The Project Gutenberg eBook of David Livingstone, by C. Silvester Horne.

BY
C. SILVESTER HORNE, M.P.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
{iv}
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MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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PREFACE

On March 19th, 1913, a hundred years will have passed since David Livingstone was born. It is only forty years since his body was carried by faithful hands from the centre of Africa to the coast that he might be buried among his peers in Westminster Abbey. In those forty years great and astounding changes have been witnessed in the Continent which is associated with his fame. The campaign he fought against the slave-system that desolated the vast district drained by the Zambesi had to be renewed to free the population on the banks of the Congo. Southern Africa has been reconstructed and consolidated. The Upper and the Lower Nile have witnessed many strange vicissitudes of history. Other names have become great in men’s mouths. Some have been associated with vast political enterprises; while some, with a disinterestedness as noble as Livingstone’s, have been at once the pioneers and the martyrs of a Christian civilisation. But nothing that has happened since has diminished by a single {vi} laurel the wreath he won, and will wear for ever. With every decade his fame greatens; and whatever our views on African problems may be, we may all agree that her white population may well pray for a double portion of his spirit. At first it seemed unnecessary to re-write his life. The task has been so well fulfilled by many sympathetic biographers. For anyone who has the patience and the leisure it is to be found recorded in the fascinating pages of his journals. But it is so great a possession that there seemed to be room for yet another attempt to present it to those in our busy century who ask for short measure and a clear, simple narrative of facts. This is what the present biography aspires to be. The author has aimed not so much at telling the story as at allowing the story to tell itself. It may be added that, in the belief of the writer, Livingstone is greatest, not as a scientist, nor an explorer, but as a man and a missionary. {vii}

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

DR. LIVINGSTONE

CHAPTER I

The year 1813 in which my story opens was a momentous one in the history of Europe. The titanic struggle with Napoleon was nearing its crisis. Victor at Lutzen and Bautzen, he had been defeated at Leipzig, on one of the bloodiest battlefields in modern warfare. Away in the Pyrenees, Wellington was grappling with Soult, and step by step driving him back on to French soil. Among those who were fighting in the ranks of the British army were at least two men bearing the name of Livingstone. It is doubtful whether they even heard, amid the excitement and peril of the time, that away in peaceful far Blantyre, and in their brother {2} Neil’s home, a lad had been born, and christened by the good, sound scriptural name of David. Yet it may come to be believed some day that the birth of David Livingstone was of more vital influence upon the destiny of the world even than the battle in which Napoleon’s star set in blood two years later. For to open up a continent, and lead the way in the Christianisation of its countless millions was one of the “more renowned” victories of peace—a more difficult and notable achievement than to overthrow one form of military domination in Europe.

The family of Livingstones or Livingstons—for David Livingstone himself spelt his name for many years without the final “e”—came from the Island of Ulva off the coast of Argyllshire. Not much of interest is known about them except that one of them died at Culloden fighting for the Stuarts; so that the “fighting blood” in their veins had its way with them before David’s more immediate kinsmen crossed the seas to the Peninsula. The most distinguished member {3} of the family inherited the Highlander’s daring and love of exploits combined with the most pacific spirit, and left behind him an unstained record as an explorer who never lifted his hand to do hurt to anyone through all the perils of his adventurous career. Towards the close of the eighteenth century his grandfather had crossed from Ulva and settled in Blantyre, a village on the Clyde that had certainly no romantic attraction. He was employed in a cotton factory there. Most of his sons went off to the wars; but one of them, Neil, settled in Blantyre as a dealer in tea. He had been previously apprenticed to David Hunter, a tailor; and, as many a good apprentice has done before him, married his master’s daughter. Neil Livingstone and his brave wife had a hard fight of it to make a living out of a small tea business, and to educate and rear their children. Two of the children died in infancy; but three sons and two daughters grew up in that humble home. David was the second son. He was born on March 19th, 1813. {4}

The small struggling tradesman has had little justice done to him either by the novelist or by common repute. He is usually represented as a man who cannot afford to keep a soul, and whose interests are limited to sordid and petty transactions across a counter, not always nor often of a scrupulous and honourable character. The reputation is very ill-deserved. The small shop has proved itself as good a training ground as any other for scholars, and saints and heroes; and, but for the fact that our prejudices die hard, we should recognise that it is so. Neil Livingstone and his wife may have lived a narrow life, serving faithfully their customers and dividing their interests between their family, their business, and the little Independent Chapel of which Neil Livingstone was a Deacon. But they found their sphere large enough for the practice of the fundamental Christian virtues, as well as for the noblest of all interests—the interest in the progress of the Kingdom of God throughout the world. There was one family tradition of which David Livingstone {5} was immensely proud. A saying had come down to them attributed to an ancestor that in all the family history there was no record of any dishonest man. When Deacon Neil Livingstone and his wife had passed away, the epitaph on their grave recorded the gratitude of their children for “poor and honest parents.” In this simple and public fashion they expressed their thanks for the honesty of one who, when he sold a pound of tea, gave neither short weight, nor an adulterated article. They also gave thanks for the poverty of their parents, recognising in poverty one of those hard but kind necessities that make for industry and courage and patience; and that the children of the poor oftener leave the world their debtor for serviceable activities than the children of the well-to-do, who have less spur to their ambitions. It was eminently characteristic of David Livingstone that he should thus avow his thanks for the honesty and poverty of his father and mother. There are those still living who recall the manly pride with which he was wont to {6} refer to “my own order, the honest poor.”

The mother of David Livingstone was a woman of great charm and force of character—“a delicate little woman, with a wonderful flow of good spirits.” In her, rare devoutness and sterling common sense were combined. She was the careful and thrifty housewife, who had to make every sixpence go as far as possible; but she was remembered for her unfailing cheerfulness and serenity, and there was always something to be saved out of the meagre income when the work of the Church of Christ needed extra support. She came of Covenanting stock, and her father, David Hunter, the tailor, received his first religious impressions at an open-air service, held while the snow was falling fast, and used to tell that so absorbed was he in the realisation of the truth of the Gospel, that, though before the end of the sermon the snow was ankle-deep, he had no sensation of cold. He lived to be eighty-seven, was a close and prolific reader, bore severe reverses of fortune with unflinching {7} courage, and earned the high respect of the countryside.

It is impossible to exaggerate what David Livingstone owed to the stock from which he sprang and the bracing influences of his early environment. There were two drawbacks to his home education. It seems that the Deacon had put two classes of book on his private index expurgatorius, as being dangerous—novels, and books of science. So far as novels are concerned the harm done was probably slight; for no one is well-read in the Bible and the Pilgrim’s Progress without receiving a liberal education, and the cultivation of the imagination; while history, biography, books of travel, and missionary records amply served the same purpose. But the proscription of books of science was an evidence of the old evil creed that there is essential antagonism between science and religion. This assumption came near to doing David permanent injury. His religious difficulties did not disappear until in his own words “having lighted on those admirable works {8} of Dr. Thomas Dick, ‘The Philosophy of Religion,’ and ‘The Philosophy of a Future State’ it was gratifying to find that he had enforced my own conviction that religion and science were friendly to one another.” Few people in the nineteenth century were destined to do more towards the practical reconciliation of science and religion than David Livingstone.

It is interesting to find that even in his very young days he had a mind and will of his own, and that not even the love and respect he felt for his father could shake his own conviction of truth. The last time his father “applied the rod” was when David refused to read “Wilberforce’s Practical Christianity.” The boy thought the matter over in his canny Scotch way, and concluded that, on the whole, the rod was the less severe form of punishment. So he took the rod, and refused a religious book for which he had no use. Looking back upon his own religious development in after years, he used to confess that at this stage he was “colour-blind.” When he was led {9} to see that God and Nature are “not at strife,” and that God does not say one thing to the theologian and its contrary to the scientist, he accepted in his own simple and sincere way the Christian Gospel, and drew from it the same splendid faith in the universality of the Kingdom of God that inspired the souls of the first apostles. To David Livingstone, to become a Christian was to become in spirit and desire a missionary. It is only necessary to add that the faith which he accepted with the full consent of heart and mind as a lad in Blantyre was the faith in which he died.

The days of David Livingstone’s boyhood were great days for missions. The churches were everywhere awakening to their opportunity and responsibility. A new “Acts of the Apostles” was being written. Letters from remote parts of the world, where the ancient battle between Christ and heathenism was being fought out anew, were eagerly read and deeply pondered. The romance and heroism of the majestic campaign captured and kindled {10} both young and old. The year of Livingstone’s birth was a year of singular triumph in the South Seas. It was the year when his great countryman Robert Morrison completed his translation of the New Testament into Chinese. When he was some six or seven years old, another famous Scotch missionary, Robert Moffat, was settling on the Kuruman; and Mrs. Moffat bore in her arms a baby girl destined to become David Livingstone’s wife. The life of Henry Martyn was a supreme call to consecration; while the story of the heroes and heroines of the Moravian missions was almost as familiar in that humble Scottish home as the history of the Apostle Paul.

A specially powerful influence in moving Livingstone to his life-decision was the appeal of Charles Gutzlaff for medical missionaries for China.

Livingstone was a born naturalist; and despite his father’s old-fashioned prejudices, he made himself a scientist at a very early age, searching old quarries for the shells in the {11} carboniferous limestone, “scouring Clyde-side for simples,” and arranging the flora of the district in botanical order. These expeditions were often very prolonged, and involved the endurance of fatigue and hunger; but the lad could not be discouraged. Unconsciously he was bracing himself physically for the toils and tasks of after years. There is a fine story about the revenge he took upon his native African escort, on one occasion, who had been misguided enough to talk disrespectfully about his slim figure and shortness of stature. Thereupon, Livingstone took them along for two or three days at the top of their speed till they cried out for mercy! He had not scoured Clyde-side for simples for nothing. His fearlessness is well illustrated in his daring and reckless exploit of climbing the ruins of Bothwell Castle, so that he might carve his name higher than any other boy had carved his. There, too, was the childlike ambition, which remained with him to the end, to do something which nobody else could surpass. “No one,” he wrote at {12} the very end of his life, on his last expedition, “will cut me out after this exploration is accomplished.” Then he adds finely, “and may the good Lord of all help me to show myself one of his stout-hearted servants, an honour to my children, and perhaps to my country and race.” The story of Livingstone is told there: it is the story of one of the good Lord’s stout-hearted servants.

All the drudgery and hardship of his lot went to make him the man he was. The days of his boyhood were “the good old days”—the days when children of ten years old were sent to work in the factories; and David went with the rest. No eight hours’ day his! No humane legislature thought it wise and well to forbid or curtail child labour. From six o’clock in the morning till eight o’clock at night he worked as a piecer; and all the world knows how he used to place the book he was studying on a portion of the spinning-jenny, and snatch a sentence or two as he passed at his work. He tells us he thus kept “a pretty constant study, undisturbed by the roar of machinery,” and that this habit {13}

of concentration stood him in good stead in after years when he wanted to read and write even “amidst the dancing and song of savages.” As if this were not enough, after a fourteen hours’ day in the factory he would go off to a night-school provided by the employers; and then home to work at his Latin till “mother put out the candle.” It is well for ten-year-old humanity when it has a mother to put out the candle, or Mother Nature might have put out another candle, and where would Africa have been then? Nine years of such severe and determined work as this brought him to University age; and as Glasgow University was hard by, and as he was promoted to be a spinner by this time and able to earn enough in the summer to keep him during the other six months, he entered as a student for Greek and medicine, and seems to have successfully schemed to attend some Divinity lectures even in the summer months. The Scotch Universities are the paradise of poor and struggling students who have more brains and character than bawbees: but the {15} education was not free in those days. The money for fees had to be pinched and scraped; but it was found somehow, and in the early winter of 1836, David and his father walked to the city from Blantyre and trudged the streets of Glasgow all day, with the snow upon the ground, till at last they found a room in “Rotten Row” that could be had for two shillings a week. Lodged thus as cheaply as could be managed, he applied himself with all his unfailing diligence and zest to learn Greek and medicine, as well as to such theological studies as could be undertaken under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Wardlaw—one of Glasgow’s most famous divines—who trained men for the Congregational ministry, and for whom Livingstone had a great admiration.

During his second session at Glasgow (1837-8) David Livingstone came to the most fateful decision of his life. He decided to offer himself to one of the Missionary Societies for foreign service. He chose the London Missionary Society because of his sympathy {16} with the catholicity of its basis. It existed “to send neither Episcopacy, nor Presbyterianism, nor Independency to the heathen, but the Gospel of Christ.” “This,” said Livingstone “exactly agreed with my ideas.” He was a member of a Congregational church, and the London Missionary Society has always been in the main supported by these churches. But the Society was founded by Evangelical churchmen and prominent Presbyterians, as well as by Congregationalists, and nothing appealed more to Livingstone than this union of Christian people in the service of an un-Christian world.

In due course the acceptance of his offer arrived, and in the early autumn of 1838 he travelled to London, where he was to appear before the Mission Board at 57 Aldersgate Street. One can imagine that, apart altogether from the momentous character of his visit, and the anxiety he must have felt as to his acceptance by the Directors, this first visit to London must have been a most impressive one to the young Scotsman. He {17} heard many distinguished preachers, and visited the famous sites of London. Among other places, he went with a companion to Westminster Abbey. It is a thrilling thought, as Mr. Thomas Hughes reminds us, that he was never known to enter that Abbey again until his remains were borne thither amid the lamentations of the whole civilised world, and all the honours that the living can ever pay to the dead.

The examination by the Directors was satisfactory; and according to the custom of the time Livingstone was committed for a short period of probation to the tutorship of the Rev. Richard Cecil, the minister of the little town of Chipping Ongar in Essex. There he was expected to give proof of his preaching ministry, with what result is generally known. He was sent one Sunday evening to preach in the village of Stanford Rivers, where the tradition of Livingstone’s first effort at preaching is still cherished. The raw, somewhat heavy-looking Scotch youth, to whom public speech was always a difficulty, gave out his text “very {18} deliberately.” That was all the congregation got. The sermon composed on the text had fled, owing to the nervous embarrassment produced by a handful of people in a village chapel. “Friends,” said the youth, “I have forgotten all I had to say”—“and hurrying out of the pulpit he left the chapel.” I have no doubt that “hurrying” is the right word. Never was failure more absolute. It is hardly to be wondered at that the Rev. Richard Cecil reported to the Directors his fears that Livingstone had mistaken his vocation. It was a risk to send someone to preach to the heathen who might possibly forget what he had come to say when he arrived. Moreover, criticism was made of his extreme slowness and hesitancy in prayer. Yet the man who was nearly rejected by the Society on this account, died on his knees in the heart of Africa, while all the world was awed by the thought that David Livingstone passed away in the act of prayer. As it was his probation was extended, and at the end of another two months he was finally accepted, and went up {19} to London to continue his medical studies in the London Hospitals. One of the most striking things ever written about him was by the celebrated Dr. Isaac Taylor, of Ongar. “Now after nearly forty years,” he writes, “I remember his step, the characteristic forward tread, firm, simple, resolute, neither fast nor slow, no hurry and no dawdle, but which evidently meant—getting there!” In November, 1840, he was able to return to Glasgow, and qualify as a Licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons; and a few days later he said goodbye to the old folks at home, one of whom—his father—he was never to see on earth again. On November 20th he was ordained at Albion Chapel, London, and three weeks later he sailed on the “George” to Algoa Bay in South Africa. One chapter in his memorable life was now definitely closed. Among the memories in it there are few if any that he cherished more than that of his old Sunday School teacher, David Hogg, who sent for him as he lay dying and said, “Now lad, make religion the every-day business of {20} your life, and not a thing of fits and starts, for if you do, temptation and other things will get the better of you.” It is hardly too much to say that the old man’s death-bed counsel became the watchword of his life. {21}

CHAPTER II

A voyage of five months saw Livingstone at Algoa Bay, preparing for his first journey into the interior of Africa, the grave of so many reputations, but the land of his renown. Until within a short time of his departure from London he had hoped and intended to go to China as a medical missionary. But the “Opium War” was still in progress; and for the time being China was impossible. Moreover, Livingstone was brought under the influence of one of the greatest personalities in modern missionary enterprise. Robert Moffat was home on furlough, and his wonderful story no less than his striking presence, exerted their spell over the young Scot and changed the goal of his ambition. Dr. Moffat was wont to describe the numberless African {22} villages stretching away to the north where no missionary had yet penetrated; and his appeal found a ready response in Livingstone’s heart. None of us who have heard the old man eloquent, and on whose memories the stately striking figure, with the flowing beard, and the iron-grey tousled hair, made an indelible impression, will wonder that any young man’s imagination should be kindled by his address, or should discover in the mysterious depths of the vast African continent the field for his life work. It was to Dr. Moffat’s station at Kuruman that David Livingstone took his first journey. The distance was seven hundred miles; and he immediately surrendered to the interest and delight of travel by ox waggon, the freedom of the open air life, the variety of the scenery and sport, and the attractiveness of the natives, who engaged his sympathy from the first. It was now that his hardy training in Scotland stood him in good stead. He knew how to put up with inconveniences cheerfully, and face difficulties with resolution, while his {23} resourcefulness was as inexhaustible as his kindliness. That “characteristic forward tread” of which Isaac Taylor had spoken which “meant getting there” was put to the proof and not found wanting. To him there was a way out of every situation, however critical; and the “bold free course” which he took with the natives, together with his medical skill and unwearying goodness, won their loyalty. They recognised him as a great chief, and his whole career is eloquent of the extraordinary devotion which he inspired in them. At the end of May, 1841, he was at Kuruman, with instructions from the Directors of the Society to turn his attention to the North—instructions that absolutely coincided with his own aspiration. It is notable that he formed the very highest opinion of the value of Christian missions from the results that he saw. Let it be remembered that he was always a slow, cautious Scot in all his judgments, with a severely truthful and scientific mind, and his testimony becomes the more valuable. “Everything I witnessed surpassed my {24} hopes,” he writes home; “if this is a fair sample the statements of the missionaries as to their success are far within the mark.” He is full of the praises of the Christian Hottentots, who are “far superior in attainments to what I had expected;” their worship reminded him of the old covenanters. It was thus, then, that with his zeal for his mission of evangelism greatly stimulated, he started north to the country of the Bakwains.

A short circuit sufficed to reveal the problem, and he returned to Kuruman to think out the best plan of campaign. The first step was a characteristic one. It was to isolate himself absolutely from all European society and live among the natives, so as to learn their language and study their habits and their laws. For six months he rigorously pursued his plan, and found his reward in the new appreciation he gained of the native character and mode of thinking, and the extent to which he conquered their confidences. So far advanced had he become in the knowledge of their language that he was able to enjoy a laugh at himself {25} for “turning poet.” One can believe that to Livingstone this was no easy work; but he succeeded in making Sechuana translations of several hymns which were afterwards adopted and printed by the French missionaries. “If they had been bad,” he says in his naïve way, “I don’t see that they can have had any motive for using them.”

He was waiting now for the final decision of the directors authorising the advance into the unoccupied district of the north. The decision was long in coming. We must recognise that such a resolution was not an easy one for those who carried all the responsibilities at home. Even their most trusted advisers on the actual field were not agreed. Dr. Philip, the special representative of the Society at the Cape, and a man of great personal power and sagacity, shook his head over Livingstone’s impetuosity and talked about the dangers. “If we wait till there is no danger,” said Livingstone, “we shall never go at all.” It was quite true; but there were big problems of policy to be decided. Many held by the watchword {26} “concentration,” which is always plausible, and often conclusive. Settlements for educational and industrial developments had proved their value. On the other hand Livingstone had unanswerable logic on his side when he argued that the missionaries in the South had too scanty a population and that the call to possess the North was urgent, for the traders and the slavers were pushing out there, and the gospel of humanity was imperatively needed.

There was long delay, but in the meantime Livingstone was making proof of his ministry. His medical knowledge helped to spread his fame. He fought the rainmakers at their own arts with the scientific weapon of irrigation and won his battle. He made friends with the Bechuana Chief, Sechele, one of the most intelligent and interesting of the many great natives who surrendered to the charm of Livingstone. Sechele was deeply impressed by the missionary’s message, but profoundly troubled in spirit. He said, “You startle me—these words make all my bones to {27} shake—I have no more strength in me. But my forefathers were living at the same time yours were, and how is it that they did not send them word about these terrible things sooner. They all passed away into darkness without knowing whither they were going.” When Livingstone tried to explain to him the gradual spread of the Gospel knowledge, the chief refused to believe that the whole earth could be visited. There was a barrier at his very door—the Kalahari desert. Nobody could cross it. Even those who knew the country would perish, and no missionary would have a chance. As for his own people there was no difficulty in converting them, always assuming that Livingstone would go to work in the right way. “Do you imagine these people will ever believe by your merely talking to them? I can make them do nothing except by thrashing them, and if you like I will call my head-men and with our litupa (whips of rhinoceros hide) we will soon make them all believe together.” It must be confessed, however, that Sechele’s state-church principles did not commend {28} themselves to the mind of an ardent voluntaryist like Livingstone. “In our relations with the people,” he writes, “we were simply strangers exercising no authority or control whatever. Our influence depended entirely on persuasion; and having taught them by kind conversation as well as by public instruction, I expected them to do what their own sense of right and wrong dictated.” He then sets on record “five instances in which by our influence on public opinion war was prevented,” and pays a high tribute to the intelligence of the natives who in many respects excel “our own uneducated peasantry.” This attitude of appreciation and respectful sympathy was the secret of Livingstone’s unparalleled influence over the African tribes. It was on a return from a visit to Sechele in June, 1843, that Livingstone heard the good news of the formal sanction of the forward movement. He hailed the decision, as he said, “with inexpressible delight”; and in a fine letter written to Mr. Cecil declared his fixed {29} resolve to give less attention to the art of physical healing and more to spiritual amelioration. He has no ambition to be “a very good doctor but a useless drone of a missionary.” He feels that to carry out this purpose will involve some self-denial, but he will make the sacrifice cheerfully. As for the charge of ambition, “I really am ambitious to preach beyond other men’s lines.... I am only determined to go on and do all I can, while able, for the poor degraded people of the north.”

