Livingstone's visits to the home land were brief, and each day was filled
to the brim with interviews, lectures, and literary work. He returned to
Africa for the third and last time in 1866, ascended the Rovuma, and for
three years was lost to the outside world. During this time he visited
lakes Meroe and Tanganyika, preaching the gospel to thousands and tens of
thousands waiting in heathen darkness.
In 1871 his strength utterly gave way, and on October 23, reduced to a
living skeleton, he reached Ujiji, after a perilous journey of six hundred
miles taken expressly to secure supplies. He was bitterly disappointed to
find that the rascal to whom the delivery of the goods had been charged had
disposed of the whole lot. For eighty days he was obliged to keep his bed,
and during this time he read his Bible through four times. On the fly-leaf
he wrote: "No letters for three years. I have a sore longing to finish and
go home, if God wills." Relief, letters, and supplies had all been sent
him, but he never received them. Many of the letters which he wrote never
even reached the coast, as the Portuguese destroyed them whenever possible.
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