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GEOGRAPHY AND EAST AFRICA   205

The popular opinion has been that Livingstone was left to his fate without adequate care on the part of his countrymen to succour him, and that he was rescued owing to the zeal of the proprietor of an American newspaper and the hardihood of his employee, Mr., afterwards Sir Henry, Stanley.

I was on the Council of the Royal Geographical Society during all the time in question, and can testify to our extreme desire to help Livingstone, but in his later years he had become difficult to meddle with. He had a brusque resentment against anything that might be construed into patronage, feeling, as I understood, that he had been over-much "exploited" by his admirers. There was great fear among those in the Council who knew him better than I did, that he might be annoyed at any attempt to relieve him, and would resent it yet more bitterly than Emin Bey subsequently resented Stanley's compulsory relief. Again, there was no reason to suppose Livingstone to be in serious want. He was thoroughly accustomed to natives of the widely dispersed Bantu race, among whom he probably then was. He travelled without a large party or other encumbrance, so that the favour of even a single chief, such as he might reasonably expect to gain, would amply suffice for his wants. Besides this, he had not cared to write, and there was no knowing where a man like him might be, who had already walked right across Africa and back again. So whenever the question was discussed formally, or otherwise, it seemed better to defer action till some intelligence of his wishes and whereabouts had been received. I n the meantime, acting upon his own