In less than two months he was ready for the new move. The first journey was two hundred miles to the north-east, to Mabotsa, which he had previously noted as suitable for a station. Here he built a house with his own hands, and settled down for three years’ work among the Bakatlas. During this period two events occurred that were especially notable. The first went far towards ending his career. The facts are well-known from Livingstone’s own graphic but simple description. He had gone with the Bakatlas to hunt some lions which had {30} committed serious depredations in the village. The lions were encircled by the natives but broke through the line and escaped. As Livingstone was returning, however, he saw one of the beasts on a small hill, and fired into him at about thirty yards’ distance. Loading again, he heard a shout, and “looking half-round saw the lion just in the act of springing upon me.” The lion seized him by the shoulder and “growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat.” We now see the advantage of a scientific education. Livingstone was able to analyse his own feelings and emotions during the process of being gnawed by a lion. He observed that “the shock produced a stupor, a sort of dreaminess”; there was “no sense of pain, nor feeling of terror.” He compares it to the influence of chloroform; and argues that “this peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed by the carnivora, and if so is a merciful provision by our benevolent Creator for lessening the pain of death.” In this judgment he anticipated some {31}

weighty modern conclusions by noted physiologists. So interesting does Livingstone find these observations, that it seems as if he must have been almost disappointed when the lion released him and turned his attention to others less well equipped for scientific investigation. On the whole Livingstone escaped marvellously well, but the bone was crunched into splinters, and there were eleven teeth wounds on the upper part of his arm. The arm indeed was never really well again. It will be remembered that it was by the false joint in this limb that the remains of Livingstone were identified on their arrival in England. It will also be remembered that, as has been so well said, “for thirty years afterwards all his labours and adventures, entailing such exertion and fatigue, were undertaken with a limb so maimed that it was painful for him to raise a fowling-piece, or in fact to place the left arm in any position above the level of the shoulder.”

This was a bad business. But Providence has a way of making up to good men for {33} afflictions of this kind; and Livingstone’s compensation came to him in the following year, when he had something to face that demanded more daring than a mere every-day encounter with lions. He had been a bachelor in Africa for four years, and he had resolved to try his fortune with Mary Moffat, Dr. Moffat’s eldest daughter. The proposal was made “beneath one of the fruit trees” at Kuruman in 1844. He got the answer he desired and deserved, and Mary Moffat took him with all his erratic ways, and became his devoted wife. “She was always the best spoke in the wheel at home,” he writes; “and when I took her with me on two occasions to lake Ngami, and far beyond, she endured more than some who have written large books of travels.” In course of time three sons and a daughter came to “cheer their solitude,” and increase their responsibilities. But from the first they set themselves to fulfil what Livingstone called the ideal missionary life, “the husband a jack-of-all-trades, and the wife a maid-of-all-work.” The catalogue of necessary {34} accomplishments sounds somewhat embarrassing, and one realises that the ordinary college training is in many respects incomplete. Here it is, as Livingstone expresses it—“Building, gardening, cobbling, doctoring, tinkering, carpentering, gun-mending, farriering, waggon-mending, preaching, schooling, lecturing on physics, occupying a chair in divinity, and helping my wife to make soap, candles, and clothes.” It was certainly a busy and catholic career. He was carrying the whole of his world upon his own broad shoulders, and was guide, philosopher, and friend to a vast district. He had his enemies, too, as those who champion the rights of the poor and helpless are sure to have. To the north were to be found settlements of unscrupulous and marauding Boers, who held by all the unenlightened views of the relation of the white races to the black which were only recently extinct in England where the financial interest in slavery died hard in 1833. These Boer marauders lived largely on slave-labour and on pillage; and Livingstone was brought into open conflict with {35} them. On one side they may be said to have barred his advance. The tribes he served and loved lived under the shadow of a Boer invasion. The time was to come when the cloud would burst over Sechele and his unoffending people, when his wives would be slain and his children carried away into slavery; when many of the bravest of his people would be massacred, and Livingstone’s house sacked and gutted in his absence. This complicity of the northern Boers in those outrages on native tribes which history most frequently associates with the Portuguese, earned Livingstone’s stern indignation and detestation; though he never did the Boers of South Africa the injustice of confounding the lawless raiders with the main body of settlers, of whom he wrote “the Boers generally ... are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry.”

He had, however, already begun to have glimpses of what his life-witness was to be. He saw that the curse of Africa lay not only in the eternal conflicts of tribe with tribe. {36} That form of misery was original to the continent and its savage inhabitants. But a new curse had fallen upon the unhappy people by the intrusion of those who united with a higher material civilisation a more developed and refined form of cruelty. The diabolical cunning and callousness that, under the guise of trading, would gain the confidence of a peaceful tribe, only at last to rise up some fatal night, murder the old, enslave the young, burn the huts, and march the chained gang hundreds of miles to the sea, have made the records of African Slavery the most awful reading in human history. Imagination carries the story one step further. We hardly need the genius of a Turner to suggest to us the horror of a slave-ship under the torrid tropical skies, with its dead and dying human freight. When the slave-trade is realised in all its accumulated horrors, it is easy to understand how, to a man of Livingstone’s noble Christian sensibility, the manifest duty of the Church of Christ was to engage in a war-to-the-death struggle against this darkest of all inhumanities. {37}

He was planning his campaign during the years when he passed with his wife and children from one settlement to another. Three houses he built with his own hands, and made some progress in the cultivation of gardens round them. The first was at Mabotsa. It was the home to which he brought his young bride and to leave it went to his heart. His going was the result of the attitude adopted towards him by a brother missionary. Sooner than cause scandal among the tribe he resolved to give everything up and go elsewhere. “Paradise will make amends for all our privations and sorrows here,” he says simply. It is something to know that the missionary who did him this injustice lived “to manifest a very different spirit.” Livingstone next cast in his lot with Sechele and his people, and built his second house at Chonuane, some forty miles from Mabotsa. It was hard work, and it made a big drain on his very small income, but it was not his way to complain. The hardship fell more severely on his wife and infant children, and he felt the deprivations {38} and inconveniences most for them. The house was finished in course of time, and a school was erected too, where the children were instructed, and services held. But nature was against a long settlement at Chonuane. A period of prolonged drought set in. Supplies were exhausted. The people had to go further afield, and the position became untenable. There was nothing for it but for the Livingstones to go too. All the labour of rebuilding had to be undertaken again, this time at Kolobeng, another forty miles on. Providence was indeed to Livingstone “like as an eagle stirring up the nest.” Such of the tribe as were left went with him and a new village was constructed. Livingstone and his family lived for a year in “a mere hut.” In 1848 the new house was actually built, despite some serious personal accidents of which he made light in his usual way. “What a mercy to be in a house again!” he writes home; “a year in a little hut through which the wind blew our candles into glorious icicles (as a poet would say) by {39} night, and in which crowds of flies continually settled on the eyes of our poor little brats by day, makes us value our present castle. Oh Janet, know thou, if thou art given to building castles in the air, that that is easy work compared to erecting cottages on the ground!” Such was the building of his third house, the one that was afterwards sacked by the Boers. Then he built no more houses. Indeed, he never had a home of his own in Africa afterwards. The dark problem of Central Africa had him in its grip. He sent his wife and children home to England; and he himself became like that Son of Man whose example he followed so nearly, one “who had not where to lay his head.”

Before that time came, however, he had laid the foundations of his fame as an explorer by crossing the Kalahari Desert, and discovering Lake Ngami. The circumstances that gave rise to this journey are easily detailed. The drought continued at Kolobeng as pitilessly as at Chonuane. Only the power of Livingstone’s personality {40} sufficed to retain the faith and loyalty of the tribes. He writes that they were always treated with “respectful kindness” and never had an enemy among the natives. His enemies were among the “dirty whites,” who knew that he was the most dangerous obstacle to the slave-raids, and who objected to his policy of training Christian native teachers to be evangelists among their own kinsfolk. But though the tribes remained loyal, the fact remained that Livingstone had led a migration which had not resulted in a permanent settlement; neither could he command the rain as their own rainmakers professed to be able to do. The heathen superstition that hostile doctors had put their country under an evil charm so that no rain should fall on it, prevailed even against their faith in the missionary. Sechele’s more enlightened mind found it difficult to understand why Livingstone’s God did not answer the prayer for rain. Yet the work went forward at Kolobeng. The chief Sechele, after long hesitation on Livingstone’s part, was baptised and entered {41} into communion with the little church. Trouble followed when he “went home, gave each of his superfluous wives new clothing, and all his own goods, which they had been accustomed to keep in their huts for him, and sent them to their parents with an intimation that he had no fault to find with them, but that in parting with them he wished to follow the will of God.” It was his solution of a social problem that can never be satisfactorily solved, and it was both courageous and generous, but the result was seen in the fiercer resentment of the relatives of the women; and while little or none of this fell upon Livingstone, it served seriously to prejudice the religion which was responsible for Sechele’s action. On every count, it was desirable to find the new and permanent station, where that central training-ground for native missionaries could be established which Livingstone had constantly in view, and where the water supply would be less likely to fail. But where to go? In the south, the field was well supplied with {42} missionaries. To the east were the unfriendly Dutch, bent on making mischief. To the north lay the Kalahari desert, which Sechele had pronounced to be an impassable barrier to the progress of Christianity. “It is utterly impossible even to us black men,” he said. But the word “impossible” was not in Livingstone’s dictionary.

If my readers will take the trouble to look at an old map of South Africa they will find the whole vast track of the west which lies to the north of the Orange River, and includes Bechuana Land and Damara Land, described as desert, and the Kalahari Desert in the eastern portion of it. Kolobeng lay at the extreme west of what we know to-day as the Transvaal, some two hundred and fifty miles from Pretoria, and was more than four thousand feet above sea level, near the sources of the Limpopo River, which flows north and east, until it finally joins the ocean at Delagoa Bay. A straight line to Lake Ngami would have taken the travellers in a north-westerly direction a distance of little {43} more than three hundred miles. But it is doubtful whether they could have survived such a journey across an untrodden route, even if they had known accurately where the great lake lay. They were certainly well inspired to go due north to the Zouga River, and then follow it westward to the lake, though this route must have added two hundred miles to their journey. Three other Europeans, Colonel Steele, Mr. Murray, and Mr. Oswell—the latter one of Livingstone’s life-long friends and a mighty African hunter, joined the expedition, which started on June 1st, 1849, and reached the lake on August 1st. Livingstone has given us a most graphic and detailed description of the desert with its sandy soil, its dry beds of ancient rivers, its trackless plains, its prairie grass, its patches of bushes, and the singular products of its soil with roots like large turnips that hold fluid beneath the soil, and above all the desert water-melons on which the Bushmen as well as the elephants and antelopes, and even lions and hyænas {44} subsist. The Bushmen he found a thin, wiry, merry race capable of great endurance, as indeed the denizens of the desert must be. They existed under conditions that inspired the Bechuana with terror, for to add to the other dangers the desert was at times infested with serpents.

It was a hazardous enterprise to which Livingstone and his fellow travellers were committed, and, humanly speaking, its success depended wholly on the discovery of water at periodical intervals. The “caravan” was a considerable one. Eighty cattle and twenty horses were not deemed too many for the waggons and for riding; these had to be watered, and the twenty men besides. Progress was necessarily slow. None could face the burning heat of the mid-day hours. They had to move forward in the mornings and the evenings. The waggon-wheels sank deep into the soft, hot sand; and the poor oxen dragging them laboriously forward were, at a critical time, nearly four days without water, “and their masters {45} scarcely better off.” Aided, however, by the experience and keen instinct of the natives, they found wells in unsuspected places, and eventually made the banks of the Zouga River. After that, progress was easy. Leaving the waggons and oxen, they took to canoes, or wended their way along the riverbanks, until, on the morning of August 1st, they found themselves gazing on the waters of Lake Ngami, the first white people to see it so far as they knew.

It had been one of the principal arguments with Livingstone for the journey that he would meet the famous chief Sebituane, who had saved the life of Sechele in his infancy, and who was renowned as a warrior and as a powerful and intelligent ruler. It meant another two hundred miles of travel to the north, and the jealousies of the chiefs, and their real or assumed fears for Livingstone’s safety, prevented the realisation of his hopes on this journey. There was nothing for it but to go back to Kolobeng, where the drought persisted as absolute as ever. {46} Livingstone’s congregation and Mrs. Livingstone’s school had disappeared in search of better watered lands. It was clear that for Livingstone there was here “no abiding city.” He resolved to transport his wife and three children to the north. He made more of an eastward circuit this time, and Sechele accompanied them to the fords of the Zouga. Mrs. Livingstone was the first white lady to see Lake Ngami; but the purposed visit to Sebituane had again to be deferred.

Livingstone’s aid was invoked for a fever-stricken party of Englishmen who were hunting ivory. One was already dead, but the others recovered under his treatment. His own children, however, sickened; and the party precipitately retired to “the pure air of the desert,” and so home to Kolobeng where another child was born to them, only to be carried away by an epidemic. “Hers is the first grave in all that country,” writes the bereaved father, “marked as the resting-place of one of whom it is {47} believed and confessed that she shall live again.”

After a visit to Kuruman to rest and recruit, they were ready in April, 1851, for a third attempt to reach Sebituane. Mr. Oswell, the most valuable of comrades, was again with them. The journey was successful, but it came dangerously near to being disastrous to the whole family. This crisis occurred on the far side of the Zouga river, as they were travelling northward across absolute desert. The Bushman guide lost his way, and the supply of water in the waggons had been wasted by one of the servants. Livingstone tells the incident in a single paragraph, but the agony of it must nearly have killed him and his wife. “The next morning, the less there was of water the more thirsty the little rogues became. The idea of their perishing before our eyes was terrible. It would almost have been a relief to me to have been reproached with being the entire cause of the catastrophe, but not one syllable of upbraiding was uttered {48} by their mother, though the tearful eye told the agony within. In the afternoon of the fifth day, to our inexpressible relief, some of the men returned with a supply of that fluid of which we had never before felt the true value.” At last the often-postponed pleasure of meeting and greeting Sebituane was fulfilled, and the famous chief more than justified all expectations. He met the party on the Chobe river and conducted them with great ceremony and hospitality to his home. The way seemed to be opening for a new and auspicious missionary settlement, when in a few days Sebituane sickened and died. It was one of the greatest blows which Livingstone ever experienced. Its tragic suddenness almost stunned him. Looking back upon it now, it is easy to believe that it was not God’s will that Livingstone should spend his life in the work of a missionary settlement, but should be driven out along the lonely, adventurous path where his destiny lay.

But at the moment he only felt severely {49} the crushing of his hopes and frustration of his plans. Sebituane’s daughter, who succeeded to the chieftainship, was full of kindly promises; but difficulties multiplied in the way of a settlement, which further exploration of the district did not diminish. Penetrating a hundred and thirty miles to the north, Oswell and Livingstone came upon the broad channel of a noble river, called by the natives the Seshéke. It was the Zambesi, and some three hundred yards wide even there, more than a thousand miles from the mouth. Clearly the swamps round the great river afforded no healthy land for settling. There must be more exploration done, and meantime his wife and children must be cared for. They were hundreds of miles from any white settlement. Even so, Livingstone might still have debated his destiny. But revelations came to him that the slaver was even now establishing his accursed hold on this district. Sebituane’s people, the Makololo, finest and loyallest of tribesmen, had begun to sell children, {50} plundered from their native villages, for guns and calicoes. “It is broken-heartedness,” he wrote much later, “of which the slaves die. Even children, who showed wonderful endurance in keeping up with the chained gangs, would sometimes hear the sound of dancing and the merry tinkle of drums in passing near a village; then the memory of home and happy days proved too much for them, they cried and sobbed, the broken heart came on, and they rapidly sank.” This was the awful revelation that came to Livingstone in the land of the Makololo. Little more than a year before, such an idea as the barter of human beings for guns had never been known among this tribe. “Had we been here sooner the slave traffic would never have existed,” argued Livingstone. He began to have a vision of Christian settlements standing sentinel over the lives and happiness of the natives of the interior. If the slaver could make his way from the coast to the centre, so could the missionary. It was the one effective counterstroke in the battle for human liberty. But it {51} meant separation from wife and bairns. He must return and do this work alone. He could risk no one’s life but his own. His decision was taken. He devotes only a single paragraph to the long and arduous journey to Cape Town. It was a matter of fifteen hundred miles, and part of it was through territory where a so-called Caffre War was being waged, which excited Livingstone’s scorn for the waste of blood and treasure. He was an object of suspicion at the Cape. The State authorities suspected his humanitarian sympathies, and the Church officials his theological orthodoxy. He was in debt, and had anticipated his small salary for more than a year in advance. But he had written to the Directors of the London Missionary Society in the most resolute terms. “Consider the multitudes that in the Providence of God have been brought to light in the country of Sebituane; the probability that in our efforts to evangelise we shall put a stop to the slave trade in a large region, and by means of the high {52} way into the north which we have discovered bring unknown nations into the sympathies of the Christian World.... Nothing but a strong conviction that the step will lead to the Glory of Christ would make me orphanise my children.... Should you not feel yourselves justified in incurring the expense of their support in England, I shall feel called upon to renounce the hope of carrying the Gospel into that country.... But stay, I am not sure: so powerfully convinced am I that it is the will of our Lord that I should go, I will go, no matter who opposes; but from you I expect nothing but encouragement.” A happy comment on this letter is found in Livingstone’s “Missionary Travels,” in the paragraph recording the farewell to his wife and children. “Having placed my family on board a homeward-bound ship, and promised to rejoin them in two years, we parted for, as it subsequently proved, nearly five years. The Directors of the London Missionary Society signified their cordial approval of my project by {53} leaving the matter entirely to my own discretion, and I have much pleasure in acknowledging my obligations to the gentlemen composing that body for always acting in an enlightened spirit, and with as much liberality as their constitution would allow.”

Livingstone started back for the interior on the 8th of June, 1852. He was now in his fortieth year. {54}

CHAPTER III

It is difficult to summarise Livingstone’s achievements during the eleven years he had spent in Africa. He had penetrated furthest north from the Cape of any white man. He had discovered Lake Ngami, and the upper reaches of the Zambesi. He had given Christianity a foothold among the Bakwains and the Makololo. He had converted one of the most remarkable chiefs in Central Africa. He had built three houses with his own hands, and had taught many hundreds to read. He had exercised the healing art to the relief and benefit of thousands. He had made some progress in reducing Sechuana to a grammatical language; and had even composed hymns in it. He had made invaluable scientific researches, and had enriched our knowledge of the animalia, {55} flora, and fauna of Central Africa. Above all, he had seen at first hand the horrors of the slave traffic, and had vowed himself to the ultimate prevention of this form of “man’s inhumanity to man.” Eleven busy, arduous, and perilous years had brought him to midlife. He was now about to dedicate all his ripe experience and unique powers of head and heart to the religious and social redemption of the dark interior of the continent to which he had consecrated his life. Even during his brief sojourn at the Cape he had been perfecting himself for the work that lay before him. He had studied astronomy, and had learned to take observations under Sir T. Maclear, the Astronomer Royal, who wrote of him afterwards: “What that man has done is unprecedented. You could go to any point across the entire continent along Livingstone’s track, and feel certain of your position.” In David Livingstone’s judgment it was impossible for a man to be too thoroughly equipped for the great business of a missionary.

In one respect his equipment was neces {56} sarily poor. His financial resources were so meagre that he had to fall back on very lean kine to draw his waggon, which is why the journey to Kuruman took a full three months. There a broken wheel detained him, and possibly saved his life; for this was the time selected by the band of Dutch marauders to wreak their vengeance on him, and on the hapless tribe of Sechele. It is a shocking story, and in his sympathy with Sechele, sixty of whose people had been massacred, Livingstone could almost forget his own personal loss, though he grieved sorely over the wanton destruction of his books. Amid all his sorrow and heartbreak, he can yet smile at the humorous side. “We shall move more easily now that we are lightened of our furniture. They have taken away our sofa. I never had a good rest on it. We had only got it ready when we left. Well, they can’t have taken away all the stones. We shall have a seat in spite of them, and that, too, with a merry heart which doeth good like a medicine.” Never in this world was anyone who had so {57} stout a philosophy for times of misfortune. He could jest that “the Boers had saved him the trouble of making a will.”

Poor Sechele in his despair resolved on a personal appeal for justice to the great White Queen, and actually travelled to the Cape to take ship to England. He was shown much kindness there, and eventually returned, gathered the people around him, and became a stronger chief than before, while he continued to instruct his tribe in the Bible, without any assistance from a missionary. There are few more striking proofs of the enduring power of Livingstone’s personal influence and Christian faith.

The journey through our old friend the desert to the Chobe river, and across it to where Sekeletu, the son of Sebituane, was now reigning, was more arduous and perilous than it had been previously. The floods from the annual inundation of the Chobe were an almost invincible obstacle; yet where the waters did not lie the heat was torrid. “At the surface of the ground in the sun the thermometer registered 125°. The hand {58} cannot be held on the earth, and even the horny feet of the natives must be protected by sandals of hide.” The battle with the waters of the Chobe and its tributaries would have ended in the defeat of anyone less lion-hearted than this traveller. Many of the natives retired from the encounter on the easy pretext of throwing dice and declaring that the gods willed their return. Some of them feigned sickness, to ride in the waggons; and it required infinite patience and humouring to get them forward. Part of the journey lay through dense forest, and laborious days were spent swinging the axe to make a waggon track. The rivers effectually stopped the waggons; and Livingstone took to a pontoon, and afterwards to canoes. But there was much wading to do under a blistering sun, and through reeds that “made our hands all raw and bloody,” and thorns that tore even leather trousers. They were glad to sleep in a filthy deserted hut; and at night the cold dews descended, and the mosquitoes gathered in clouds. They were disturbed by the hippopotami, {59} and the eerie waters were alive with water-snakes. But no combination of perils had any terror for one the alphabet of whose creed was that “man is immortal till his work is done.” At twilight of one day, a village was descried on the river bank. It was Morémi, and Livingstone had reached his beloved Makololo at last. “The inhabitants looked like people who had seen a ghost,” he says; but what he himself really looked like he forbears to add. “He has dropped among us from the clouds, yet came riding on the back of a hippopotamus,”—this was their appropriate description of the pontoon. “We Makololo thought no one could cross the Chobe without our knowledge, but here he drops among us like a bird.” They returned with him, “took the waggons to pieces and carried them across on a number of canoes lashed together.” On the 23rd of May, 1853, they reached Linyanti, the capital town of the Makololo, where the new chief, Sekeletu, received them “in royal style.”

