Overlooking the low, fertile basin
he would establish trading posts, supplied with European wares.
We can not wonder that the directors of the Missionary Society
looked coldly upon this scheme, and wrote to him that they were
"restricted in their power of aiding plans connected only remotely
with the spread of the Gospel;" nor can we regret that Livingstone,
feeling his old love of independence revive, withdrew from his connection
with the Society, for the purpose of carrying out his own plans.
With all respect for the worthy persons who manage missionary societies,
we can not but believe that the man who led so large a party
across the African continent will accomplish more for the good cause
when working out his own plans than he would do by following out their ideas.
Appendix. - Notes to etext.
Words:
The names Loanda and Zambesi are given in most modern texts
as Luanda and Zambezi.
In three cases, the spelling used in the original was distracting enough
that it has been changed: musquito > mosquito, hachshish > hashish,
and nomade > nomad.
In three other cases, two variant spellings of a word were used in the text.
These were made uniform in accordance with the modern standard.
They were: water-buck > waterbuck, Mosambique > Mozambique,
and imbody > embody.
Other notes on terms: Livingstone often refers to ground-nuts -
this is the British term for a peanut. Mutokwane (`Cannabis sativa')
must be some variety of marijuana.
Symbols:
As the symbols for the British Pound (a crossed L), Degrees (small circle,
in the upper half of the line of text), and fractions cannot be represented
in ASCII, the following standards have been used:
Pounds: written out, and capitalized, AFTER the number of pounds,
rather than before it. Hence "L20" becomes 20 Pounds.
(where L represents the Pound symbol.)
Degrees, Minutes, Seconds: "Degrees", when used alone,
is either spelled out or abbreviated "Deg." - but is always capitalized
where it replaces the symbol. When a location is given
with a combination of degrees and minutes, or degrees, minutes, and seconds,
[d] is used to denote the symbol for degrees, ['] represents minutes,
and ["] represents seconds - these latter two are the common symbols,
or at least as similar as ASCII can represent. For an example,
lat. 9d 37' 30" S. would be latitude 9 degrees 37 minutes 30 seconds south.
All temperatures given are in Fahrenheit.
Fractions: Where whole numbers and fractions are combined,
the whole number is separated from the fraction with a dash.
For example, in Chapter 21: 16 ounces and 2-19/20 drams
would translate as 16 ounces and two-and-nineteen-twentieths drams.
Incidentally, Livingstone uses British measurements, which sometimes differ
from the American.
Corrected Errors:
Errors in the original text were corrected when the context presented
compelling evidence that there was in fact an error.
