P. Sir Isaac Newton's letter is a critical
examination of a treatise on music ; but it conclude 3 with
the following:—" I am much obliged to you for giving me
notice of the objection made against my notion about
colours. But ye experiment succeeds otherwise than
tis reported. If you place your eye wee blew-light
falls on ye .wall so yt a by-stamfer see your eye of a
blew colour you will at ye same time see ye Prism of a
blew colour, & so if you place your eye in ye red light you
will see ye Prism red. What colour a By-stander sees fall
yor eye you will see at Prism; as I can affirm by iterated
experience." Reference is made to this letter p. 293 of
Roger North's " Lifo of the Lord Keeper Guildford," who
was author of the treatise on music. In order to give
further security for its genuineness, it is proposed to place
the original in the hands of General Sir Edward Rabin°,
Dart., for. the ihspootioa 9, the membere • the Royal
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