Livingstone’s problem had now definitely {60} to be solved. Sekeletu was not a whit behind Sebituane in friendliness, and not much inferior in intelligence. He had no desire for the Bible, fearing that it might compel him to content himself with one wife. But he set an example to the tribe in reverent attention to Livingstone’s simple preaching, and he had absolute faith in the protection afforded to his people by Livingstone’s presence and skill. But exactly a week after the arrival at Linyanti, Livingstone had his first taste of malaria, nor did the well-meant efforts of the native doctors do much to cure him. He experienced its weakening effect. If he looked up suddenly he was affected with a strange giddiness. “Everything appeared to rush to the left, and if I did not catch hold of some support I fell heavily on the ground.” The same horrible sensations occurred at night, “whenever I turned suddenly round.” One thing was clear—Linyanti was no place for a healthy settlement. Some might add that with fever in the system it was idle to think of a journey of a thousand miles or more. But this was {61} not Livingstone’s way of looking at things. “There is a good deal in not giving in to this disease,” he writes; “he who is low-spirited will die sooner than the man who is not of a melancholic nature.” Ill as he was, he was resolute to continue his explorations, and with Sekeletu and a large band of Makololo for companions, he travelled some hundreds of miles of waterway, ascending the great river to the north-west from Seshéke. Here the Zambesi is called the Leeambye, and Livingstone expresses his delight at skimming along in great canoes, gazing on a wonderful inland river which no white man had hitherto explored. He finds, as ever, in the wonders and beauties of nature, the splendour of the wild birds, and the curious fascination of the river-beasts some relief from the awful spectacle, constantly present, of human cruelty and degradation. “The sciences,” he writes, “exhibit such wonderful intelligence and design in all their various ramifications, some time ought to be devoted to them before engaging in missionary work.... We may feel that we are {62} leaning on His bosom while living in a world clothed in beauty, and robed with the glorious perfection of its Maker and Preserver.... He who stays his mind on his ever-present, ever-energetic God, will not fret himself because of evil-doers. He that believeth shall not make haste.” It was indeed well for him that he had this power to absorb himself in “whatsoever things are lovely,” for the nightmare of heathenism was always with him. He has to witness Sekeletu’s revenge on those who had plotted against him. Some of the scenes are incredibly horrible; and his protests are unavailing. The miseries of slavery wrung his heart, and as he advances into the dark interior, the chorus of human agonies is ever in his ears. “I was in closer contact with heathens than I had ever been before, and though all were as kind to me as possible, yet to endure the dancing, roaring and singing, the jesting, the grumbling, quarrellings and murderings of these children of nature was the severest penance I had yet undergone in the course of my missionary duties. {63} ” Again he exclaims in his Diary, “the more intimately I become acquainted with barbarians, the more disgusting does heathenism become. It is inconceivably vile ... they never visit anywhere but for the purpose of plunder and oppression. They never go anywhere but with a club or spear in hand.... They need a healer. May God enable me to be such to them.” Slowly but surely the whole tragedy of Africa is unveiled before him. The fair landscape of its rivers and forests, the gay plumage of its birds, and beauty of its living creatures, is like a gorgeous curtain covering unspeakable depths of pain and sin. The people gather in hundreds to hear him, and especially to see the wonders of his magic lantern, but he cannot in a brief stay undo the superstitions and inhumanities of centuries. His eye is on the future. “A minister who has not seen so much pioneer service as I have done would have been shocked to see so little effect produced.... We can afford to work in faith.... Future missionaries will be rewarded by conversions for every sermon. {64} We are their pioneers. They will doubtless have more light than we, but we served our Master earnestly and proclaimed the Gospel they will do.”

Baffled in the hope of finding a healthy situation for a permanent mission station near Linyanti, the final determination to make a way to the coast crystallised in his mind. “I shall open up a path to the interior or perish,” he writes, in his terse, decisive way to Dr. Moffat; “I never have had the shadow of a shade of doubt as to the propriety of my course.” On November 8th he writes home to his father what he evidently feels may be his last will and testament: ‘May God in mercy permit me to do something for the cause of Christ in these dark places of the earth. May He accept my children for His service and sanctify them for it. My blessing on my wife. May God comfort her! If my watch comes back after I am cut off, it belongs to Agnes. If my sextant, it is Robert’s. The Paris medal to Thomas. Double-barrelled gun to Zouga. Be a father to the fatherless and a husband {65} to the widow for Jesus’ sake,” That was all. The Boers had relieved him of the necessity of willing any other belongings. He had none. The Chancellor of the Exchequer would not have made much out of the death duties on this property. {66}

CHAPTER IV

Before we begin our journey with Livingstone to the coast, it will be well to pause and consider two things—firstly, the task proposed; and secondly, the equipment for the task.

(1) The Task. Linyanti lies a hundred miles from the Zambesi river, at which the two possible routes may be said to fork. The one, eastward, was comparatively simple: it was to follow the great river some thousand miles to the sea. The other, westward, meant tracing the river towards the source so far as was possible, and then striking westward for St. Paul de Loanda, a matter in all of some fifteen hundred miles. Cape Town lay to the south, another fifteen hundred miles. These were the three spokes of the wheel from the centre at Linyanti. {67} Little was known to Livingstone of either the eastward or the westward route. He could only roughly estimate the distance. He had no notion what hostile tribes, what malarial swamps, what impenetrable forests, what waterless deserts might fall to be encountered. All that lay in the lap of destiny. He had not only to make this pilgrimage himself; he had to watch over the safety of his Makololo “boys,” keep them supplied with food and drink, and protect them in the event of attack by savages. The deadly “tsetse” fly lay in wait for his oxen. The African fever lurked in ambush everywhere. In all times of extremity he had nothing to consult but his own stout heart and resourceful brain. Perils of floods and fevers, wild beasts and wilder human foes might be expected as a daily portion. Death would be almost a familiar companion. No love of adventure, no curiosity and fascination of exploration would have driven Livingstone through this self-imposed task. One has only to study his journal and listen to his simple, artless {68} confessions of faith to see that at every step the Christian motive was supreme. He had sight of the ultimate City—the coming civilisation of Christ—and the lions of the way were all chained, and the dangerous rapids charmed.

(2) The Equipment for the Task. Never was a journey of such heroic proportions undertaken with so simple an equipment. When one reads of the elaborate preparations for modern expeditions not half so formidable one is amazed at the contrast. Many of my readers have probably seen the four tin canisters, fifteen inches square, that held the valuables. One contained spare shirts, trousers, and shoes to be used when civilisation was reached. One was a medicine chest. One a library. One held the magic lantern by means of which the Gospel story was to be preached. For the rest, there were twenty pounds of beads, value forty shillings, a few biscuits, a few pounds of tea and sugar, and about twenty pounds of coffee. There were five guns in all: three muskets for the natives who could use them, and who {69} only hit things by accident; a rifle and double-barrelled shot gun for Livingstone, whose injured arm always made shooting difficult, and whose fever-shaken frame sometimes made it impossible. A bag of clothes for the journey, a small tent, a sheepskin mantle, and a horse-rug to sleep on completed this equipment. The sextant and other instruments were carried separately; and the ammunition was “distributed through the luggage,” so that if any portion were lost some powder and shot would remain to them. Twenty-seven “boys” were chosen for the westward journey; and it is as well to set down the fact here that all the twenty-seven were brought back in safety to their homes.

The expedition left Linyanti on the 11th of November, 1853. Away in Europe the English and French fleets had entered the Bosphorus, and a delirious public opinion was hurrying Great Britain into the blunders of the Crimean War. Far away from all the “fool-furies” of European politics, one single-minded Christian hero was setting his heart on the more renowned victories of peace and {70} freedom, with nothing to sustain him but his own quenchless faith in God and the Right. Even at the start he had been severely shaken with fever, and much preaching had brought back an old troublesome complaint in the throat; but these were personal inconveniences which he never allowed to deter him from any line of duty. The farewells were said with Sekeletu at Seshéke on the Zambesi, and the expedition passed away to the north-west into the great unknown.

For the particulars of Livingstone’s memorable journeys we are dependent on what he called his “lined journal.” It was a strongly bound quarto volume of more than eight hundred pages, and fitted with lock and key. The writing in it is extraordinarily neat and clear; but there are pathetic pages in it when it is evident that the writer is shaking with fever, yet nevertheless his iron will is compelling his trembling fingers to do their office. Everything went down in his journal. Dr. Blaikie well says that “it is built up in a random-rubble style.” There are frequent prayers and poignant religious {71} reflections, the ejaculations of a heart charged to overflowing with the Divine love and human compassion. Immediately following will be scientific observations, or speculations on some problem of natural history or geological structure. The various incidents in the journey are all recorded with the simplicity and freedom from sensationalism of the Evangelist Mark. Livingstone never magnifies a peril, and dwells not at all on his personal heroism. The “lined” journal ranks as one of his “books,” and its companions in the little canister were only a Sechuana Pentateuch, Thomson’s Tables, a Nautical Almanac, and a Bible. He confesses that “the want of other mental pabulum is felt severely.”

A misfortune little short of a disaster befel him at the beginning of this journey. The greater part of his medicines were stolen. With the health of all his escort to see to, and with fever racking his own frame, it must have seemed as if the chances of success were sensibly diminished.

It is interesting to compare Livingston {72} e’s rate of progress with that of ordinary traders. The trader thought seven miles a day good travelling, and even so he only reckoned on travelling ten days a month. Seventy miles a month was, in his eye, satisfactory progress. Livingstone struck an average of ten miles a day, and travelled about twenty days a month. Thus he seldom made less than two hundred miles a month. He travelled from Linyanti to Loanda (some 1,400 miles) in six months and a half, which as a mere feat of rapid African transit was quite amazing. On this journey he rode hundreds of miles on the back of his riding-ox, Sindbad, whose temper was uncertain and whose idiosyncrasies were pronounced. We shall see as we proceed that Sindbad was by no means always a satisfactory colleague.

Complications that might have led to ugly developments occurred while they were still in Sekeletu’s sphere of influence and among his people. It was discovered that a party of Makololo had made a foray to the north, and had destroyed some of the villages of {73} the Balonda, through whose country they were bound to pass. Some of the villagers had been seized for slaves, and Livingstone foresaw reprisals and the probability that prejudice would be excited against himself and his men. He therefore insisted that the captives should be restored, as a means of demonstrating that his errand was one of friendliness and peace. This act helped to disarm the hostility of the Balonda chief, and Livingstone afterwards busied himself to form a commercial alliance between the Balonda and the Makololo. It was always his policy to overcome the jealousies and hostilities of rival tribes, and substitute confidence based on mutual interest. After leaving the country of the Makololo, and while ascending the Barotse valley, the rains were almost incessant, and the expedition moved forward through clouds of vapour that hardly ever lifted. For a whole fortnight at a time neither sun nor moon was seen sufficiently to get an observation for latitude and longitude. The very tent that sheltered him by night began to rot with the excessive and {74} incessant humidity. In spite of being kept well oiled, the guns grew rusty; and the clothing of the party became “mouldy and rotten.” Part of the way lay through dense forest, and the axe had continually to be plied. The waters of the river were crowded with hippopotami, alligators, and at times with fish; but it was not easy to get food in the forest, and repeatedly they were reduced to living on such roots as could be trusted, while moles and mice became a luxury. They were making now for the country of the great chief Shinté, whose fame had travelled far; and early in the New Year of 1854 found them at his capital, the most imposing town that Livingstone had seen in Central Africa. In the town were two Portuguese half-castes who were trading for slaves and ivory. “They had a gang of young female slaves in a chain, hoeing the ground in front of their encampment.” This was the first time that Livingstone’s Barotse companions had seen slaves in chains. “They are not men,” they exclaimed (meaning they are beasts), “who treat their children so. {75} ”

The explorer was received with great ceremony. Shinté sat on a “sort of throne” covered with a leopard’s skin, under a banyan tree. He must have presented a somewhat bizarre appearance, for Livingstone tells us “he had on a checked jacket and a kilt of scarlet baize edged with green. Strings of beads, copper armlets and bracelets hung about his neck and limbs. For crown he had a great helmet made of beads and surmounted with a huge bunch of goose feathers. The subsequent ceremony was as odd and elaborate as the chief’s wardrobe. There were terrifying manœuvres of savage soldiers armed to the teeth. Livingstone suspected that their object was to cause him and his friends to take to their heels, but if so it was a failure. At last the new-comers were presented to the chief by the orator Sambanza, who described Livingstone’s exploits in great style, dwelt on the fact that he had brought back the captives taken by the Makololo, that he possessed “the Word from Heaven,” that he sought the peace of all the tribes, and was opening up a path for trade. {76} This speech was a great effort, and its effect was by no means minimised that the orator wore “a cloth so long that a boy carried it after him as a train.” It would appear that fashionable habits are the same all the world over. During his stay at Shinté’s court Livingstone suffered agonies from fever, accompanied by “violent action of the heart.” But he made his own invariable impression upon the chief by his frankness, independence and courtesy. He preached to the assembled tribesmen, and showed the magic-lantern pictures; and he pleaded urgently with Shinté personally against the growing practice of slavery. When his stay was over Shinté gave him the last evidence of goodwill, for “he drew from out his clothing a string of beads and the end of a conical shell, which is considered in regions far from the sea of as great value as the Lord Mayor’s badge is in London. He hung it round my neck, and said, ‘There now you have a proof of my friendship.’ ” Shinté also bequeathed to the expedition his “principal guide,” Mtemése, {77}

Mtemése proved to be by no means an immaculate person. Among other delinquencies he left the pontoon behind, a loss that was keenly felt. He had, too, a prejudice against speedy travel which Livingstone could not be induced to share. He was useful, however, in levying tribute of food throughout Shinté’s dominion, and evidently thought Livingstone a great fool for paying a fair price for what could have been had for nothing. Gradually Shinté’s territory was left behind, and that of Katema was invaded. It seemed to Livingstone that as they moved north the moral conditions darkened. At times the great horror of heathenism laid hold of him. Everywhere was the same unrelieved tragedy of brutality and murder. Sometimes over the camp fires his savage hosts would exult in their customs. They told of the death of chiefs, and the slaughter of enough of their subjects to be an escort to the nether world. The further north Livingstone penetrated the more {79} “bloodily superstitious” did the people become. Yet he must eat with them, chat with them, laugh with them; and the impression of such religious teaching as he could impart was, alas! so superficial. Katema proved peaceable; but his people lived under the perpetual shadow of the slave-trade, and would gladly have been taken away to the Makololo country.

The beginning of March found them for the first time in hostile territory. There had been much rain and flood, wading and swimming. Livingstone himself had had an adventure that thoroughly alarmed his men, and served to evoke their real devotion. He was flung from his ox in midstream, and compelled to strike out for the opposite bank. There was a simultaneous rush on the part of all his men to rescue him. Their delight was unbounded when they found he could swim like themselves. “Who carried the white man across the river but himself,” they said afterwards. It was among the Chiboques that the expedition came nearest to having to fight for their lives; and bloodshed {80} was only averted by Livingstone’s wonderful patience and fearlessness. He sat on a campstool with his double-barrelled gun across his knees, and insisted on arguing with the chief who was endeavouring to levy blackmail. It was characteristic of Livingstone that he argued the legitimacy of passing through their country on the ground that the land belonged to God. If their gardens had been damaged compensation would have been paid, but the earth is the Lord’s. “They did not attempt to controvert this,” he comments, “because it is in accordance with their own ideas.” Finally he told them that if there was to be a fight they must begin it, and the guilt be on their heads. Matters looked critical for some hours; but Livingstone’s tact prevailed and the gift of an ox satisfied them for the time being. They had more trouble later before getting quit of the Chiboques, but there was no actual outbreak. There was thieving, however, of their goods, which were getting sadly reduced; and the attitude of enmity and treachery added to the gloom of a very {81} gloomy forest through which a way had to be found. So thick was the atmosphere that the hanging creepers could not be seen, and again and again the riders were swept off the backs of the oxen. On one occasion Sindbad went off at a plunging gallop, the bridle broke, and Livingstone came down backwards on the crown of his head. At the same time Sindbad completed the triumph by dealing him a kick on the thigh. Livingstone makes light of all this, only remarking that “he does not recommend it as a palliative for fever.” Repeated attacks of fever had reduced him to a skeleton. The sodden blanket which served as a saddle caused abrasions and sores. His “projecting bones” were chafed on the hard bed at nights. He had enough burdens to bear without having to dare the threats of savages. At the last outpost of the Chiboque country their two guides turned traitors and thieves, and escaped with the larger portion of their beads, so necessary for barter. This was almost the last straw; and there was mutiny among Livingstone’s men, for they declared they {82} would go home. He was in despair; and having finally told them that in that case he would go on alone, he went into his little tent and flung himself upon his knees, “with the mind directed to Him who hears the sighing of the soul.” Presently one of the men crept into the tent. “We will never leave you,” he said. “Do not be disheartened. Wherever you lead we will follow.” The others took up the chorus. They were all his children, they told him, and they would die for him. They had only spoken in the bitterness of their feeling and because they felt they could do nothing.

They had one more parley with a bullying chief, but came out victorious, thanks to the opportune appearance of a young military half-caste Portuguese, who afterwards showed them every hospitality. Moreover, they were now able to dispose of certain tusks of ivory presented to them by Sekeletu, the proceeds of which clothed the whole party and partially armed them.

The journey was easy now, save that the intrepid leader had had twenty-seven attacks {83} of fever, and suffered one more humiliation at the hands of Sindbad, being compelled inadvertently to bathe in the Lombé. He had to reassure his men as they drew near to the Atlantic, for they began to be troubled lest after all he should leave them to the cruel mercies of other white men. “Nothing will happen to you but what happens to me,” he told them. “We have stood by one another hitherto, and will do so till the last.” In course of time they crossed the sterile plains near Loanda, and gazed upon the sea. “We marched along with our father,” they said afterwards, “believing that what the ancients had always told us was true, that the world has no end; but all at once the world said to us, ‘I am finished, there is no more of me.’ ”

It was a weak, worn, haggard figure that on the 31st May, 1854, entered the city of Loanda, “labouring under great depression of spirits.” The fever had brought on chronic dysentery. He could not sit on his ox ten minutes at a time. His mind was “depressed by disease and care.” His {84} heart misgave him as to his welcome. But he had finished his course. He had accomplished his superhuman task. He had reached the coast. He had protected and guided his faithful company. He had robbed no man’s goods and taken no man’s life; and all the fourteen hundred miles he had preached the Gospel and argued for freedom and peace. {85}

CHAPTER V

Livingstone found Loanda a very decayed town, but he did not fail to win many friendships. Mr. Gabriel, the one Englishman in the place, was overwhelmingly kind, and the Roman Catholic bishop scarcely less so. English men-of-war were in the harbour also, keeping both eyes open for slave ships, and Livingstone was able to take his men on board and show them the cannon with which England “was going to destroy the slave trade.” He himself recovered only very slowly from his condition of absolute emaciation, and in August had a severe relapse, which left him a mere skeleton. Everybody was kind to him, physicking him, and nourishing him, and, what was most of all valuable in his depression, providing him with lively {86} and interesting company. He fell in with their plans for him very gratefully, but on one point he was adamant. They had wished to persuade him to go home and rest. The British captains offered him a passage to St. Helena. When this failed they urged him to take the mail-packet, the “Forerunner,” by which all his own precious diaries, and letters, and scientific papers, with maps and so forth, were to be sent. Despite his weakness it was not in him to be idle, and he had laboriously accomplished the writing of this big budget of despatches in time for the mail-boat. On April 23rd, 1852, he had told his wife that he would rejoin her in two years. It was now August, 1854, and his heart cried out for wife and children. But one thing stood in the way. He had promised his twenty-seven “boys” to take them back to their own country; and they were there in Loanda on the faith of Livingstone’s word. It did not consist with his sense of honour to leave them at Loanda, while he went home for a holiday, and he refused {87} all the tempting offers. The reward of honourable men does not always come as it came to him. The “Forerunner” went down with all hands but one, and he escaped an almost certain fate because he kept his promise. But, alas! all his precious papers, the fruit of so much labour, were destroyed; and he had to take up the drudgery of doing everything over again. It was the form of toil most irksome to him; but he just turned to and did it. It was his way.

Fortunately he had not gone far on the homeward track when this news reached him, and there was no lack of hospitality. He was making a circuit round about Loanda to visit some of the more noted Portuguese settlements and estates, always with an eye to the better cultivation of the country and the interest of inland trade. The re-writing of his papers involved long and tedious delay, and there was more trouble through fever among his men. The year of 1855 dawned before he left a hospitable Portuguese home, and struck out {88} along the old trail. It is worth while to remember here that whereas the expedition travelled from Linyanti to Loanda in six and a half months, it took twice that time to return. It was September, 1855, before they saw Linyanti again.

The homeward journey was not devoid of incident and excitement. The passage through the Chiboque territory was once again troublesome. Just when Livingstone was most anxious to be himself, he fell a victim to rheumatic fever. For eight days he lay in his tent, tossing and groaning with pain; and it was twenty days before he began to recover, and the old ambition to be on the march came back to him. His men objected, for he was too weak to move; and at the physical crisis a quarrel broke out between his men and some of the Chiboques. A blow was struck, for which ample compensation was paid; but with the leader on his back the importunities of the tribesmen increased, and matters became threatening. When a forward move was made, an organised attack on the baggage took place, {89} and shots were even fired, though nobody was hurt. It was then that Livingstone snatched up his six-barrelled revolver and “staggered along the path” till most opportunely he encountered the hostile chief. “The sight of the six barrels gaping into his stomach and my own ghastly visage looking daggers at his face seemed to produce an instant revolution in his martial feelings.” He suddenly became the most peaceable man in all Africa, and protested his goodwill. Livingstone advised a practical illustration of this, and bade him go home. The Chief explained that he would do so, only he was afraid of being shot in the back! “If I wanted to kill you,” rejoined Livingstone, “I could shoot you in the face as well.” One of his men, afraid for Livingstone’s own safety, advised him not to give the Chief a chance of shooting him in the back, whereupon Livingstone retorted, “Tell him to observe that I am not afraid of him,” and mounting his ox rode away triumphantly.

Plodding steadily onward, they arrived on the 8th June at a spot famous for one of {90} Livingstone’s most notable geographical discoveries, which he afterwards learned was actual confirmation of Sir Roderick Murchison’s theory, which the latter had worked out in his own arm-chair as the only one that would satisfy what was known of the African river systems, and the geological formation. Livingstone had just forded a wide river called the Lotembwa, only three feet deep, and had failed to remark in which direction it was flowing. He believed it to be the same river that flowed south from Lake Dilolo, but a Chief pointed out to him that this was not so, for the former river flowed north into the Kasai, one of the main tributaries of the Congo. The latter flowed south into the Zambesi. Livingstone now realised that he was “standing on the central ridge that divided these two systems”; and what amazed him most was that these vast river systems had their rise, not in a chain of lofty mountains, but on flat plains not more than 4,000 feet above the sea.

The expedition now made slow and peaceful progress along their former route, being {91} welcomed everywhere by their old friends with demonstrations of joy and astonishment. They distributed presents to all who had prospered them on their way, and left none but friendly memories behind them. When at the end of July they reached Libonta their progress became a triumphal procession. His men arrayed themselves in white European clothing, swaggered like soldiers, and called themselves his “braves.” During the time of service they sat with their guns over their shoulders. “You have opened a path for us,” said the people, “and we shall have sleep.” The ovations continued all down the Barotse valley. There were no drawbacks, except that many of the men found that during their absence some of their wives had sought and found other husbands. Livingstone advised them to console themselves with those that remained. “Even so, you have as many as I have,” he reminded them. At Linyanti Livingstone found his waggon and belongings perfectly safe; and some stores, and a letter a year old, from Dr. and Mrs. Moffat. Sekeletu’s gratifica {92} tion knew no bounds. A grand new uniform had been sent him as a present from the coast, and when he wore it to church on Sunday it produced a greater impression than the sermon. It is worth remarking that Sekeletu at once began to set on foot a trade in ivory with the Portuguese at the coast, in fulfilment of Livingstone’s policy.

