"The Makololo are just such a strange mixture of good and
evil as men are everywhere else."

THE insuperability of the Kebrabasa Rapids to navigation
of the Zambesi was an obstacle that Livingstone had
tried in vain to minimize, even to himself; but the dis-
appointment was more than allayed by his discovery of the
Shire highlands, soon to be known as Nyasaland. As Professor
Debenham has emphasized, this discovery proved to be of even
greater importance in opening up the continent than that
which he had made on his first Great Journey, and is of itself
enough to dispose of the view that this expedition was an anti-
climax to the other.

The natural resources and productivity of the Shire high-
lands were after all greater, and the climate healthier, than the
Kafue highlands, and in the deflection of his enterprise from
the Zambesi to the great Lake, Livingstone saw the good hand
of an over-ruling Providence. Here, rather than in the more
distant interior, was the true line of advance; for a Christian
settlement here would intercept the main slave-routes at their
focal points, and an armed launch on the Lake would be a more
effective deterrent than "half a dozen warships off the coast".

But he had to wait for its arrival and, though there was much
to organize and supervise in the Lower Zambesi meanwhile, he
felt that he could no longer defer fulfilling his promise to the
Makololo, or rather the remnant of them who still wished to
return to their homes. With so much else to exercise his thoughts
and energies he had little taste for a prolonged excursion to
Linyanti and had earlier in the year even agreed to their own
suggestion that his brother should act as his deputy; "but they
afterwards thought that it might be construed into disobedience,
for Sekeletu had given them orders to return with me". ¹

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