Beschreibung:

File of letters to the Hon George Francis Stewart Elliot, Private Secretary to Lord John Russell Foreign Secretary (afterwards Prime Minister), pertaining to Livingstone's Zambesi Expedition of 1858-1864, comprising six autograph letters to Elliot by Charles James Meller, Naturalist and Surgeon to the Expedition, some of considerable length, copy of one letter by Meller to Lord John Russell himself, two autograph letters and a note to Elliot by Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society, sponsors of the Expedition; Meller's letters providing an extraordinarily detailed and, at times graphic – and highly critical – account of Livingstone's expedition: in them, he gives his unvarnished opinion of the expedition's prospects ("...There is nothing too, to be got from the Zambesi – It is a great sham of an Expedition built upon the prestige that Livingstone had previously acquired. Should Livingstone get his new little steamer on to Lake Nyassa he may do something to cut down the slave line between the interior and the coast from Eboe to Zanzibar... I am not desirous of being much longer connected with an enterprise that must eventually bring those connected with it into disfavour as having been the recipients of public money for which they are aware no adequate action could be shown..."); and in the course of the correspondence comments on, inter alia, Livingstone's wife, who was accompanying the expedition ("...I was not surprised to hear of Mrs Livingstone's death, as I had been conscious about her before I left the river, & could not but predict her speedy fall, as she was a heavy, sedentary, bilious woman..."), his companions ("...the majority of seamen (8 out of 11) were still hors de combat from fever... It was a motley troupe – the Bishop [Mackenzie] with a Crozier in one hand and rifle in the other..."), Livingstone's attempts to stamp out slavery ("...The Dr. seized the leader & discovered in him an old cook he had, when at Tette in 1858 - who was now up in business on his own account & was taking this 'lot' to Tette, for trade..."), the treatment meted out to these slaves ("...the laggards were at the evening halt, tied up to branches of trees by the wrists – touching the ground by their toes only – for example – A woman who carried a load of corn & a baby had the latter taken from her & saw its brains knocked out against a tree..."), local hospitality ("...Champagne & Vermouth are the favourite tipple and they stinted neither whilst drinking to Queen Victoria, & the English... if you pay much attention to one of the ladies, it generally follows that the King or her father presents her to you as 'Your Own', and the young lady never makes objection to the match – tout au contraire..."); and rounds off the series with a damning assessment of Livingstone's overall achievement ("...The Country is drear – no cattle nor game, & little produce or market except in slaves... The Lady Nyassa ship was left, anchored in mid-stream opposite the place where it was put together (& where Mrs Livingstone died – Shapanga). She (the ship) will be towed by the Pioneer up to Murchison falls, at which the Doctor expects to arrive about the end of December or so, and then comes the tug to carry the Sections overland. But this the indomitable Doctor will do... What with the losses by fever – invalidings – and desertions the Expedition is comprised only of its original 1858 members, plus, myself... Missions & expeditions seem rather God-forgotten things of late – if we take South American – Australian & this, as samples..."); in Elliot's letter to Murchison he remarks that "Mr Meller in this letter makes some remarks on Dr Livingstone's expedition which I think you ought to see... I cannot help thinking there is much truth in what he says of the barren results to be expected from the Zambesi expedition", to which Murchison offers the terse reply: "I am inclined to agree with Mr Meller. It is a wild goose chase but Dr Liv