For eight weeks Livingstone remained at Linyanti. He found plenty to occupy him. He was once again the guide, philosopher, and friend to all the tribe. He had doctoring to do, and operations to perform. He found personal interviews on religious subjects more satisfactory than the public services, and he was now, as ever, supremely anxious that these people should owe their souls to his ministry. He had letters to write, and journals to transcribe, and new observations to make. He had all the odd jobs to do that had accumulated during his absence. He found Sekeletu a willing pupil in his ideas on commerce, and on the removal of the tribe to the healthier and wealthier Barotse valley. Especially he had to think out the problem {93} of his next great adventure to the East Coast. His inclination decidedly was to trace the course of the Zambesi to Quilimane and the sea. But against this was to be set the fact that it had an evil reputation for the savagery of some of the tribes along the banks. Certain Arabs whom he had met had strongly counselled him to strike up country to the North-East and make for Zanzibar by the south of Lake Tanganyika. The tribes were reported to be peaceable, and the villages and food supplies plentiful. If he decided to explore the Zambesi, the problem of the north or south shore was an important one. The north shore was reported to be very rocky and broken, and consequently specially difficult for transport.

Either shore was likely to be dangerous to the oxen on account of tsetse fly. All these considerations had to be weighed, and the final decision was to risk the dangers of the tribes along the Zambesi, and to take the north shore, because on Livingstone’s map Tette, the farthest inland station of the Portuguese, was marked as being on the north {94} of the river. This turned out to be untrue. Having settled his course he made his preparations. Sekeletu proved himself a most magnificent ally. Livingstone’s new escort was composed of a hundred and twenty men, with ten slaughter oxen and three of the best riding oxen. He was provided with stores of food, and given tribute rights over all tribes subject to Sekeletu. When we consider that Livingstone had no one to finance him, and that the success of his travels depended on the goodwill of native chiefs like Sekeletu, we begin to understand the unique influence which he exercised over the native mind. Those who knew him never failed him at a pinch; they never deserted him in his need; they lent their best aid to carry through his enterprises; and gave him every tangible proof that can be given from one man to another of confidence, honour and love.

Perhaps before we set out on this new journey, we may quote from Livingstone himself two passages illustrative of the secret of his influence. In the first he says, {95} “No one ever gains much influence in this country without purity and uprightness. The acts of a stranger are keenly scrutinised by both old and young, and seldom is the judgment pronounced even by a heathen unfair or uncharitable. I have heard women speaking in admiration of a white man because he was pure, and never was guilty of any secret immorality. Had he been, they would have known it, and, untutored heathen though they be, would have despised him in consequence.” This illustrates Livingstone’s favourite doctrine that it is the missionary’s life that is the most powerful sermon. That his teaching was partially understood may be gathered from the story of Mamire, Sekeletu’s stepfather, who on coming to say good-bye, used words like these: “You are now going among people who cannot be trusted, because we have used them badly, but you go with a different message from any they ever heard before, and Jesus will be with you, and help you, though among enemies.” It was a gracious and discerning God-speed.

The route selected led Livingstone across {96} what we know to-day as Rhodesia, and which would have been much more appropriately named Livingstonia. It passed to the north of the land inhabited by the formidable and dreaded Matabele. The tribes bordering on the Makololo country had no reason to love their oppressive neighbours; and this fact had inspired the fears expressed in Mamire’s words. It was on the 3rd of November, 1855, that the final departure from Linyanti was made; and Sekeletu accompanied the expedition along the first stage. He took the opportunity of showing Livingstone an extraordinary kindness, for the journey began in a terrific tropical thunderstorm. Livingstone’s clothing had gone on, and there was nothing for it but to sleep on the cold ground. Sekeletu, however, took his own blanket and wrapped it about the missionary, lying himself uncovered through the chill night. “I was much affected,” writes Livingstone, “by this little act of genuine kindness. If such men must perish by the advance of civilisation, as certain races of animals do before others, it is a pity. {97} ”

It was no great distance to the famous falls, the rumour of which had often reached Livingstone, and which he was the first white man to visit. The falls were originally called Shongwe. Sebituane used to ask Livingstone whether in his own country he had “smoke that sounds,” referring to the pillars of vapour, and the far-carrying roar of the river as it plunged into the chasm beneath. Sliding down the river in their canoes, they came to within half a mile of the falls, when some of the natives who were expert in the management of the rapids transferred Livingstone to a lighter canoe, and with practised dexterity guided it to the central island—the “Goat Island” of the Zambesi Falls—“on the edge of the lip over which the water rolls.” This adventure can only be made when the river is low, but it was successfully accomplished, and Livingstone was able to gaze down into the fissure into which the great river plunges and apparently disappears. Then he saw that “a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet, and {98} then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen or twenty yards.” He spent many hours contemplating its beauties, noting all its fascinations, and pondering the scientific problem of its origin. He then permitted himself the only act of nationalism—“personal vanity” he used to call it—that he ever indulged in. He changed the native name to that of the Victoria Falls in honour of the great White Queen; and returning to the island next day with Sekeletu he carved his initials and the date on a tree, and planted “about a hundred peach and apricot stones and a quantity of coffee-seeds,” with the remark that “were there no hippopotami, he had no doubt this would be the parent of all the gardens which may yet be in this new country.”

Sekeletu now returned home, having provided a company of 114 men to carry the tusks to the coast, and the expedition set forth in a northward direction. Many wars had decimated the country, but there were ample evidences of the savagery of {99} the people. He found one old chief living in a house surrounded with human skulls, much like Giant Pope’s cave in the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Many of the skulls were of mere children, slain by the chief’s father “to show his fierceness.” The Batoka tribe could be recognised because of their custom of knocking out the upper front teeth at the age of puberty, which gave them an uncouth appearance and a hideous laugh. He found them “very degraded” and much addicted to smoking “the mutokwana,” a pernicious weed which causes a species of frenzy, and which is often resorted to before battle as the native form of “Dutch courage.”

On the 4th of December they had a foretaste of coming peril, in the person of a howling dervish, who came at Livingstone with his lips covered with foam, and with a small battle-axe in his hand. “I felt it would be a sorry way to leave the world, to get my head chopped by a mad savage”—but he would show no fear, and by and by the paroxysm of frenzy passed away. Later {100} on, they heard the tribesmen exulting over them. “God has apportioned them to us,” they cried. Still there was no outbreak, and the expedition moved on unmolested. The country was now seen to be swarming with inhabitants. They had no notion of any invasion of their territory that did not mean conquest and plunder; but when the villagers listened to Christ’s promise of “Peace on earth, goodwill to men,” they expressed satisfaction. “Give us rest and sleep,” they pleaded. The chief Monze, further on, was urgent that a white man should come and live among his people, and his sister seconded him, exclaiming that it would be joy “to sleep without dreaming of anyone pursuing one with a spear.” Livingstone must have felt like Dante with the vision of the Inferno before his eyes.

They travelled on through a healthy and beautiful region, where Livingstone could indulge to the full his love of natural beauties, and study the habits of the wonderful beasts and birds. They kept well to the north of the Zambesi; and the first organised {101} hostility awaited them at the confluence of the Zambesi and the Loangwa. There is no more striking or characteristic story than this in the whole of Livingstones biography. The chief Mburuma had shown many signs of treachery, and had roused the countryside against the expedition. It seemed almost certain that the passage of the Loangwa would be contested. The people were collecting in large numbers, and remained in obstinate suspicion at a distance from the camp. Livingstone’s own reflections are to be gathered from the entries in his Journal. On January 14th—for 1856 has come—he writes, “Thank God for His great mercies this far. How soon I may be called before Him, my righteous Judge, I know not.... On Thy word I lean. The cause is Thine. See, O Lord, how the heathens rise up against me as they did against Thy Son.” Then comes a very characteristic sentence: “It seems a pity that the facts about the two healthy longitudinal regions should not be known in Christendom. Thy will be done.”

Later on in the evening the signs are even {102} more ominous. “Felt much turmoil of spirit in view of having all my plans for the welfare of this great region and teeming population knocked on the head by savages to-morrow. But Jesus came and said, ‘All power is given to Me in Heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore and teach all nations ... and lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.’ It is the word of a Gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honour and there is an end on’t. I will not cross furtively by night as I intended. It would appear as flight, and should such a man as I flee? Nay, verily, I shall take observations for longitude and latitude to-night, though they may be the last. I feel quite calm now, thank God.” The next day he superintended the crossing of the river, under the ægis of natives armed to the teeth, reserving for himself the post of honour, the last man in the last canoe. He stepped in, pushed off, thanked the astonished savages, and wished them peace. Then “passing through the midst of them, he went his way.” They had never seen an enemy like this. {103} New perils arose in the country of the powerful chief Mpende; and again Livingstone had little hope of avoiding a skirmish. But he succeeds in explaining that he is an Englishman, and shows them his white skin. “No,” said they, “we never saw skin so white as that. You must be one of the tribe that loves the black men.” He accepted the compliment, and when later he needed a canoe to take a sick man across the river, Mpende, exclaimed, “this white man is truly one of our friends. See how he lets me know his afflictions.”

He was now on the south side of the river, and the natives were peaceful. The 2nd of March saw the expedition within eight miles of Tette, and Portuguese officers came forward to help and welcome him. He succeeded in making arrangements for his Makololo to be cared for until his return, for he could now descend the river by boat to Quilimane. Nothing but death, he told them, would prevent his return. The leader of his escort, however, Sekwebu, he had resolved to take to England with him. The result {104} was tragic. The extraordinary experience of a sea voyage unhinged his reason; and when Mauritius was reached, he sprang overboard and was lost. On December 12th, 1856, David Livingstone reached Dover, having narrowly escaped shipwreck off the Bay of Tunis, and having crossed the Continent from Marseilles to Calais. He had girdled Africa from West to East. He was universally recognised as the greatest of explorers. Well might Dr. Moffat write to him, “the honours awaiting you at home would be enough to make a score of light heads dizzy.... You have succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectation in laying open a world of immortal beings, all needing the Gospel, and at a time, now that war is over, when people may exert their energies on an object compared with which that which has occupied the master minds of Europe, and expended so much money, and shed so much blood, is but a phantom.” Livingstone’s own simple words are the best conclusion of this chapter: “None has cause for more abundant gratitude to his {105} fellow-men and to his Maker than I have; and may God grant that the effect on my mind be such that I may be more humbly devoted to the service of the Author of all our mercies. {106} ”

CHAPTER VI

From the end of 1856 till March of 1859 Livingstone was home. He had been parted from wife and children for five long years, and nobody realised more than he did what a burden of anxiety Mrs. Livingstone had carried all that while. One of his greatest sorrows was the death of his father, whom he had longed to see again, but who died during Livingstone’s voyage home. The honours bestowed upon him were numberless. The freedom of the City of Glasgow and the City of Edinburgh, honorary doctors degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, and the Gold Medal of the Geographical Society were only a few of his distinctions. He wrote his book entitled “Missionary Travels” in 1857, and it was a phenomenal success, the simple, direct, unassuming style being the most {107} appropriate clothing for the thoughts and deeds of the man. It may be said that Livingstone’s writings were in a marked degree a revelation of his personality and character. You could not read the narrative without wondering at the achievements, and conceiving a personal affection for the author. In all parts of the kingdom there was extraordinary eagerness to see and hear him. The most distinguished people competed for the honour of entertaining him, the Universities showed exceptional enthusiasm, while in humbler places which had associations with his fame the celebrations were touching in their love and pride. Much of the public laudation was distasteful to him, but he greatly enjoyed the intercourse now open to him with men and women of kindred spirit in all churches, and among all professions. One problem in regard to the future was settled in a characteristic way. Believing, as he did, that it was his life-mission to open up this great new country, and do pioneer work in the African interior, he felt that he ought to resign his position {108} under the London Missionary Society, as some of its supporters might not approve of this kind of work being undertaken by one of its agents. At the same time he was exceedingly anxious that the work of the Society should not suffer, and regarded it as his own duty to provide a substitute. Accordingly he arranged with his brother-in-law, Mr. John Moffat, to become a missionary to the Makololo, promising him £500 for outfit, and £150 a year for five years as salary, besides other sums amounting in all to £1,400.

His own immediate future was determined by the offer from Lord Palmerston of the post of Consul at Quilimane and Commander of an expedition for exploring Eastern and Central Africa. He was to take out a light paddle steamer suitable for the navigation of the Zambesi; and his colleagues were to include a botanist, a mining expert, an artist, and a ship engineer. This offer was cordially accepted and all arrangements made for departure.

There will always be some people, the {109} victims of the water-tight compartment theory of life, who will hold that a man cannot be a minister or a missionary if he is anything else. These people believe that if a man becomes an explorer he ceases to be a missionary. To be consistent they ought to believe that when Paul practised as a tent-maker he ceased to be an apostle, or that a bishop becomes a secular person if he attends to his parliamentary duties. It is needless to say that Livingstone held no such impossible conception of the ministry. He never at any time ceased to be a missionary. All his work was regarded by him as sacred, because it was done for the glory of God and the good of humanity. The ends that he pursued till the close of his life were essentially the same that he had sought hitherto—the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

One of the most impressive addresses delivered by Livingstone during this visit, and one which produced the most lasting effect, was to a distinguished University audience in the Senate House at Cambridge. {110} It was a magnificent and irresistible appeal for missionaries. He was amazed that some of our societies had to go abroad to Germany for missionaries because of the lack of the missionary spirit at home. He repudiated the talk about sacrifice. He had made no sacrifice worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as the Great Sacrifice made for mankind by Christ. He closed with this impressive appeal: “I beg to direct your attention to Africa; I know that in a few years I shall be cut off in that country, which is now open: do not let it be shut again! I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity; do you carry out the work which I have begun. I leave it with you!”

It was by such glowing words as these that he enforced on English audiences his favourite theme that “the end of the geographical feat is the beginning of the missionary enterprise.”

Fresh from the ovations and honours which reached their culmination in the {111} grand final banquet at the Freemason’s Hall, at which foreign statesmen, dukes, earls, bishops, and scientific magnates vied with one another in celebrating his fame, Livingstone sailed from Liverpool on H.M. Colonial Steamer “Pearl.” Nothing had been wanting to his success. He was now rich, famous, powerful, the accredited representative of the greatest Government in the world. Instead of having to provide for his journeys of exploration out of a meagre salary and the generosity of African chiefs, he had the wealth of England behind him and limitless goodwill. On the deck of the “Pearl” were the sections of the little steam-launch “Ma Robert,” which a philanthropic firm had sold him “as a great bargain for the good of the cause,” and which was the most ill-constructed, clumsy, and extravagant vessel that ever ruined the hopes of its owner. Going back with him was his wife and his youngest boy. His brother Charles, too, had been assigned to him as a colleague by a generous Government. One of Livingston {112} e’s first acts was to read to the members of the expedition the instructions drawn up by himself with the sanction of the Foreign Office. In these he laid stress on “an example of consistent moral conduct,” “treating the people with kindness,” “inculcating peace and goodwill”; he “earnestly pressed” upon the members “a sacred regard to life,” and the avoidance of wanton destruction of animals, and expressed the hope that arms would never be needed for defence against the natives, as “the best security from attack consists in upright conduct.” He insists on “the strictest justice in dealing with the natives,” and an attitude of respect to the chiefs of tribes. “We are adherents of a benign, holy religion, and may by consistent conduct and wise, patient efforts become the harbingers of peace to a hitherto distracted and down-trodden race.” He concluded by again reiterating that “a kind word or deed is never lost.”

These instructions are very notable, and perhaps one may read between the lines {113} some anxiety, and even apprehension, for he knew that the success of the expedition no longer entirely rested on himself, and might be marred by ill-advised and unchristian action on the part of any single member. It was well that he could not forecast the future. The years that were to elapse until his return to England in 1864 were in many respects tragic years. They were years of accumulated disappointments, bereavements, failures and rebuffs, faced with courage and borne with resignation, but none the less leaving upon his life the shadow of great and crushing sorrow which never wholly lifted. The course of the “Pearl” was down the West Coast of Africa; and the first bitter disappointment was when his wife and son had to be left behind at Cape Town owing to ill-health. Fortunately, Dr. and Mrs. Moffat had journeyed down country to meet them, and took their daughter and her boy back to Kuruman. But “it was bitter parting with my wife—like tearing the heart out of one.” Livingstone was fated to do his work in loneliness. {114}

The “Pearl” reached the mouth of the Zambesi on May 14th, 1858. She was anchored in the “mangrove swamps,” a deadly place for fever, and Livingstone insisted on the small launch, “Ma Robert,” being fitted together immediately, for he feared the consequences to the newcomers if they did not speedily get away to a healthier locality. This meant working on Sunday, for which if life can be saved there is sound Scripture warrant; but the order created no small criticism. “It is a pity,” writes Livingstone, “that some people cannot see that the true and honest discharge of every-day life is divine service.” The next trial was in the resignation of the naval officer, a matter in regard to which Livingstone was fully exonerated by the Foreign Office, but which none the less brought home to him the difficulties of his new position. Instead of waiting for a new officer, Livingstone proceeded to run the ship himself. “It was imagined we could not help ourselves,” he wrote later, “but I took the task of navigating on myself, and have conducted the {115} steamer over 1,600 miles, though as far as my likings go I would as soon drive a cab in November fogs in London as be ‘skipper’ in this hot sun; but I shall go through with it as a duty.”

There was some genuine compensation when he reached Tette, and was hailed with delirious delight by his old Makololo friends, who had never ceased to believe that he would keep his word to them. “The Tette people often taunted us by saying, ‘Your Englishman will never return’; but we trusted you, and now we shall sleep.” Disease and fighting had thinned their ranks. Thirty had died of smallpox and six had been killed. Livingstone had some work to do before he was ready to march back with the survivors to Linyanti, but they knew he would not fail them. Already it was clear that the “Ma Robert” was almost useless. Livingstone had applied to the Government for a more suitable vessel; and had also ordered one on his own account. He had intended to spend £2,000, but eventually he devoted nearly the whole of the profits of his {116} book, some £6,000, to the purchase of the little steamer “Lake Nyassa,” which he specially destined for the lake whose name she bore, but whose waters she never sailed. The Government acceded to the request, but the “Pioneer” did not arrive till early in 1861, and the “Lake Nyassa” a year later, the latter vessel having then to be put together, which occupied many months.

There were two years, therefore, to be devoted to what explorations were possible with the aid of the “Ma Robert”—now frivolously called the “Asthmatic”—and their own exertions. It was clear to Livingstone that the Shiré river, a tributary of the Zambesi out of the north country, was a very important feature, and ought to be thoroughly examined. It was quite possible that it might prove to be a highway to the inland lakes of which rumour reached him. So the first months of 1859 were devoted to this journey. The party made their way up till they were stopped by cataracts, which were named the Murchison Falls. Little could be done among the natives, who were very sus {117} picious and armed with poisoned arrows. It was necessary constantly to assure them that the expedition was not Portuguese, but English, for the terror of slave-raids was like a perpetual nightmare over the people. A second attempt on the Shiré two months later had more notable results. They were inspired to strike away from the river to the east, and discovered Lake Shirwa. The lake lay 1,800 feet up, and was sixty miles long. It is remarkable that the Portuguese had no idea of its existence. Livingstone describes its remarkable beauty and the grandeur of its setting among the mountains, some of which rise to the height of 8,000 feet—“much higher than any you see in Scotland,” he writes to his little daughter Agnes. He is increasingly impressed that the whole region is suitable for cotton and sugar. The land is “so rich that the grass towers far over one’s head in walking.”

The party went back to the mouth of the Zambesi for stores, and then returned to make a determined effort to find Lake Nyassa. {118}

Passing beyond the cataracts, they were assured by a chief that the river Shiré “stretched on for two months, and then came out between perpendicular rocks which could not be passed.” “Let us go back to the ship,” said the Makololo who were with them, “it is no use trying to find this lake.” “We shall see the wonderful rocks, at any rate,” said Livingstone. “Yes,” they grumbled, “and when you see them you will just want to see something else.” However, the curiosity of the Englishmen was by this time thoroughly aroused, and they pushed forward till, on the 16th of September, they discovered Lake Nyassa. They had not time to do much by way of exploration, and two years were to elapse before Livingstone returned and satisfied himself that the lake was at least two hundred miles long, and that it had endless possibilities in view of future colonisation. But even now the slavers were active; and gangs of unfortunate captives were being marched to the coast, greatly to the indignation of the Makololo, who wondered why Livingstone would not let {119} them “choke” the marauders; but he was occupied with more heroic measures, that would lay an axe to the roots of the Upas-tree. The highlands of the Shiré, the fertility and healthiness of the country, and the proximity to the great waterway, together with the lake stretching two hundred miles to the north, filled his brain with schemes for colonising the district. It is the best white man’s country he has seen, and he bombards his English friends with letters on the subject. Why should honest poor folk at home make a miserable pittance by cultivating small crofts of land when here is a vast undeveloped country waiting for their occupation, with the well-being and safety of a large population to be secured by their presence? He is personally prepared to embark two or three thousand pounds in such an enterprise. “It ought not to be looked on as the last shift a family can come to, but the performance of an imperative duty to our blood, our country, our religion, and to human kind.”

While waiting the response of England to these appeals, he is off with his Makololo for {120} six months, to see them back to their land and to their folks. Some have perished, as we have seen; some had no wish to return. About thirty of them deserted before they had gone far, leaving about sixty to go forward. Livingstone’s white companions were his brother and Dr. Kirk, afterwards Sir John Kirk, who had proved himself an invaluable friend and comrade.

As for the great traveller himself, it was with real joy that he found himself on the old trail, marching and camping in the fashion so reminiscent of earlier days. There are the same tasks and toils, the same fight with hunger and fatigue and fever; but it cheers his heart: “He rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course.” At times, however, he is compelled to realise how hard it is to do good and not do evil with it. He has opened up a path; and the first to follow him is the Portuguese or Arab slave-dealer. He feels that he has been made the instrument of the undoing of some innocent people, and his heart is heavy. Only Christian settlements can defeat these sinister enter {121} prises. In August they were at the Victoria Falls, and most unexpectedly find a white man there, Mr. Baldwin by name, who has news of a great tragedy that fills Livingstone’s soul with sorrow. One of the results of his missionary appeals in England had been that the London Missionary Society had resolved on a mission at Linyanti. Nine Europeans set out for this spot, and Mr. Baldwin had helped them on the way. But the head of the mission, Mr. Helmore, and his wife had perished of fever, and three others succumbed later, so that the survivors gave up in alarm and retired. Livingstone was too late to be of service, though he was certain his remedies might have saved their lives. Even this is not all, for poor Sekeletu is stricken with leprosy, and is living away from his people, believing himself to be bewitched. His joy, however, at Livingstone’s return is unbounded, and the general happiness does something to make up for the sad news by which all have been depressed. He is cheered also to hear that his old friend Sechele was doing well, and happy in the {122} possession of a Hanoverian missionary, and in the progress of Christian teaching. It was with evident satisfaction that Livingstone, British Consul, resumed his old labours of preaching and teaching. It could not be for long, for he had to be back on the Zambesi, but he could not neglect any opportunity of doing definitely spiritual work. They reached Tette once more on November 23rd, and travelled down the river in the “Ma Robert,” the last voyage of that ill-fated “bargain.” A month later she grounded on a sandbank and filled, and without remorse they left her at the bottom of the Zambesi.

To Livingstone it seemed that 1861 was to mark the opening of a new era, for the long-expected steamer “Pioneer” arrived at the end of January, and with it Bishop Mackenzie and his staff, whose object was to plant the “Universities’ Mission,” another fruit of Livingstone’s memorable home visit. Livingstone liked the Bishop from the first for his manly character, his devotion, and his common-sense. Differences of denomination {123} affected him not at all. He “looks upon all godly men as good and true brethren.” He thought the Bishop like Dr. Moffat “in his readiness to put his hand to anything.” Some time was lost in exploration of the river Rovuma, which came to nothing. Then the navigation of the Shiré with the “Pioneer” proved very slow and laborious because of low water and sandbanks. Worse than all, the whole country seemed to have been ravaged by the slavers; and it was evident that the Portuguese Government officials were in active connivance. At the village of Mbame on the Shiré Livingstone and the Bishop liberated a gang of eighty-four men and women, and attached them to the Mission Settlement. A peculiarly murderous native chief, the head of a fierce tribe called the Ajawa, was doing the deadly work for the Portuguese, and when a visit was paid to him to persuade him to desist, he fired on the mission party, and the fire was returned. It was an ominous beginning of an enterprise that had tragical developments. It was difficult for the Bishop to {124} remain a spectator of all these murderous onslaughts, but Livingstone strongly advised him not to interfere in tribal quarrels if he could avoid it. A little later the Bishop returned to the ship, and assured Livingstone that the Ajawa were more peaceably disposed. The latter heard the report with suspicions that proved well-founded. The Bishop went back to his station, and Livingstone’s thoughts were turned to the prospective arrival of the man-of-war that was to bring his own new vessel, the “Lake Nyassa,” as well as his wife, the Bishop’s sister, and some more members of the mission. The ship was spoken at the end of January, and among other passengers was the Rev. James Stewart, afterwards so well known as Dr. Stewart of Lovedale. He had come to represent the United Free Church of Scotland, and survey for a mission station. The Bishop had not appeared to meet his sister, and boats were despatched up river to find him. Miss Mackenzie and Mrs. Burrup, the wife of one of the Bishop’s colleagues, went with the boats. What they {125} actually found was the well-authenticated story that the Bishop and Mr. Burrup were dead of fever, after an expedition to rescue the captive husbands of some Manganja women. The blow to Livingstone was a crushing one, for though he had never been able wholly to approve the policy of the mission, he was too chivalrous to criticise in such an hour, and declared that had he been with the Bishop he might have done the same. “This will hurt us all,” he said prophetically, as the two sorrow-stricken women came back to Shupanga with the terrible tidings. He knew well that the Portuguese would misrepresent the object of missionary settlements to be to interfere among the tribes, and even to make use of military force, so adding to the mischief instead of abating it. “We must bow to the will of Him who doeth all things well,” he writes; “but I cannot help feeling sadly disturbed in view of the effect the news may have at home. I shall not swerve a hair’s-breadth from my work while life is spared.”

Some weeks were spent in arranging for {126} the return of the bereaved women, who did not sail for home till April 2nd. Meanwhile an even darker cloud of sorrow was preparing to break over Livingstone. His wife had only returned to him to die. She had been to Kuruman, where their youngest child was born. Then she had returned to Scotland to see the other children. But her longing to be at her husband’s side was intense, and at last she had come back to him. On April 21st she was taken ill with fever, and on the evening of Sunday, 27th, in the presence of Dr. Stewart and her husband she sank to rest. Dr. Stewart tells us how he found Livingstone “sitting by the side of a rude bed formed of boxes, but covered with a soft mattress, on which lay his dying wife.” For the first time in his life Livingstone says he would be content to die. He laid her to rest under a baobab tree on “Shupanga brae.” His diary reveals the agony of his heart. Henceforth “the red hills and white vales” of Shupanga are with him in all his wanderings. “In some other spot I may have looked at, my own resting-place may be {127} allotted. I have often wished that it might be in some far-off still deep forest, where I may sleep sweetly till the resurrection morn.” “I loved her when I married her, and the longer I lived with her the more I loved her.... Oh! my Mary, my Mary, how often we have longed for a quiet home, since you and I were cast adrift at Kolobeng; surely the removal by a kind Father who knoweth our frame means that He rewarded you by taking you to the best home, the eternal one in the Heavens.”

For such comfort as could be obtained in such dark days he turned again to his work. The fight against slavery is becoming more and more desperate. Even the navigation of the river is now a horror. The waters are ghastly with corpses. “The paddles had to be cleared of bodies caught in the floats at night.” Human skeletons were found in all directions. “Many had ended their misery under shady trees, others under projecting crags in the hills, while others lay in their huts with closed doors which, when opened, disclosed the mouldering corpse with the {128} poor cloth round the loins, the skull fallen off the pillow, the little skeleton of the child that had perished first rolled up in a mat between two large skeletons.” Eighteen months before, this was a well-peopled valley, now it is a desert “literally strewn with human bones.” To complete his despair the mission of Bishop Mackenzie is removed, by order, to Zanzibar, despite Livingstone’s urgent entreaty; and finally, in July, 1863, he himself received from Lord Russell the news that he was recalled. He does not blame the Government. He has expected this. But the bitterness is that “900 miles of coast are abandoned to those who were the first to begin the slave-trade, and seem determined to be the last to abandon it.”

His instructions as to handing back the “Pioneer” to the Government men were quite explicit, and it was clear that he had little time left in Africa. Yet before he returned to England he accomplished two feats that would have made the reputation of any other man. With only one white colleague and five Makololo he marched seven hundred and {129} sixty miles in fifty-five days, getting to within ten days’ march of Lake Bangweolo or Bemba, and the village of Ilala, where years later his own heart was to be buried. He would have reached the lake but for the duty of fulfilling his instructions from the Government. The second great feat was on the ocean. He had to face the problem of his own admirable little steamer, the “Lake Nyassa.” She had cost him a fortune and he needed the money. He could have sold her as a slave-vessel, but sooner than do that he would sink her in the Indian Ocean. After many adventures he gets her to Zanzibar, but cannot get a fair price. The one chance left is to sail her across the Indian Ocean and sell her in Bombay. It was the wildest adventure, but it was worthy of him. He could take but fourteen tons of coal, and the distance was 2,500 miles. The crew consisted of himself, a stoker, a carpenter, and a sailor, seven native Zanzibarians, and two “boys,” one of whom was Chumah, who was with him on his last march. The voyage took forty-five days, much of it marked by {130} dead calm, but the latter part by furious squalls. The sails were torn, and the little boat nearly rolled right over. But “God’s good providence” is “over us,” and on June 13th, 1864, they creep into the harbour through the fog, their entrance being unobserved.

He stays in Bombay a short time, interesting the merchants in East African trade. Then he takes ship for England, where he arrived on July 21st.

The Livingstone who thus returned for his last visit home was in some respects a very altered man from the one who took England by storm at the close of his first great explorations. He had suffered severe personal losses. His wife’s death had left him lonely and sad, with the deep and lasting sadness of a strong nature. His grief and disappointment over the tragedy of the Universities’ Mission had left their mark upon him. But two experiences had changed his outlook even more radically. In the first place he had seen the limitations inseparable from the life of a Government {131} official. His position as a Consul had not helped him, while at the same time it had made his attitude towards the Portuguese more difficult. He could not be his own free and independent self when the relations of two European Powers were at stake. His recall was something of a relief. He was now unmuzzled: and gentle and kindly as his spirit was, Livingstone was capable of what we may dare to speak of as “the wrath of the Lamb.” It becomes more and more evident during this visit that his heart had turned back in full affection to his original vocation and work as a missionary; and when the next negotiations were opened up with him, he bluntly avows his determination to return only on the condition that he may pursue his travels in that capacity. The second experience was, of course, his full contact with all the indescribable villainies of the slave trade. He had seen enough of the miseries it involved during his journey to Loanda; but the West Coast was vigilantly watched by English cruisers, and the slave trade {132} reduced to comparatively small proportions. On the East Coast, Portugal was in authority; and her connivance and sympathy were responsible for the vast extent of the operations of the raiders. Livingstone came back to England in the grip of a great and noble passion—a fiery indignation against the barbarities of this traffic in flesh and blood; and he sternly resolved to fight it single-handed if need be. He had no heart to pursue purely scientific observations or geographical explorations to gratify the intellectuals, while Africa was being desolated and her population laid waste. The great public might complain that he no longer tickled their ears with thrilling or amusing descriptions of adventures: he was, as Mr. Thomas Hughes truly said, “a great Puritan traveller,” and the moral ends of his labours remained with him ever supreme. With such a fire consuming him, it may easily be realised that he found the Foreign Office “cold.” The year was 1864. America was washing out the guilt of centuries in the blood of {133} her bravest and best. Livingstone’s own boy, Robert, who had been somewhat erratic, had heard his call, and was fighting in the Federal ranks on his way to a grave in Gettysburg Cemetery. Never in the history of the world had slavery revealed itself so convincingly as a hideous cancer in the social system. But official England was “cold.” She had begun by believing that Jeff Davis was making a nation; she had reached the stage of chill condescension towards Abraham Lincoln, for whom Livingstone had a true man’s admiration and affection. The Foreign Office was in no mind to take an heroic line, and was, no doubt, heartily relieved that Livingstone had not made a greater fuss about his recall.

It was not to make a fuss about his personal affairs, however, that Livingstone had come home. The “fuss” was to be about his friends, the natives, who were being done to death in thousands, and the residue sold into degradation and forced labour. He opened the battle in a lecture to the British {134} Association at Bath; and so effective an opening was it, that the Portuguese had to put up Senhor Lacerda, the traveller, to declare that it was “manifest that Dr. Livingstone, under the pretext of propagating the Word of God, and the advancement of geographical and natural science,” was bent on robbing Portugal of the “advantages of the rich commerce of the interior.” “Rich commerce” is good! The learned Senhor goes on to urge that Livingstone’s “audacious and mischievous actions” ought to be “restrained.” This was a pretty plain hint to the Portuguese authorities, and not lost on them, as we shall see. The next move in the war lay with Livingstone. This was the book in which he proposed to lay the whole scandal bare. He wrote this book at Newstead Abbey, the home of his hospitable friends, Mr. and Mrs. Webb, the former of whom was a noted African hunter. The day he finished his book was the day when Lincoln was assassinated in Washington.

The book finished, he was to settle a {135} question which Sir Roderick Murchison had raised with him, of a return to Africa for purely geographical purposes. Livingstone is all eagerness to return, and the line of exploration suggested on the inland lakes appeals to him strongly, but he answers that he can only feel in the way of duty by working as a missionary. He writes to Mr. James Young, “I would not consent to go simply as a geographer, but as a missionary, and do geography by the way, because I feel I am in the way of duty when trying either to enlighten these poor people, or open their land to lawful commerce.” Later on came an informal request from Lord Palmerston to know what he could do for him. It may be doubted whether that decidedly worldly statesman ever anticipated so disinterested a reply as he received. Instead of bargaining for salary or pension, Livingstone replied that he wanted but one thing; “free access to the highlands by the Zambesi and Shiré to be secured by a treaty with Portugal.” Governments find those men easiest to deal with who are satisfied with a lump sum down. {136}

In the interval of fixing up his arrangements with the Government and the Royal Geographical Society, Livingstone had a personal sorrow in the death of his mother at the age of eighty-two. He was glad, however, to be at home to fulfil her wish that “one of her laddies should lay her head in the grave.” After that, he visited the school which his children attended, and made a short speech. The last words he uttered in public in Scotland were the simple ones, “Fear God and work hard.”

The negotiations in regard to his new work were finally completed. The Government gave £500, and the Royal Geographical Society an equal sum. A private friend added a thousand pounds. This was all, except that he was to be the unsalaried Consul with power over the chiefs on the coast between Portuguese territory and Abyssinia. He was also warned to expect no pension. It is useless now to indulge in belated indignation over these very unhandsome terms. Probably if they were put into plain black and white they meant that the {137} great British Government presented David Livingstone with £500 and a sphere of influence to keep him from making mischief with the Portuguese by expressing honest British hatred of the slave trade; while the Geographical Society hoped to tie him up to geographical work, and so prevent him wasting his time and talents on fatuous missionary enterprises. What actually happened we shall see in due course. Meanwhile Livingstone’s own personal plan was to sell his steamer at Bombay in order to make up the deficiency in the cost of his new expedition due to the financial economy of a lukewarm Government. It was for Bombay accordingly that he departed in August, 1865. He never saw these shores again. {138}

CHAPTER VII

When Livingstone arrived in Bombay in September, Sir Bartle Frere was Governor. They were old friends, and the Governor became his very sympathetic host. His immediate purpose was to dispose of the “Lake Nyassa” for what she would fetch. This proved to be £2,600, for a steamer that had cost him £6,000. It was a poor bargain, but he was not in a position to refuse it, and as things turned out he got no good out of it. He deposited the money in an Indian bank which in a few weeks failed miserably, and Livingstone’s money was seen no more. As he cared for money less than any man, he did not allow himself to be unduly depressed by this misfortune. “The whole of the money she cost,” he wrote, “was dedicated to the great cause for which {139} she was built: we are not responsible for results.” His preparations in Bombay for the forthcoming expedition were, for him, quite elaborate; and we may add at once gave little satisfaction in the sequel. There is a training school under Government for Africans at Nassick. Nine of the men volunteered to go with him. Besides these, he was supplied with sepoys from the “Marine Battalion.” He was assured that they had been accustomed to rough it in various ways. In practice they would only march five miles a day, were “notorious skulkers,” and disgusted Livingstone by their cruelty to the brute beasts. It was not long before he dismissed them to their homes. The Nassick “boys” were not much more manageable. The expedition included ten Johanna men who were only a moderate success, two Shupanga men—including Susi—and two Wayaus—including Chumah. Susi and Chumah, it will be remembered, were with him at the last. Chumah was a liberated slave who owed his freedom to Livingstone and Bishop Mackenzie in 1861. The expe {140} dition was further distinguished by a number of animals imported by Livingstone from India: six camels, three buffaloes and a calf, two mules and four donkeys. He was anxious to prove that camels were immune from the bites of the tsetse flies, and he expected to acclimatise the other beasts, and teach some native chief to breed them. The Sultan of Zanzibar was cordial, and armed Livingstone with a letter to be used as a passport. Then he took his leave, and on the 22nd of March he is at the mouth of the Rovuma with all his caravan complete. The navigation of the shallow river proved unexpectedly difficult, and occasioned tedious delay and some anxiety; so at last he sails north again and gets all his animals landed in Mikindany Bay. He is too old a traveller not to realise that his troubles are all in front of him; but he does not anticipate them; and writes in high spirits of the joy of setting out once more into wild and unexplored country.

As David Livingstone is now starting on his last and greatest march, which was to be {141} lengthened out year after year, and to be signalised by unparalleled sufferings and heroic endurance, it will be well to acquaint ourselves with such plans as he had somewhat vaguely laid down. He realised that there are three great main waterways into the African interior: the Congo, the Zambesi, and the Nile. He was satisfied that no future exploration could do other than confirm his conclusions as to the watershed which he had traversed, from which certain rivers flowed north to the Congo, and certain others south to the Zambesi. But from earliest times the scientific imagination had been captured by the problem of the sources of the Nile. This was the greatest of all unsolved geographical problems; and to it Livingstone was attracted irresistibly, not only by his own native curiosity, but by that interest in classical questions which was a very marked characteristic of his mind. To this problem he knew that the system of inland lakes was the clue, and that whoever could completely explore them would settle the question for all time and “make himself {142} an everlasting name.” That he would have numberless opportunities of proclaiming Christ to the scattered peoples of the interior, and would cut across the slave routes and perhaps be able to scheme out how to defeat the devilish purposes of the slavers, were motives with him even more powerful. So he got his caravan under way, marched south to Rovuma, and then south-west across the four hundred miles of country that lay between the coast and Lake Nyassa.

The first stages were made miserable to Livingstone by the brutality of the sepoys to the dumb beasts. They were overloaded and overstrained and cruelly maltreated. Some of them die of sores, which the sepoys insist are caused by tsetse or by accidents. Meanwhile progress is depressingly slow; the district through which the expedition passes is famine-stricken, and food is most difficult to obtain. The sepoys go from bad to worse, and in two months are openly mutinous. They kill one camel, beating it over the head; and set themselves to corrupt {143} the Nassick boys so as to tire Livingstone out. For weeks together it is nothing but one endless struggle on the part of the leader against this conspiracy to defeat his plans. Sometimes he tries the offer of increased wages; sometimes the threat of corporal punishment, but the indolence, cruelty, and illwill of the sepoys threaten the success of the expedition, and the spirit of disaffection spreads to the Nassick boys.

It is the 19th of June: “We passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree and dead. The people of the country explained that she had been unable to keep up with the other slaves in a gang.... I may mention here that we saw others tied up in a similar manner, and one lying in the path, shot or stabbed, for she was in a pool of blood.” They were on the red trail now, and Livingstone’s feet never left it till death brought him release.

On the 27th of June they found “a number of slaves with slave-sticks on, abandoned by their masters from want of food; they were too weak to be able to {144} speak or to say where they had come from; some were quite young.”

The middle of July found them in Mataka’s country, with whom Livingstone made fast friends. The town lay in an elevated valley surrounded by mountains; and food was plentiful, so that they were able to make up for many privations. It was here that Livingstone resolved to send the sepoys back. They had become quite intolerable—shirking work, stealing, and infecting all the company with their ill-nature. One of the incidents that most pleased Livingstone during his stay with Mataka was the release by the chief of a large company of slaves. The expedition left for Lake Nyassa on July 28th. It was mountainous travelling now, but the country between them and the lake was under Mataka, and his guides were sworn to take them safely. Progress was still slow, though decidedly more pleasant in the absence of the sepoys. Sometimes they came on Arab encampments, where the slaves were herded in great pens—from 300 to 800 form a gang, according to Livingston {145} e’s estimate. As they drew near the lake, food was plentiful and game abundant. On August 8th, “we came to the lake at the confluence of the Misinjé, and felt grateful to that Hand which had protected us thus far on our journey. It was as if I had come back to an old home I never expected again to see; and pleasant to bathe in the delicious waters again, hear the roar of the sea, and dash in the rollers ... I feel quite exhilarated.” It had taken four months to reach Lake Nyassa from the coast.

Livingstone’s plan had been to cross the lake by means of Arab dhows, and resume explorations on the west side. But the Arabs fled from him as from the plague, and took every care that no dhows were at his disposal; so he was driven to march round to the foot of the lake, where he was again on familiar ground, and utters anew his lamentations over the untimely end of the Universities’ Mission, which he had always seen in his mind’s eye standing sentinel over this great inland sea, and holding the country for Christ and freedom. {146}

The end of September finds the expedition on the Shiré; and now rumour reaches them of wars and troubles ahead, which causes the Johanna men to desert in a body, and Livingstone does not indulge in many regrets. They were “inveterate thieves;” but he is left with a party inconveniently small. The sequel to this treachery on the part of the Johanna men was that, to justify themselves, they invented and circulated a most plausible and circumstantial story of Livingstone’s murder—a story which imposed upon many of his friends and produced a crop of laudatory obituary notices in the papers. The story was as thoroughly disbelieved by Livingstone’s old friend, Mr. E. D. Young, who well knew how the leader of these men could lie. Mr. Young came out to Africa at once, bringing with him a steel boat, the “Search,” which, by the aid of some Makololo men, was successfully transported to Lake Nyassa and floated there. Mr. Young effectually disproved the Johanna legend, and in eight months was back {147} again in England, having discovered that Livingstone had passed safely on toward the north-west.

The depleted expedition found itself now in very mountainous regions, and enjoyed the noble prospects afforded from many of the high plateaux which they reached. Their faces were to the north, towards the Loangwa River and the distant Lake Tanganyika. No opportunity is lost by the way of preaching to all the tribes “our relationship to our Father; His love for all His children; the guilt of selling any of His children—the consequence: e.g. , it begets war, for they don’t like to sell their own, and steal from other villages, who retaliate.” Going west from the lake they followed a very zigzag course, crossing many rivers which flow into the Lintipé, which is one of the main supplies of Lake Nyassa. They kept to the north of the fine Zalanyama range, and pushed on in a north-westerly direction. All the while a state of fear existed in regard to the dreaded Mazitu, who were reported to be {148} making forays, and whom Livingstone compared to the Highland Celts in the twelfth century in the Border country. By the middle of December they had reached the Loangwa, and crossed it in search of food. Christmas Day was spent wretchedly, the goats having been stolen, and Livingstone’s favourite milk-diet being at an end. A ridge of mountain country has to be crossed, after which they are compelled to bear to the east in search of food, which has become very scarce again, and all the party are suffering. The last day of 1866 is sacred to some new resolutions: “Will try to do better in 1867, and be better—more gentle and loving; and may the Almighty, to Whom I commit my way, bring my desires to pass and prosper me. Let all the sin of ’66 be blotted out for Jesus’ sake.”

January 1st, 1867. —“May He who was full of grace and truth impress His character on mine. Grace—eagerness to show favour; truth—truthfulness, sincerity, honour—for His mercy’s sake. {149} ”

The year opens with “a set-in rain.” He records that he feels always hungry, and is constantly dreaming of better food when he should be sleeping. On the 10th he takes his belt up three holes to relieve hunger. On the 15th he suffers the loss of his “poor little dog, Chitané,” to which he was greatly attached. Everywhere it is famine, and famine prices for wretched food. They boil grain and pretend it is coffee. The ground is all sloppy—feet constantly wet. The natives are living on mushrooms and leaves. Then comes the crowning disaster. Two men who had joined the expedition deserted, and absconded with the medicine chest. It was in the midst of the forest and there was not the shadow of a chance of recovering it. There is little doubt that the lack of any proper medicines to counteract the fever poison was a main contributory cause to Livingstone’s serious loss of health. “I felt as if I had now received sentence of death, like poor Bishop Mackenzie,” he writes. Yet even in the hour of despair he searches for some support for optimism, and the Pro {150} vidential order which he knows to exist. “This may turn out for the best by taking away a source of suspicion among more superstitious, charm-dreading people further north.” On January 23rd he remarks that “an incessant hunger teases us ... real, lasting hunger and faintness.” Yet next day it was a case of “four hours through unbroken, dark forest.” But they have reached the Chambezé now, lean and starved and desperate, and there is prospect of food on the other side. They found the food a little later, but “in changing my dress this morning I was frightened at my own emaciation.”

The expedition made a lengthy stay with the chief, Chitapangwa, who on the whole treated them well, and sent men to set them on their way to Lake Tanganyika. The same steady tramp, tramp continues. Always we seem to hear what Dr. Isaac Taylor described as “the forward tread ... which means getting there”; but it is terrible work. He has had rheumatic fever again; and no medicine! On March 10th he writes: “I {151} have been ill of fever ... every step I take jars in the chest, and I am very weak; I can scarcely keep in the march though formerly I was always first.... I have a constant singing in the ears, and can scarcely hear the loud tick of the chronometers.” Still he will go on with the rest; and at last, on the first day of April, they are at Tanganyika, or, as it is called at the southern end, Lake Liemba. It has been good marching under the most trying conditions. The veteran traveller has gone from the south of Lake Nyassa to the south of Lake Tanganyika in six months. Ill as he is, he is deeply impressed by the loveliness of the scenery. Mountains running up to 2,000 feet surround the southern portion, “and there, embosomed in tree-covered rocks, reposes the lake peacefully in the huge cup-shaped cavity.” Again he writes: “It lies in a deep basin whose sides are nearly perpendicular, but covered well with trees: the rocks which appear are bright red argillaceous schist: the trees at present all green: down some of these rocks come beautiful cascades, and buffaloes, elephants, and antelopes wander and graze on {152} the more level spots.” It is an enchanted country; but the getting there has, in the absence of medicines, nearly killed him. “I feel deeply thankful at having got so far. I am excessively weak and cannot walk without tottering, and have constant singing in the head. But the Highest will lead me further. ” After a few days spent at the lake, Livingstone’s illness assumes a most alarming form. He has “a fit of insensibility,” finds himself “floundering outside the hut and unable to get in,” and finally falls back heavily on his head. The boys carried him in, but hours passed before he could recognise where he was.

He is a little better a fortnight later, and anxious to move on. But whither? He had intended to follow the lake to the north-west; but the road seems barred by the Mazitu, who are out for plunder. He has heard of Lake Moero, which lies to the west some two hundred, or two hundred and fifty miles. Is it not possible that this lake may be the common source of the Congo and the Nile? The geographical problem is {153} most persistent, and he cannot be satisfied to leave Lake Moero unexplored. On the first day’s march he has another fit of insensibility, but this does not constitute an argument for delay. He reached the village of a chief Chitimba, only to find that the country between him and Lake Moero is the scene of a small war, which would involve “a long détour round the disturbed district.” He decides to wait events, which turns out to be a tedious business; but the Arabs are kind to him, and the enforced leisure is probably beneficial. His diary is full of descriptions of the cruelties inflicted by the slave-trade. In all, he was detained at Chitimba’s village nearly three months and a half. In his onward march he visits the famous Nsama, with whom the war has been waged, and is again laid up with illness in that neighbourhood. After this, he crosses the Chisera and the Choma, and then ascends the high lands between the rivers and the northern part of the lake. It is exhilarating travelling here, for Livingstone is always pleasantly excited by beautiful and hilly {154} scenery which brings back memories of Scotland. But, alas! “the long line of slaves and carriers” is a frequent incident in the march. On the 8th of November, he reaches Lake Moero, “which seems of goodly size, and is flanked by ranges of mountains on the east and west.” There he sleeps in a fisherman’s hut, for the lake abounds in fish, the fishermen enumerating thirty-nine varieties. The end of November finds him at the town of Casembe, where he meets an Arab trader, Mohamad Bogharib, “with an immense number of slaves,” who gives him a meal—the first honey and sugar he had tasted for fourteen months—and is useful to him in many ways. The chief also is civil to Livingstone; but has been guilty of hateful barbarities, as the mutilated arms and ears of many of his people bear witness. Livingstone looks with disgust on the executioner who carries sword and scissors for his horrible work. The people generally are more savage than any he has seen.

The results of extended explorations of Lake Moero, lasting for some months, are set {155} forth in a despatch to Lord Clarendon, dated the 10th of December, 1867. From this despatch we can see that Livingstone had been misled by a similarity of name to imagine that Lake Bemba, of which he had heard years before, was the same as Lake Liemba. He now knows that Lake Liemba is only the southern portion of Lake Tanganyika; and that Lake Bemba is the lake otherwise called Lake Bangweolo; and that on his northern travels from Lake Nyassa, when he crossed the River Chambezé, he had been less than a hundred miles from this latter lake, and might have saved himself many a hundred miles of trudging had he explored it first of all. He had discovered also, that a great river, the Luapula, flows from Lake Bangweolo into the south of Lake Moero, and that at the north the waters flow out in what is called the River Lualaba. He is uncertain in his own mind what this great river Lualaba is, and whither it goes. It may be the Nile; it seems more probable that it is the Congo. It may flow into the northern portion of Lake Tan {156} ganyika, or it may flow away to the north-west. Livingstone is assured by the natives that Lake Bangweolo is only ten days distant. But he adds, “I am so tired of exploration without a word from home or anywhere else for two years, that I must go to Ujiji on Tanganyika for letters before doing anything else. Besides, there is another reason—I have no medicine.” He is satirical on the subject of the published maps, one of which tacks on 200 miles to Lake Nyassa, and another makes a river—“the new Zambesi”—flow 4,000 feet up hill! “I have walked over both these mental abortions and did not know that I was walking on water till I saw them in the maps.”

The year 1868 finds him still interested in Lake Moero. His New Year’s prayer is: “If I am to die this year, prepare me for it.”

It was towards the end of March that the idea of going south and exploring Lake Bangweolo took hold on him. His reason was that at least two more months must be passed at Lake Moero before a passage could {157} be made to Ujiji. There were many difficulties in the way, notably that his stores were nearly done and he could not give presents to chiefs on the way. What was more serious was that those on whose help he counted were in open revolt against his plan. Mohamad Bogharib, who intended to accompany him to Ujiji, was incensed at Livingstone for making a proposal so mad; and the latter expresses the fear that he must give up Lake Bangweolo for the present. Next day, however, he is bent on going, but his own carriers have been corrupted by the Arabs, and refuse to accompany him. Only five of his men remain loyal; but Livingstone’s blood is up now, and he starts out at the head of this meagre escort to find Lake Bemba or Bangweolo. “I did not blame them very severely in my own mind for absconding,” he writes; “they were tired of tramping, and so verily am I.” They might well resent Livingstone’s decision, for at the time it was taken they were at the north end of Lake Moero, where Livingstone had gone to look at Lualaba, examine the country, {158} and draw his conclusions as to whether this great river was the Congo or the Nile. The way to Tanganyika and Ujiji was now open, and this sudden turn south was almost more than flesh and blood could stand. However, the leader was obdurate, and early in May, with his faithful few, he is back at Casembe’s, to the south of Moero, with his mind fully made up for Bangweolo. Again there were tedious delays, and it is the second week in June before he is definitely off for the south. A month’s travelling brings him to Lake Bangweolo. A Babisa traveller asked him why he had come so far, and he answered that he wished to make the country and people better known to the rest of the world; that we were all children of one Father, and that he was anxious that we should know each other better, and that friendly visits should be made in safety. He began exploring the islands of the lake. It was bitterly cold on one of them, and the shed where he slept was decidedly airy, but he tells us that he was soon asleep and dreamed that he had apartments in Mivart’s Hotel! {159} At the end of July he started back, and at Kizinga he deviated from his former route and struck out to the north for the Kalongosi River. All goes well, and by the first of November be is back again at the north of Moero, preparing to march to Ujiji, and intently preoccupied with the problem of the Nile. The men who had deserted him when he went south are now pleading to be taken back. He reflects that “more enlightened people often take advantage of men in similar circumstances,” and adds characteristically, “I have faults myself.” So all the runaways are reinstated.

The expedition would have got away now without further delay but that the slave raids of Mohamad Bogharib’s men roused the countryside against him, and Livingstone found himself at the very centre of a small war, and literally in the zone of fire. Stockades were hastily erected, and the perpetrators of the outrage had to stand a siege. Horrible scenes were witnessed, and Livingstone comments on the miseries which this devilish traffic entails. The country is now very {160} disturbed and unsafe, and it is not till December 11th that a start can be made. Mr. Waller describes the “motley group” that now set out for Tanganyika: “Mohamad and his friends, a gang of Unyamwezi hangers-on, and strings of wretched slaves yolked together in their heavy slave-sticks. Some carry ivory, others copper or food for the march, whilst hope, and fear, misery and villainy may be read off the various faces.” Livingstone is now an actual eye-witness of a slave march. The slaves constantly escape. Sickness and accidents pursue the miserable cavalcade, and make progress slow. Food for so many mouths is difficult to obtain. Christmas Day passes in a land of scarcity. The weather is very damp and cheerless; and on New Year’s Day Livingstone, as he says, got wet through once too often. Yet he is so anxious to be on the far side of the Lofuko that he wades through, though it is waist deep and very cold. This is the last straw. He breaks down utterly, is “very ill all over; cannot walk; pneumonia of right lung, and I cough all day {161}

and all night; sputa rust of iron, and bloody; distressing weakness.” He chronicles the illusions that come and go; sees himself lying dead on the way to Ujiji, and all the letters waiting for him useless. It seems as if he is near the end. Mohamad Bogharib constructs a kind of litter for the helpless veteran, and in this litter he is carried forward four hours a day. It is the best that can be done; but Livingstone tells of the pain he endured as he was jolted along, sometimes through steep ravines and sometimes over volcanic tufa, the feet of the carriers being at times hurt with thorns, and the sun beating down on Livingstone’s face and head, which in his weakness he could not even shelter with a bunch of leaves. For six endless weeks the sufferer was borne onward thus, and on February 14th all that is left of him is deposited on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, and canoes are sought to transport the party up the lake to Ujiji. It was stormy weather on the lake, and the canoes had to creep along the western shore from village to village—“Patience was never needed more than now, {163} ” writes the sick man in his extremity—then across the lake to the east, and at last, March 14th, the heroic traveller reaches his goal, and does actually stand for the first time in the streets of Ujiji. He had fixed so many hopes on this Arab settlement, and had lived for so long on the anticipation of letters and journals, stores and medicines, that the disappointment awaiting him was heartrending. He had reached a den of thieves, the vilest he had ever known. His stores were plundered—only eighteen pieces of cloth out of eighty remained, and what was harder to bear, only one old letter out of all that had been sent to him. As for the medicines, he is told they are at Unyanyembe, thirteen days to the east. He knew quite well that there was a conspiracy to thwart him, and if possible to drive him out of the country or compass his death. He was fighting the slave trade single-handed, and was ringed around by cruel and unscrupulous enemies, whose dark deeds had only him to fear. He is almost beaten in the unequal strife; almost, but never quite. No man was ever yet quite beaten who is as {164} sure of Christ as he was. He has one thing to rely on, as he said before—“the word of a Gentleman of the strictest honour”—and it is enough. So he will remain and outwit the slave-traders if he can. And yet it is a misnomer to call it a “trade”; “it is not a trade, but a system of consecutive murders.”

He did not know, though he suspected, how helpless he was in the hands of the Arabs. His bitter cry could not reach England. Forty letters he wrote, and paid handsomely for their delivery, but the Arabs took care they should never reach the coast. He was literally “cut off” in the interior. He heard nothing from Europe, and Europe heard nothing of him. A few weeks at Ujiji were enough. Then, all unfit as he was, he starts out again for the country in the north-west, the land of the Manyuema, and the great river Lualaba, the direction of which it is his main purpose now to determine. He still believes it is the Nile. {165}

CHAPTER VIII

When Livingstone crossed Tanganyika again to the west and disappeared into the new country, he certainly did not propose to himself more than an eight or nine months’ absence. In reality he left Ujiji on July 12th, 1869, and saw it no more until October 23rd, 1871. For two years and a quarter he wandered on, while the great world believed him to be dead; and, perhaps, if we had to name one period of his life which was more poignant and more fruitful than any other, it was this. For out of its agonies a new hope was born for humanity. His health returns somewhat as he goes on, though many signs remind him that he is not the man he was. He is only fifty-six, but he is worn out with hardship and privation. He cannot walk up-hill without panting for {166} breath. His cheeks are hollow, and his teeth are broken, or have fallen out, from trying to masticate hard and sticky food. “If you expect a kiss from me,” he writes to his daughter Agnes, “you must take it through a speaking-trumpet!”

The 21st of September sees him at Bambarré, the capital of the Manyuema country, noting with thankfulness that as he perseveres his strength increases. In front of him is the Luamo River, flowing west to its confluence with the Lualaba, which again is not far distant. He might have fulfilled his ambition to navigate the Lualaba now, but could get no canoes—“all are our enemies’ ” —and so returned reluctantly to Bambarré. It was from Bambarré that he wrote two letters—they were probably posted months later—which actually got through the Arab cordon, and eventually reached their owners. One was to his son Tom. He tells of his hopes to go down the Lualaba; but he has frightful ulcers on his feet “from wading in mud.” Another to Sir Thomas Maclear, which is more explicit as to his {167} plans. “I have to go down and see where the two arms unite—the lost city Meroe ought to be there—then get back to Ujiji to get a supply of goods which I have ordered from Zanzibar, turn bankrupt after I secure them, and let my creditors catch me if they can, as I finish up by going outside and south of all the sources, so that I may be sure none will cut me out and say he found other sources south of mine.... I have still a seriously long task before me.” To his daughter Agnes, whose courage he never failed to praise, he writes: “The death knell of American slavery was rung by a woman’s hand. We great he-beasts say Mrs. Stowe exaggerated. From what I have seen of slavery I say exaggeration is a simple impossibility. I go with the sailor who, on seeing slave-traders, said: ‘If the devil don’t catch those fellows we might as well have no devil at all.’ ”

After Christmas he goes away to the north, and discovers the Chanya range. Marching through rank jungle, and suffering much from fever, and “choleraic symptoms, {168} ” he turns south again, and on the 7th of February goes into winter quarters at Mamohela. Mohamad is still with him, but goes off at this stage in search of ivory. The entries in his diary are now few, but on June 26th the winter season is evidently over and he proposes to start once again for the Lualaba. Once more, however, he has to reckon with a revolt of his men, who desert, with the exception of three, among whom are the ever-faithful Susi and Chumah. The path this time is to the north-west. It is difficult and hazardous, but the situation is relieved by the timely arrival of Mohamad Bogharib. It was well, for Livingstone was at the end of his strength. “Flooded rivers, breast and neck deep, had to be crossed, and the mud was awful.” His feet “failed him” for the first time in his life. “Irritable, eating ulcers fastened on both feet.” In indescribable pain, he “limped back to Bambarré.” This was on July 22, 1870.

For the next eighty days he was a prisoner in his hut. He could do nothing but think, {169}

read the Bible, and pray. He read the Bible through four times during his stay in the Manyuema country. He was fascinated by the personality of Moses and his connection with the Nile; and thinks favourably of the legend that associates him with the lost city, Meroe, at the junction of the two rivers Lualaba. He meditates tenderly on the stratagem of the “old Nile” hiding its head so cunningly, and baffling so many human efforts. One of his resources is the Soko, a kind of gorilla, often made captive. It is physically repulsive to him, but it interests him as a naturalist; and later on he becomes possessed of one, which he pets and proposes to take back to Europe. When most helpless he sketches out his future; and in imagination names certain lakes and rivers after old English friends and benefactors—Palmerston, Webb, and Young; and one lake after the great Lincoln. On the 10th of October, he is able for the first time to crawl out of his hut. On the 25th he makes this significant entry in his journal: “In this journey I have endeavoured to follow with {171} unswerving fidelity the line of duty. All the hardship, hunger and toil were met with the full conviction that I was right in persevering to make a complete work of the exploration of the sources of the Nile. The prospect of death in pursuing what I knew to be right did not make me veer to one side or the other.” Never had any man a better right to use such words.

He is waiting now for the arrival of Syde bin Habib, Dugumbé, and others who are bringing him letters and medicines from Ujiji. Months pass and there is no sign of them. He is heartsick and weary with the intolerable delay. The one excitement is in the shedding of blood. Every day has its story of horrors, and he can bear it no longer. But there are to be darker tragedies yet before he escapes out of the Manyuema country.

It was February before the men arrived who were bringing letters and stores for him; but, alas! “only one letter reached, and forty {172} are missing.” The men, too, have been corrupted by the Arabs, and refuse to go north with him. He is again outwitted by his cunning foes. Weary days of bargaining follow, and at last terms are arranged. The expedition starts, and on March 29th Livingstone is at Nyangwé on the bank of the Lualaba, the furthest point westward that he was to reach at this time. He finds the Lualaba here “a mighty river 3,000 yards broad.”

Livingstone was to learn to his cost that the men who had been sent up country to him, ostensibly to help him on his way, were his worst enemies. They poisoned the minds of the Manyuema against him. They stirred up strife, and were guilty of every kind of crime. All Livingstone’s efforts to get canoes for exploring the river were neutralised by them; though he afterwards saw in this the hand of God for his deliverance, for other canoes were lost in the rapids. “We don’t always know the dangers we are guided past.”

We now reach the event which was the {173} climax of Livingstone’s moral sufferings, and which, when known in Europe, sent a thrill of horror through the nations which had heard of the lesser agonies of the slave traffic with comparative indifference. On the 28th of June, one of Syde bin Habib’s slaves, named Manilla, set fire to eight or ten villages, alleging an old debt by way of an excuse. He then made blood-brotherhood with other tribes, which angered Dugumbé and his followers, who planned revenge. The 15th of July was a lovely summer day, and about 1,500 people came together for the market. Livingstone was strolling round observing the life in the market place, when three of Dugumbé’s men opened fire upon the assembled crowd, and another small troop began to shoot down the panic-stricken women as they fled to the canoes on the river. So many canoes were pushed off at once down the creek that they got jammed, and the murderers on the bank poured volley after volley into them. Numbers of the victims sprang into the water and swam out into the river. Many were hit and sank; {174} others were drowned. Canoes capsized and their occupants were lost. The Arabs reckoned the dead at four hundred; and even then the men who had tasted blood continued the awful butchery and fired village after village. “No one will ever know,” writes Livingstone, “the exact loss on this bright, sultry, summer morning; it gave me the impression of being in hell.” Dugumbé protested his innocence, and helped to save some who were drowning; but it is clear that Livingstone in his heart accuses him of complicity. He counted twelve burning villages; and on the next day sees as many as seventeen. “The open murder perpetrated on hundreds of unsuspecting women fills me with unspeakable horror.” It “felt to me like Gehenna,” he writes later; and the nightmare never left him afterwards. “I cannot stay here in agony,” he adds; and on the 20th he starts back for Ujiji, in spite of the entreaties of those who had every reason to desire that he should not go away and publish the story. The atrocious wickedness of the Arabs was {175}

that they demoralised their slaves, and trained them to perpetrate these butcheries of natives, and then excused themselves on the ground that they had nothing to do with the crime.

The homeward march lay through miles of villages, all burned; and it was impossible to convince the wretched survivors that he himself had not been guilty. Ambushes were laid to murder him and his party. A large spear “almost grazed my back.” Another spear missed him by only a foot. Two of his men were slain. A huge tree had been loosened at the roots, and almost fell upon him. Three times in one day he escaped death by a hair’s-breadth. So impressed were his people that they cried, “Peace! peace! you will finish your work in spite of everything.” He took it as an omen, and gave thanks to the “Almighty Preserver of men.” For five hours he ran the gauntlet, “perfectly indifferent whether I were killed or not.”

The march was pursued in great suffering through August and September, and on into {177} October. Once, he says, he felt like dying on his feet. He was profoundly shaken and depressed. The infamous traders succeeded, but he had failed, he alone, “and experienced worry, thwarting, baffling, when almost in sight of the end for which I strained.”

On the 23rd of October, reduced to a skeleton, “a mere ruckle of bones,” he arrived at Ujiji. Shereef, who had custody of his goods, had sold them all off. Shereef, says Livingstone, is “a moral idiot.” Little wonder that he feels like the man in the parable who fell among thieves, only, alas! there was no Good Samaritan. So he felt; but this time he was mistaken. “When my spirits were at their lowest ebb, the Good Samaritan was close at hand.” No part of his amazing story is better known. On the morning of October 28, 1871, Susi came running to him “at the top of his speed and gasped out, ‘an Englishman. I see him!’ ”

A caravan was approaching with the American flag flying over it. A few minutes and the stranger was in front of him, holding {178} out his hand, with the words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume!” It was Henry Morton Stanley, who had undertaken to find him, alive or dead. He had engaged to do so two years before; and he had kept his word. {179}

CHAPTER IX

In the middle of October, 1869, when Livingstone was at Bambarré in quest of the Lualaba, Mr. Stanley was travelling from Madrid to Paris in response to an urgent telegram from Mr. James Gordon Bennett, Jr., of the New York Herald . “Where do you think Livingstone is?” was Mr. Bennett’s query when Stanley arrived. The latter confessed his ignorance. The world in general seemed to be content to go on, regardless of Livingstone’s fate. Nobody knew for certain whether he was alive or dead. Mr. Bennett approached the question as a journalist. To find Livingstone was the most sensational feat that could be performed. Mr. Bennett probably underrated his own motive of humanity; but he felt that David Livingstone was good “copy, {180} ” and that if he were discovered the world would ring with the enterprise of the great paper with which he was honourably associated. His instructions to Mr. Stanley were of the simplest: “Spare no expense; spend all the money you want; only find Livingstone.” By a curious arrangement, Stanley was first of all to make a grand tour through Constantinople, Palestine, Egypt, India. That is why he did not cross to Zanzibar till the beginning of 1871. Livingstone might have reappeared in the interval, but there was no sign. Accordingly, Stanley organised an imposing expedition of nearly 200 persons in five caravans, with all kinds of stores, necessary and luxurious, and made for the interior by way of Unyanyembe. There he himself all but perished of fever, and afterwards escaped by a hand’s-breadth being made the victim of a war between the Arabs and the natives. However, he stuck to his errand and, as we have seen, arrived in Ujiji and greeted Livingstone just when the latter was most in need of the kind of {181}

cheer and aid that Stanley had brought. Five years had passed since Livingstone had had news of the outer world; and even now it is a question whether Stanley’s story to Livingstone or Livingstone’s to Stanley was the greater tale. Stanley brought news of the Franco-German War, of General Grant’s Presidency, of the electric cables laid, and, what touched Livingstone deeply, of a vote of £1,000 for supplies to him by the Government. So he was not entirely forgotten! Livingstone’s story was told by degrees—a story of which Stanley could be left to estimate the heroism and miraculous endurance. Never before or since has such a story of one lone man’s achievement been told to any listener. This was the man Stanley had found: this was the man he was now to save from despair and collapse. “You have brought me new life!” Livingstone kept saying; and it was true in every sense. For Stanley had brought him news, and food, and medicine, and comfort, and, above all, companionship. His recovery was remarkable. He began {183} to enjoy every luxury provided for him. He revelled in the descriptions of the history of the memorable five years, as Stanley described it in graphic fashion. He read and re-read his home letters. He luxuriated in clothes, new and clean and warm. The imagination loves to dwell on this oasis in the desert of his last years. He was supremely happy, full of laughter and anecdote; above all, full of gratitude to the resourceful and admiring friend who had dropped from the clouds to relieve his solitude and brace his soul for the final exploits. It was Stanley’s own testimony that this meeting, and the cheerful days that followed, seemed to take ten years off Livingstone’s age, and bring back the air of youth to his face and figure.

They planned together an exploration of the northern end of Lake Tanganyika. It was a “picnic,” or so Livingstone called it; and it was carried out in that spirit. The old explorer had always been convinced that Lake Tanganyika contributed its waters to the Nile. They found but one river at the {184} northern end, and that river flowed in , not out . Even so, he was not wholly convinced that his theory was unsound. There were incidents in the journey that revealed to the younger man Livingstone’s patience and forbearance, and the secret of his unique power in gentleness and the forgiving spirit. The impression made was never effaced.

Of the picture of Livingstone, drawn by Mr. Stanley’s sympathetic and accomplished hand, we shall have more to say in the final chapter. Meanwhile we only record that Stanley succeeded beyond all hopes in the first part of his mission, and as conspicuously failed in the second. The first part was to find Livingstone and minister to his needs. There is no manner of doubt that this mission was well and truly performed. Stanley’s repeated acts of generosity brought the tears to Livingstone’s eyes, and this “cold northerner,” as he called himself, was moved beyond words. From Stanley he also received abundance of stores and medicines, as well as a company of carriers sent back to him eventually from Zanzibar. {185} But as to the second part of the mission, which was to persuade Livingstone to go home at once, where honours and fortune awaited him, and his nearest and dearest were yearning to see him again—in this Stanley had no success. To return, and go wearily over many of his old tracks; to dare once again the perils of fever, the enmity of the slave trader, and the ignorant antagonism of savage peoples—this was the alternative programme, and he was resolute to carry it out. His problem was not yet fully solved; and, if he could help it, he would not carry mere half-baked theories back to England after five years of wandering and exile. When his daughter Agnes wrote, “Much as I wish you to come home, I had rather that you finished your work to your own satisfaction than return merely to gratify me,” he writes proudly in his journal: “Rightly and nobly said, my darling Nannie; vanity whispers pretty loudly, ‘She is a chip of the old block.’ My blessing on her, and all the rest.”

The plan then formed between the two {186} travellers was to return together to Unyanyembe, where Stanley had stores waiting. The latter would then push on rapidly to Zanzibar, and send back carriers for Livingstone’s new expedition. With these, the veteran proposed to return to a final examination of the sources of the great rivers, clear up the points still in dispute, and then turn his face home. They set out together at the end of the year 1871, and arrived after seven weeks’ travelling at Unyanyembe, on Feb. 18th, 1872. The march is prosaically recorded by Livingstone. The most frequent entries concern Stanley’s repeated attacks of fever. Occasionally he was so weak that he had to be carried. But for the tireless ministration of his great companion, and the cheering effect of his presence, which was worth many doses of quinine, Stanley might easily have succumbed. They reached their destination only to find that thieves had been active as usual, and that both Livingstone’s and Stanley’s stores had been extensively plundered. There was enough left, however, to make Livingstone feel rich: “I am {187} quite set up; and as soon as he can send me men, not slaves, from the coast, I go to my work, with a fair prospect of finishing it.”

The two friends remained together nearly a month at Unyanyembe. Letters and parcels arrived. Livingstone rejoices in “four flannel shirts from Agnes,” and “two pairs of fine English boots” from a friend. Despatches have to be written, articles for the New York Herald , and grateful letters to many American and English friends—all of which Stanley will take with him. At last, on March 14th, the time has come to say good-bye. Livingstone’s entry in his diary is characteristic: “Mr. Stanley leaves. I commit to his care my journal, sealed with five seals; the impressions on them are those of an American gold coin, anna and half-anna, and cake of paint with royal arms. Positively not to be opened.” All that one man (naturally reticent and reserved) could say of the limitless kindness shown by Stanley, and the noble interest taken by America, Livingstone expressed in his private {188} letters. It is to Stanley’s picturesque pen that we owe the description of the final parting, and we may well quote a few sentences from it:—“My days seem to have been spent in an Elysian field; otherwise, why should I so keenly regret the near approach of the parting hour? Have I not been battered by successive fevers, prostrate with agony day after day lately? Have I not raved and stormed in madness? Have I not clenched my fists in fury, and fought with the wild strength of despair when in delirium? Yet I regret to surrender the pleasure I have felt in this man’s society, though so dearly purchased.... March 14th.—We had a sad breakfast together. I could not eat, my heart was too full; neither did my companion seem to have an appetite. We found something to do which kept us longer together. At eight o’clock I was not gone, and I had thought to have been off at 5 a.m.” But the final parting must be faced. The Doctor will walk out a little way with his friend, and start him on his journey. The carriers were in lively mood, singing on the march. The {189} two friends walked side by side, Stanley searching Livingstone’s features to impress every detail on his memory. At last he halts. “Now, my dear Doctor, the best friends must part; you have come far enough, let me beg of you to turn back.” “Well,” Livingstone replied, “I will say this of you: you have done what few men could do—far better than some great travellers I know. And I am grateful to you for what you have done for me. God guide you safe home and bless you, my friend.” “And may God bring you safe back to us all, my dear friend. Farewell!” “Farewell!” Livingstone turned away. Did his heart forebode that this was the last white face he would ever see, the last white hand he would ever press? Did he feel that he was turning his back for ever on home, and rest, and freedom? Just when a dip in the path would hide the returning exile finally from view, Stanley turned to take one more look. “The old man in grey clothes” was still there. He, too, turned round. “He was standing near the gate of Kwihaha with his servants near him. I {190} waved a handkerchief to him, and he responded by lifting his cap.”

This was on March 14th. On March 17th, at a spot agreed upon, Susi and Hamaydah found Stanley and delivered to him a letter signed by Livingstone, in which the latter gives him a well-seasoned Scotch counsel, “to put a stout heart to a stey brae”; rejoices that Stanley’s fever has assumed “the intermittent or safe form,” and concludes, “I feel comfortable in commending you to the guardianship of the good Lord and Father of all.”

Two days later it was Livingstone’s birthday; and his diary reminds us that though this new friend has come and gone, there is One Who is with him always even to the end of the world.

March 19th. —My birthday. My Jesus, my King, my Life, my all! I again dedicate my whole self to Thee. Accept me. And grant, O Gracious Father, that ere this year is gone I may finish my work. In Jesus’ name, I ask it. Amen. {191}

CHAPTER X

As we have seen, Livingstone said farewell to Stanley on March 14th, 1872; and prepared to wait in Unyanyembe until his friend had reached Zanzibar, and sent a body of picked natives back to act as his escort. In his diary he makes careful reckonings as to the length of time this will mean, and concludes that he cannot expect his men until July 15th. It was August 14th before they arrived. He had to wait five weary months at Unyanyembe; and the lateness of his start brought the wet weather near, and handicapped the expedition from the first. We may just stay to record that Stanley’s march to the coast was beset with difficulties—“the whole ten plagues of Egypt”—but it was successfully accomplished, and the men he sent back to Livingstone were of the very {192} best. Stanley encountered at Zanzibar members of an English relief expedition that had been sent out to find and succour Livingstone. Of this expedition, the explorer’s son, Oswell, was a member. After hearing Stanley’s news they decided that it was unnecessary to go on, and returned to England.

To the ordinary person five months of waiting would have been almost intolerable. There are signs that even Livingstone had some ado to sit still and count the days. But if they were profitless months to him, and if often he was, as he records, “weary, weary,” the revelations contained in his journal are by no means profitless to us. He has time to write fully as to his plans and his motives. He takes us into his confidence; and we see that he has lost nothing in all these years of that eager curiosity which belonged to him as a boy. He still carries in his breast “the heart of a little child.” The wonderful Ptolemy and the naïve Herodotus are pondered over; and all the stories of “fountains” and “pillars” awaken in the {193} great traveller the desire to test them for himself. He is evidently not sure that there is not something in them after all. He would dearly like to find out. He cannot reconcile Ptolemy with the investigation of Baker, Speke, and Grant; and it has all the delight of a fascinating conundrum to him.

April 18th. —“I pray the good Lord of all to favour me so as to allow me to discover the ancient fountains of Herodotus, and if there is anything in the underground excavations to confirm the precious old documents (τἀ βιβλία), the Scriptures of truth, may He permit me to bring it to light, and give me wisdom to make a proper use of it.”

On the first of May he records that he has finished a letter to the New York Herald . This is the letter which concludes with the now world-renowned words upon his tablet in the Abbey—“All I can add in my loneliness is, may Heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one—American, English, or Turk—who will help to heal the open sore of the world.” By a {194} coincidence the words were written one year to the very day before the writer’s death.

He meditates much on the native faiths. He recognises as the fundamental fact “dependence on a Divine Power,” but “without any conscious feeling of its nature.” He notes also their belief in a continued existence after death, so as to be able to do good to those they love and evil to those they hate.

“I don’t know how the great loving Father will bring all out right at last, but He knows and will do it.” For himself, his confidence is anchored, as it has always been, in the plain word of Christ, the perfect Gentleman.

May 13th. —“He will keep His word, the Gracious One, full of grace and truth—no doubt of it. He said, ‘Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out,’ and ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name that will I do.’ He will keep His word: then I can come and humbly present my petition and it will be all right. Doubt is here inadmissible, surely. {195} ”

He is reading Speke’s travels with critical enjoyment. He spends a page or two in challenging his statement that African mothers sell their own children. He does not believe it. He has never known an instance, nor have the Arabs. He always defends the essential goodness of the natives, and their common human feelings. Then he appeals to the heroism of the Church at home to come and help the African people. “I would say to missionaries, Come on, brethren, to the real heathen. You have no idea how brave you are till you try. Leaving the coast tribes and devoting yourselves heartily to the savages, as they are called, you will find, with some drawbacks and wickednesses, a very great deal to admire and love.” A little later he is arguing that the interior is a tempting field for “well-sustained efforts of private benevolence.” He thinks the missionary should make up his mind not to depend upon “foreign support,” and gives instances of his own resourcefulness where he had none to depend on but himself. He is {196} for “a sort of Robinson Crusoe life,” the great object being “to improve the improvable among the natives.” As to method, he writes later, “no jugglery or sleight-of-hand ... would have any effect in the civilisation of Africans; they have too much good sense for that. Nothing brings them to place thorough confidence in Europeans but a long course of well-doing.... Goodness and unselfishness impress their minds more than any kind of skill or power. They say, ‘You have different hearts from ours.’ ... The prayer to Jesus for a new heart and a right spirit at once commends itself as appropriate.” He notes, too, that music influences them, and often leads to conversion.

Scattered through the journal are his usual keen observations on the animal life and plant life of the district, together with brief narratives of tribal quarrels and crimes. Again and again he confesses uncertainty as to whether he has not been tracing the sources of the Congo rather than the Nile. If he had not had a scientific mind and train {197} ing, he argues that long ere this he would have cried “Eureka!” and gone home with a half-proved hypothesis. But his absolute love of truth forbids.

By the middle of July his men have not come, though he has heard of them as being on the way. He is very tired of the delay; but returns at length to the subject of missions in Africa, and indulges in one passage which clearly shows how his Puritan common-sense never deserted him. “A couple of Europeans beginning and carrying on a mission without a staff of foreign attendants implies coarse country fare, it is true, but this would be nothing to those who at home amuse themselves with fasts, vigils, &c.” A great deal of power is thus lost in the Church. Fastings and vigils, without a special object in view, are time run to waste. They are made to minister to a sort of self-gratification, instead of being turned to account for the good of others. They are like groaning in sickness. Some people amuse themselves when ill with continuous moaning. The forty days of Lent might be annually spent {198} in visiting adjacent tribes and bearing unavoidable hunger and thirst with a good grace. Considering the greatness of the object to be attained, men might go without sugar, coffee, tea, &c. I went from September, 1866, to December, 1868, without either.”

He gives us also a vivid summary of his impressions of the slave system, assuring us that “in sober seriousness, the subject does not admit of exaggeration. To overdraw its evils is a simple impossibility. The sights I have seen, though common incidents of the traffic, are so nauseous that I always try to drive them from memory. In the case of most disagreeable recollections I can succeed, in time, in consigning them to oblivion, but the slaving scenes come back unbidden, and make me start up at dead of night horrified by their vividness.”

August comes, and still no arrivals. There is a charming description of the African children and their sports and games, followed by observations on the swallows and the spiders. Then he breaks off to {199} exclaim: “That is the atonement of Christ. It is Himself. It is the inherent and everlasting mercy of God made apparent to human eyes and ears. The everlasting love was disclosed by our Lord’s life and death. It showed that God forgives because He loves to forgive. He works by smiles, if possible; if not, by frowns. Pain is only a means of enforcing love.”

At last, on August 14th, the miserable suspense is at an end. The new expedition marches safely into Unyanyembe. Livingstone lifts up his heart in gratitude to God. Many of those who have come to help him had marched with Stanley and were well seasoned. Some were Nassick boys from Bombay, among whom were John and Jacob Wainwright. It will never be forgotten how much we owe to the intelligence and courage of the latter. Five only in the new expedition belonged to Livingstone’s “original followers.” These are Susi, Chumah, Amoda, Mabruki and Gardner. It is much to know that Livingstone was never more loyally and devotedly served {200} than during this last march, which was to have so sad a termination and so heroic a sequel.

Ten days were allowed for rest and preparations for departure, which included the setting aside of certain stores to await them on the homeward march. Then, on August 25th, they slipped quietly out of the town of which Livingstone was so weary, and started for the southern part of Tanganyika. We are beginning now the last journey, which ended eight and a half months later, after incredible toils and sufferings. It is difficult to estimate the exact length of it, for there were many short diversions. One need only remember that from the middle of September David Livingstone was to all intents and purposes a dying man. The internal hæmorrhage began again, and the entry in his diary on September 19th is that for eight days he has eaten nothing. No rest and no medicines have any lasting effect upon him after this; and he can scarcely have been out of pain, which frequently amounted to {201} agony. They made their way at first mainly through forest and hilly country, passing from village to village, each day having its burden of travel, its problem of supplies. Livingstone finds the climbing “very sore on legs and lungs.” On the 8th of October his eyes rested once again on the blue waters of Tanganyika. The day heat is very trying. Some of the men are sick; all are tired. “Inwardly I feel tired too.”

They had come to Tanganyika by a circuitous route. They now kept to the highlands running south-west, and travelled along the ridge, 1,000 feet above the lake. He notes that the lake-side is favourable for cotton, and admires the glory of the sunsets. The various arms and bays of the lake are carefully observed. The route is still very mountainous, and painfully up and down. October is past before he reaches the part where the lake narrows and becomes what the natives call Lake Liemba. It is slow and weary work around the southern section. The heat is intense. “The sun makes the {202} soil so hot that the radiation is as if it came from a furnace. It burns the feet of the people and knocks them up. Subcutaneous inflammation is frequent in the legs, and makes some of my most hardy men useless.” He maintains that walking is better than riding. Suddenly he breaks off his description of the toilsomeness of the journey to set this down:

“The spirit of Missions is the spirit of our Master, the very genesis of His religion. A diffusive philanthropy is Christianity itself. It requires perpetual propagation to attest its genuineness.”

The day after this he is “ill and losing much blood.” Another disaster is that the large donkey which has borne him from time to time over difficult ground has been badly bitten by tsetse, is now useless, and shortly dies. “It is a great loss to me.”

From the southern extremity of the lake they proceeded almost due south, the main difficulty being provided by the Lofu river, over which they built a bridge. A little further south they turned westward, evidently {203} making for the north of Lake Bangweolo. Many rivers are crossed, and more hilly regions negotiated. Then comes an entry in the journal in so shaky a hand as to be almost undecipherable. It simply tells us that he is ill and camping “in a deserted village.” Yet there is no halting on the march. River after river is crossed; and on December 18th he sees once more his old friend the Kalongosi or Kalongwesé river. “We crossed it in small canoes, and swamped one twice, but no one was lost.” They now march south for the lake. Christmas Day—“our great day”—is cold and wet, but it inspires Livingstone’s thanks to “the good Lord for the good gift of His Son, Christ Jesus our Lord.” He also finds time for some meditations on the Blue and the White Nile. The end of the year brings very heavy weather, during which no observations can be taken. One of the men also is taken critically ill and dies. They plant four trees at the corners of the grave.

As the expedition drew near Lake Bangweolo, they came upon a region com {204} posed of “spongy” morass. The men describe it as endless plunging in and out of morasses, and the effect on their strength and spirits must be conceived. It was terrible work, and Livingstone was spent with chronic dysentery. On they went, however, plunging through this horrible country. Yet such alleviations as nature affords are not forgotten. Livingstone enumerates all the flowers he sees: the marigolds and the jonquils, the orchids and the clematis, the gladioli and the flowering bulbs. He rejoices also to distinguish balsams and “pretty flowery aloes, yellow and red, in one whorl of blossoms.” The world is clearly not forsaken that has these tokens of the divine presence.

A week of priceless time was lost in the middle of January owing to the misrepresentations of a chief called Chungu; and all the while they were marching aimlessly over the desperate spongy country. They have to get back to their starting point, and strike eastward to make a circuit of the lake. Livingstone has to be carried across many {205} of the morasses and rivers on the shoulders of one or other of his men. The march was at times almost impossible. January 23rd saw them quite lost. No observations could be taken, and it was “rain, rain, rain.” Then came January 24th, and this dramatic entry in the journal:

“Carrying me across one of the broad, deep, sedgy rivers is really a very difficult task. One we crossed was at least 2,000 feet broad. The first part, the main stream, came up to Susi’s mouth, and wetted my seat and legs. One held up my pistol behind, then one after another took a turn, and when he sank into an elephant’s deep footprints he required two to lift him.... Every ten or twelve paces brought us to a clear stream, flowing fast in its own channel, while over all a strong current came bodily through all the rushes and aquatic plants. Susi had the first spell; then Farijala; then a tall, stout, Arab-looking man; then Amoda; then Chanda; then Wadé Salé; and each time I was lifted off bodily and put on another pair of stout, willing shoulders, and fifty yards put them out of breath—no {206} wonder!” We are not surprised to learn that progress is “distressingly slow; wet, wet, wet, sloppy weather truly, and no observations.” January closes miserably. They have no proper guides. “It is drop, drop, drop, and drizzling from the north-west.” The country is all froths and sponges. Livingstone loses much blood, but with characteristic optimism expresses the hope that it is a safety-valve, for he has no fever.

The lack of guides is serious. Livingstone reckons they lost half a month now floundering about in this sodden, depressing country, suffering much hunger; and it is all due to the unfriendliness of some and the fears of others. When guides were ultimately obtained progress was far more speedy and direct; but what the fatigue and exposure have meant to the sick man can be best gauged by the note in the journal on February 14th, which follows the record of another “excessive hæmorrhagic discharge.”

“If the good Lord gives me favour, and permits me to finish my work I shall thank and bless Him, though it costs me untold toil, {207} pain and travel; this trip has made my hair all grey.”

Melancholy reading as the last month has been, it is perhaps not so heartbreaking as the next. It represents the almost desperate exertions of a dying man to get on; yet he is thwarted and deceived at every turn. He fixes his hopes on the chief Matipa, and on the 22nd of February sends Susi and Chumah to find him. Matipa appeared to be friendly, and eventually the expedition travels by canoes towards his country. Then they have to cross flooded prairie, and camp on a “miserable, dirty, fishy island.” They arrive at last, and Matipa is profuse in his promises and plausible in his plans. Time was of no value to Matipa. He drowned his cares in “pombe”; but Livingstone is in misery. Day after day passes, and no promised canoes arrive to carry the expedition westward. By the 18th of March he is convinced that Matipa is “acting the villain.” The next day is his birthday, and sacred to other thoughts. “Thanks to the Almighty Preserver of man for sparing me thus far on {208} the journey of life. Can I hope for ultimate success? So many obstacles have arisen. Let not Satan prevail over me, O my good Lord Jesus!”

Never had he been in worse case. Matipa was false again; and Livingstone took the extreme step, for him, of making a demonstration in force, and firing a pistol through the roof of the chiefs house—a movement which resulted in Matipa’s flight. He returned, however, soon after in a chastened frame of mind. Some canoes being available at last, on March 24th Livingstone started with all his goods, his object being to get across the Chambezé. It was an awful journey. Six hours’ punting brought them to a little islet without a tree, and the rain descended pitilessly. They got what shelter they could out of an inverted canoe, and crouched under it. The wind tore the tent and damaged it. The loads were soaked. It was bitterly cold. “A man put my bed into the bilge and never said ‘Bail out,’ so I am safe for a wet night, but it turned out better than I expected. {209} ”

“ March 28th. —Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair. I encourage myself in the Lord my God and go forward.”

The next day sees them across the Chambezé; but progress is extremely slow, and it is April the 5th before the neighbouring river, Lobingela, is passed. Meanwhile, as we learn from a subsequent entry in the diary, his final critical illness has begun. On March 31st, an artery began “bleeding profusely.” Yet he does not dream of resting. The whole country round Lake Bangweolo is a shallow sea. It is impossible to say where the rivers begin and end. Livingstone’s mode of progression is being punted along in a canoe. Further inland there is a marching party struggling along parallel with the canoes. On April 10th, he sets down that he is pale and bloodless. The artery “gives off a copious stream and takes away my strength. Oh! how I long to be permitted by the Over Power to finish my work.” The 17th of April witnesses another calamity, when “a tremendous rain after dark burst all our now rotten tents in shreds. {210} ” He is now utterly weak and ill, fighting his complaint with quinine, and trying to believe it is no more than fever. On the 19th, however, he confesses he is “excessively weak, and but for the donkey could not move a hundred yards.” He adds pawkily, “it is not all pleasure this exploration.”

The diary is now painful reading, the writing becomes very shaky, eloquent of weakness and pain.

“ 21st April. —Tried to ride but was forced to lie down, and they carried me back to vil., exhausted.” The fact is that the old hero insisted on being put on his donkey, only to fall to the ground. He was carried back to the halting-place on Chumah’s shoulders.

“ 22nd April. —Carried on kitanda over Buga, S.W. 2¼.” The men made a rude palanquin, covered it with grass and a blanket, and in this way carried the dying chief for two hours and a quarter. They {211}

were two and a quarter hours of excruciating agony; and it was a relief to all when a village was reached where a rude hut could be erected.

The next day was similar. They carried him for another hour and a half. The following day one hour’s journey was all that he, in his extreme emaciation, could endure. He was too weak now to write anything except the date. On the 25th, they proceeded for an hour, and found themselves among a simple, friendly people. The trend of Livingstone’s thoughts may be gathered by some questions he addressed to the natives. He wanted to know whether they had ever heard of a hill on which four rivers had their rise. They shook their heads, but confessed themselves no travellers. On the following day they still moved on; and Livingstone’s unconquerable hope appeared in the fact that he instructed Susi to buy two large tusks, because he might be short of goods when they got back to Ujiji, and he could buy cloth of the Arabs with them. {213}

The last entry in the diary, the last words he ever wrote, stand under the date April 27th, 1873:—

“27.—Knocked up quite and remain—recover—sent to buy milch goats.—We are on the banks of the Molilamo.”

He is lying at Kolunganjovu’s town. His one hope is in milk, but the search for milch goats was vain. The whole district had been plundered by the Mazitu. He tried to eat a little pounded corn but failed. The 28th was spent in similar vain endeavours to obtain milk. On the 29th the chief, who said “everything should be done for his friend,” offered to escort the caravan to the crossing-place, and see them provided with canoes. There was an initial difficulty. Livingstone could not walk to the door of the hut to reach his litter. The wall was opened, and the sick man transferred from his bed to the litter in that way. The narrative of his devoted men is now most explicit. It is eloquent alike of the great leader’s fortitude and their own unfailing consideration. We need not linger on the {214} details; the agony of lifting him into the canoe, and lifting him out; the journey through “swamps and plashes”; the arrival at Chitambo’s village; the delays in building the hut while he lay “under the broad eaves of a native hut,” and a soft drizzle of rain descended. At last the shelter was erected and banked round with earth; the bed was made, raised on sticks and grass; the medicine chest placed on a large box that did duty for a table; and a fire kindled outside opposite the door. Just inside the boy Majwara lay down and slept, that he might be at hand if wanted.

The imagination reverently dwells on every detail of the scene, for the old hero has made his last journey, and is about to sleep his last sleep. While he was lying on his litter outside, and the rain was falling, curious villagers had gathered round, each man with bow in hand, for they had been guarding their crops. This was the great chief who had come from far. His fame they knew somewhat; they could not know that he was the best friend Africa ever {215} had. They gazed respectfully and wonderingly at the thin, pale, emaciated sufferer with the bloodless hands and lips, and the face distorted with sharp throes of agony. Through the falling rain they watched him; and in days to come would tell their children that they had seen Livingstone.

That night passed quietly; and when Chitambo called next day, Livingstone, with unfailing courtesy, received him, though he had to beg the chief to go away and return on the following day, when he hoped to feel stronger. All that morning he lay suffering, his strength gradually ebbing. In the afternoon he bade Susi bring him his watch, and with great effort he slowly wound it. Night fell at last; and at eleven o’clock Livingstone called Susi. There were noises heard. “Are our men making those noises?” said Livingstone. Susi told him that the villagers were scaring a buffalo. “Is this the Luapula?” he asked again; and Susi knew that his master was wandering in his mind. How ardently he had desired to reach the {216} Luapula through those terrible weeks and months on the sponges and through the floods! When Susi told him where they were, he asked again, “How many days to the Luapula?” “I think it is three days,” said Susi. There was no more except the cry of pain, “Oh, dear, dear!” Then he dozed. Near midnight he sent for Susi again. This time Livingstone told him to boil some water; and, when Susi had filled the copper kettle, he again asked for the medicine chest. The candle had to be held close to him, for his eyes were very dim. But he did just succeed in selecting some calomel, which he wanted to have at his side with a little water in a cup.

These were the last words he was heard to speak. It almost seemed as if a higher Master had said to His tired servant, “All right! You can go now.”

What happened after that is known only to the One who was with him at the last. {217} The boy Majwara slept; and while he slept the miracle happened. For it appeared miraculous and incredible to his men, who had seen his utter inability to move himself, that he did actually rise from off that rude couch and did kneel down at the side, his knees probably on the bare soil, and there in the attitude of prayer commended himself to God,

When the lad Majwara awoke at 4 a.m. and saw the strange sight of his master kneeling thus, he was afraid, and slipped out to warn the others. Susi dared not go in alone. He ran to rouse Chumah, Chowperé, Matthew, and Nuanyaséré. The six stood awestruck at the door of the little hut. On the box a candle was burning. It was just stuck there in its own wax, but it relieved the darkness; and they gazed at the still, bowed form. He was lying, stretched forward across the bed, in the attitude of prayer, his head buried in his hands. None seemed to dare to {218} approach him for a while. Then Matthew, reverently and tremblingly, stretched out his hand and laid it on his master’s cheek. It was quite cold. David Livingstone was dead. It was the morning of the first of May, 1873.

With the death of the hero, most biographies perforce end. In this respect Livingstone’s story is wholly unique. The most thrilling and sensational chapter remains to be written. Nothing more convincingly illustrates Livingstone’s ascendancy over his followers than the events which followed his death. It would have been easy for the men to have hurried the body into the ground, divided the property among themselves, and dispersed to their homes. Perhaps the last thing to be expected was that they would shoulder the dead body, and carry it from the centre of Africa, more than a thousand miles, through hostile and inhospitable country, to the ocean. Yet this was what they did; while the method, order and reverence of their proceedings would have done honour to the wisest and most civilised of our race. {219} Let us now see how they faced the duty that had suddenly come to them.

The discovery that Livingstone was dead was made about 4 a.m. The news was carried round at once to all the men; and as soon as day dawned they assembled for conference. The dead man’s possessions were collected, the boxes opened in the presence of all, and Jacob Wainwright made a careful and exact inventory on a page of Livingstone’s little metallic pocket-book, in which his own last entries had been made. The next business was to appoint Susi and Chumah, the oldest and most experienced of Livingstone’s followers, as leaders of the expedition. All promised to obey their orders; and all kept their word. Fearing lest the native superstitions in regard to departed spirits might lead to some outrage on the dead body, or that Chitambo might demand some ruinous fine, they decided to conceal for the present the fact of the death. In this respect they had misjudged Chitambo, who soon learned what had happened, and proved himself the kindest and most {220} sympathetic of advisers. All were agreed that the body of Livingstone must be carried back to the coast.

The first practical step, after making the inventory, was a remarkable one. Outside Chitambo’s village the men erected a small settlement of their own, fortified by a stockade. Here they built a circular hut, open to the sky, but strong enough to resist any attack of wild beasts, and in this they laid the body of Livingstone. His followers were stationed all round like a guard of honour. It happened that Farijala had once been servant to a Zanzibar doctor, and knew the elementary facts about a post-mortem. With the assistance of a Nassick boy, Carras, he undertook to do what was necessary. Certain rites of mourning having been performed, and volleys fired, a screen was held over these men while they did their work. The heart and viscera were removed, placed in a tin box, and reverently buried four feet in the ground, while Jacob Wainwright read the Burial Service from the English Prayer Book. The body was then dried in sun for fourteen {221} days. So emaciated was it that there was little more than skin and bone. For coffin, they stripped the bark off a Myonga tree “in one piece”; the corpse was carefully enveloped in calico and inserted in the bark cylinder. The whole was sewn up in a piece of sail-cloth and lashed to a pole, so that it could be carried on the men’s shoulders. Then Jacob Wainwright carved Livingstone’s name and the date of his death on the tree standing near where the body rested. Chitambo was charged to keep the ground free from grass lest bush-fires should burn the tree. Finally they erected two strong posts, with a cross beam, and covered them thoroughly with tar, so that the spot might be definitely identified. They seem to have forgotten nothing that could be done to keep in perpetual memory the place where Livingstone breathed his last.

The line of march determined on was up the west coast of Lake Bangweolo and across the Luapula River; then north-eastward till they struck the route by which they had come from Unyanyembe. It seemed at the outset as if all their hopes were to be {222} frustrated. In three days half the expedition were down with fever. Two women died. Susi became critically ill and could not move. They were delayed a whole month, and only started again to break down once more. It was not till they had crossed the great Luapula River—four miles broad—that things went better with them. Near where the River Liposhosi flows into the lake at Chawendes village, the expedition was unfortunately brought into active conflict with the chief and his tribe, and a regular affray took place in which blood was shed and many native houses burned. It is probable that a calmer and stronger leadership might have averted this; but it was proof of the determination of the devoted band to defend their precious burden with their lives. After this, the march was, on the whole, a favourable and peaceful one. They turned north towards Tanganyika, but, profiting by previous experience, gave the lake itself a wide berth, keeping well to the east, and traveling far more easily than Livingstone had {223}

done owing to the fact that they largely avoided the mountainous region. Everywhere the news of Livingstone’s death had preceded them; and they were made aware that a party of Englishmen was at Unyanyembe awaiting their arrival. Jacob Wainwright wrote down the story as we know it, and Chumah hurried on by forced marches to deliver it to the Englishmen in question, who turned out to be Lieutenant Cameron, Dr. Dillon, and Lieutenant Murphy, members of a search expedition. To them, on October 20th, 1873, Chumah brought the news, and soon afterwards the gallant band arrived and delivered all Livingstone’s belongings intact to his fellow-countrymen. Lieutenant Cameron was decidedly in favour of burying the body in African soil; he also took the liberty of appropriating most of Livingstone’s instruments to the use of his expedition. This latter act the men were powerless to resist, but in regard to the former they were not to be moved. It was useless to argue with them as to the dis {225} turbed district between Unyanyembe and the coast. They had made up their minds that the great Doctor must “go home.” Lieutenant Murphy and Dr. Dillon decided to return to Zanzibar with them, and the former does not appear to have been a very amicable companion. Dr. Dillon’s tragic fate is well known. Seized with fever on the journey, he went out of his mind and committed suicide.

One further incident has to be recorded illustrative of the resolution and ingenuity of the members of the expedition. Near Kasekera matters developed threateningly, and the men became convinced that there would be growing hostility along the route to the passage of a dead body. They accordingly resorted to a ruse. They unpacked the body, and repacked it to look like an ordinary bale of goods. Then they filled the old cylinder with sticks and grasses, and solemnly despatched six men back to Unyanyembe to bury it! Needless to say that as soon as these men got well into the jungle they disposed of their burden, and {226} rejoined the main caravan by devious routes. So well did every man keep his counsel, that it was believed henceforth that ordinary merchandise was being carried to Zanzibar. On February 15th, 1874, their sacred charge was fulfilled, and their precious burden, so jealously and triumphantly preserved, was handed over to the possession of the British Consul at Bagamoio on the coast. The Calcutta transferred the remains to Aden, and the P. and O. steamer Malwa carried them thence to Southampton, where on April 15th a special train was in waiting to convey them to London. That evening they were deposited in the rooms of the Geographical Society in Savile Row, and examined by Sir William Fergusson and other medical gentlemen. The “oblique fracture” of the arm which had been broken by the lion so many years before, and the false joint that had resulted, provided ample identification of the remains. On Saturday, April 18th, they were borne through the crowded streets of the capital to Westminster Abbey and deposited in the centre of the nave. Among the pall-bearers {227} were several who had been closely identified with the great explorer—Mr. Stanley, Dr. Kirk, Mr. Webb, Mr. Oswell, Mr. Young, and not least Jacob Wainwright, the Nassick boy. In the vast congregation there was no nobler, or more striking figure than Livingstone’s father-in-law, the veteran Dr. Moffat, the father of her who “sleeps on Shupanga brae, and beeks forenent the sun.” No grave in the famous Abbey is more frequently asked for by visitors than his. It makes its solemn appeal to the world year after year, for the plain slab is extraordinarily happy in its inscription:—

Brought by faithful hands
Over land and sea,
Here Rests
David Livingstone,
Missionary, Traveller, Philanthropist.
Born March 19, 1813,
At Blantyre, Lanarkshire.
Died May 4th, [A] 1873,
At Chitambo’s Village, Ilala.

Tantus amor veri, nihil est quod
noscere malim
Quam fluvii causas,
per saecula tanta latentes.

CHAPTER XI

CHARACTERISTICS

The life of Livingstone has been indifferently told if the personality of the man has not appeared in these pages. But the reader will welcome a few personal details that could not well find a place in previous chapters. The portrait of Livingstone is well known. It is a strong, rugged face, rather heavy and severe in its general effect, with a thick dark moustache, a broad mouth and full chin—the whole lightened, however, by the honest kindly eyes and the suggestion of humour about the lips. When he was a young man it would appear that his hair was almost black, but it became lighter in colour later, and the lock of it in possession of one of his relatives is distinctly brown. He is himself our authority for saying that his {230} beard was reddish in colour; and it must be remembered that in this respect all our pictures are at fault. Not one of them shows us a bearded African traveller; yet, except on his visits to England, he always wore a beard. Stanley’s first impression was of the grey-bearded man whom he found at Ujiji. Later on he noted that his hair had still a “brownish colour,” but that his beard and moustache were “very grey.” Stanley also paid a tribute to the brightness of his eyes, which he says were hazel. They appear to have been grey with a bluish tinge. Livingstone himself comments on the astonishment of the natives at his red beard and blue eyes. From that reference one might imagine that he had the appearance of a Viking or Scandinavian; but the fact is that his eyes were really more grey than blue, and that his hair was a very dark brown, while his beard was more distinctively Scotch and “sandy.”

In height he always appeared quite short when in contact with tall companions. But he was about average height, say five feet {231} six inches; certainly not more. He had the broad chest and shoulders of a man specially built to endure exceptional fatigue; but otherwise he always created the impression of a short and spare man. That he inherited an iron constitution is evident from the mere narrative of his travels and privations. One of the things that most vividly impressed Stanley was how swiftly the man he found so worn and thin and haggard threw off the burden of the years, recovered his old buoyancy of spirit and physical efficiency, and took upon him the appearance of one who was ten years younger than his actual age.

He was in some ways a fastidious person. He was scrupulously neat in his manner of dress. Even on his travels, when making his way through swamp and jungle, the one luxury he most prized was a change of raiment; and his torn clothes would be mended to the best of his ability. Stanley found him “dressed in a red shirt, with a crimson joho, with a gold band round his cap, an old tweed pair of pants, and shoes {232} looking the worse for wear.” The wonder is he had anything left that was fit to be seen, and the new apparel that came to him was hailed with genuine exclamations of delight. He set great store on an example to the natives of simplicity and neatness. This characteristic also comes out in other ways. His diaries are done with wonderful care and precision. His handwriting was not naturally good, but it is admirably legible.

Every entry in his diary bears upon it the marks of method and neatness, while the scientific observations are set forth with a clearness which won the highest praise from those best competent to give it. Nothing was slurred over. There is no sign of hurry or of the exhaustion of patience. Similarly, there is a notable absence of all embroidery. The language is throughout austerely plain and truthful. Everything is in keeping with his essential character of a man who hated the vulgarity of useless or tawdry rhetoric, and held always by the refinement of simplicity. From many anecdotes related of him it is clear that not only his writing but {233} his private and public speech were affected by his taste in this respect. A letter is extant in which he counselled his children to speak English because it was “prettier” than Scotch. He was doubtless thinking of the somewhat coarse Scotch accent prevalent in Glasgow and the neighbourhood, where his youth was spent. Strangers who met him were uniformly impressed by the softness and gentleness of his speech. His voice was deep; and if sometimes in public it took on a harsh sound, this was undoubtedly due to the difficulty of public utterance, which he never mastered. His addresses to great audiences in England were always delivered in a slow, hesitating, and rather laboured fashion. For one thing, he grew so accustomed to thinking and speaking in the native languages of Africa that his own tongue became strange to him. But, apart from that, he was never a fluent speaker; public address was an ordeal to him, and he had a Puritan disposition towards restraint and reserve, combined with a scientific predilection for exact statement. The impression he left {234} upon his audience, however, was always powerful. Every one who heard him testifies that the man triumphed where the orator was most to seek.

When he once became sufficiently at home with any one to conquer his natural reserve, he was excellent company, for he had a large fund of humour, and the gift of Teufelsdröckian laughter—“a laugh of the whole man from heel to head.” He was especially devoted to children. One of my correspondents remembers him most vividly with a child on each knee telling them lion stories; and another recalls his own boyhood, and days of sickness in bed brightened by a visit from Livingstone, who showed him the marks of the lion’s teeth in his arm, and entertained him with some of his adventures. The atmosphere that he most detested was the atmosphere of flattery. There is a fine story about him which illustrates this. He had been invited out to dinner, and had fallen to the lot of a society lady who was injudicious enough to indulge in some very highly coloured compliments on his achieve {235} ments. Suddenly Livingstone left the table, and was afterwards discovered sitting in a room in the dark. He explained that he could not endure to be praised to his face, and that he would not sit and listen to it. One who knew him intimately told me of a lecture delivered in one of our great northern towns. Two local orators introduced the proceedings with speeches magnifying Livingstone’s achievements. When he rose to his feet he had an overwhelming reception, but, turning straight to a large map, he said in a singularly cold, hard voice: “If you want to know the truth about the river system of Central Africa, be good enough to look at this map,” and plunged into his subject without a word of reference to anything that had been said about himself. He was the least vain and most unspoiled of any man who was ever lionised by the British public; the secret of which was undoubtedly to be found in the humility and sincerity of his Christian faith and character.

Of that faith something ought to be said. In his earliest letters which have been {236} preserved, we can see how strongly he was influenced by forms of theology that have long since ceased to be regarded as Scriptural. That the heathen who had never heard of Christ were perishing eternally was a doctrine that inspired much missionary devotion. These dogmas, it is clear, very gradually became impossible to him in view of the actual facts of the vast heathen world. But the supreme motive never changed. In a letter written just at the time of his ordination, he expresses his sense of the honour done to him in being accepted by Christ Jesus as one of His witnesses. The absolute surrender of his own will and mind to “his fair Captain Christ” was the fact most fundamental to Livingstone’s whole career. To the last, he never felt that he was really in the way of duty unless he was doing missionary work and bearing witness to the lordship of Christ. Stanley bore his testimony to the practical character of Livingstone’s religion. “In him religion exhibits its loveliest features; it governs his conduct {237} not only towards his servants, but towards the natives, the bigoted Mohammedans, and all who come in contact with him.” In another striking phrase, he says: “Religion has tamed him and made him a Christian gentleman.” Until his physical powers utterly failed, he never omitted to gather his men around him for evening service, read and pray with them, and add some simple exhortation.

He was a man of deep convictions. Once thoroughly alive to some fact, he took a tenacious grip of it, and gave it a place in all his thinking. That was how it came to pass that neither the politicians nor the men of science could prevail upon him to leave the social sore of Africa to others and devote himself to exploration and discovery. Livingstone’s Puritan soul, that knew how to put first things in the first place, realised that the fact of most moment in Africa was not the sources of the Nile, but the sources of the slave trade. This great social problem had to be attacked if religious and spiritual work was not to be negatived. Much {238} might be written about his courage in alienating those who sympathised with his work as an explorer and those who might have assisted him financially. He knew quite well that a price must be paid by any one who was really in earnest to destroy the slave trade. But nothing moved him. Henceforth it was a case of “this one thing I do.” Perhaps the most remarkable fact of all is, how early in his life he perceived that here lay the path he was to tread. There lies before me as I write an old brown and much torn letter which must have been the first he wrote from the Cape on his arrival there, and is dated March 10, 1841. Every inch of the large sheet is covered with writing, and among the last words is a reference to the resistance of certain of the Boers to the policy of emancipation. Then follows this sentence: “Oh! when shall the time come in which every man that feels the heat of the sun shall be freed from all other fetters but bonds of love to our Saviour!” So the young missionary wrote in his first {239} letter from Africa; so he prayed and strove for thirty laborious and weary years; and so he prays still from his grave in the Abbey, and few will claim that that prayer has been vainly uttered in the ear of God and man.

His unique influence over the natives of Africa is admitted. It may not be possible wholly to analyse his secret, for such words as “personality” and “magnetism” are easily written, and do not help us very much. Two things we may say on this subject, and leave it. Firstly, he believed in them; and secondly, he did not expect too much of them. This is no more than to say that he entered into his inheritance by means of the two ancient and Scriptural keys—faith and patience. He was abundantly rewarded for his faith. “Any one,” he said once, “who lives long among them ( i.e. , the natives) forgets that they are black and remembers only that they are fellow-men.” That was certainly all that he remembered. The stories of Sechele, Sebituane, Sekeletu, and others would have {240} set the crown on his reputation were it not that that was reserved for the heroic band who attended him on the last of his journeys, and made themselves an everlasting name by their final and supreme act of devotion. But, if he saw their splendid possibilities underneath all their degradation, he never expected too much of them. His scientific mind appreciated all that they owed to centuries of savagery and superstition. He was infinitely patient with them. He forgave them until seventy times seven. He quietly and gently reasoned with them when any other white man would have lost his temper and resorted to force. He could hardly be persuaded even to punish the recreant with any severity. “I have faults myself,” he would say simply.

The last word should concern his single-mindedness and disinterestedness. Neither as missionary nor as Government official is there any trail of commercialism over his life. When the bank in Bombay failed, with the money he had lodged in its keeping, it {241} hardly cost him a pang. All his money was dedicated to the cause in which he gave his life, and his personal serenity was quite independent of possessions. He refused to bargain with the Government as to terms; and when Lord Palmerston sent a friend to ask what he could do for him, Livingstone’s whole ambitions were centred on an international arrangement that would sanction the creation of settlements which could stand between the natives and the slavers. At no single period in his life is there any tittle of evidence that he cared for money save as it might advance the cause that was dearer to him than life itself.

The world still argues and disputes as to what it is that constitutes the highest form of greatness. In the common acceptation of the term Livingstone was not a man of genius. He was not brilliant; he was not strikingly original. What he achieved was done by the genius, falsely so called, of taking pains. But this we may surely say: If human greatness consists not in any natural endow {242} ment alone, whether of the genius of those

or the genius of industry in those who believe that “it is dogged as does it”; but rather in all the powers and faculties of a man’s nature brought into subjection to one supreme disinterested ambition for the glory of God and the good of man, then few greater men have ever walked this earth than David Livingstone. {243}

INDEX

Ajawa tribe, 123 , 124
Algoa Bay, arrival at, 21
Amoda, 199 , 205
Arab slave encampments, 144
Ascendancy over followers, 218

Bakatlas , work among, 29
Bakwains, 54
Baldwin, Mr., 121
Bambarré, 166 , 168 , 179
Bangweolo, Lake, 129 , 155-8 , 209 , 221
Barotse Valley, 73 ;
orations at, 91
Batoka tribe, 99
Bechuanaland, 42
Bemba, Lake, 129 , 155
Bennett, Mr. J. G., jnr., telegram to Stanley, 179
Blantyre, 3 ;
old mill ruins at, 13
Boers, complicity of, with slave trade, 35
Bombay, 130 , 137 , 138
Breakdown on journey to coast, 222
British Association, lecture to, on slavery, 133 , 134
Buga, 210
Burrup, Mr., 125
Burrup, Mrs., 124
Bushmen, 44

Caffre war, 51
Cambridge University, address to, 109
Cameron, Lt., favours burying in African soil; followers object, 224
Cape Town, 66
Carras, 220
Carrying the body to the sea, 223
Casembe, 154 , 158
Cecil, Rev. Richard, 17 , 18 , 28
Chambezé River, 150 , 155 , 208 , 209
Chanda, 205
Chanya Range, discovery of, 167
Chawendes Village, 222
Chiboque, 79-81 , 88
Chisera, the, 153
Chitambo, 215 , 221 ;
last arrival at, 219 , 220
Chitapangwa, chief, 150
Chitimba, chief, 153
Chobe River, 57
Choma, the, 153
Chonuane, 37 , 38 , 40
Chowperé, 217
Christmas Day, Livingstone’s last, 203
Chumah, 129 , 139 , 168 , 207 , 210 , 219
Chungu, chief, causes delay in last journey, 204
Clarendon, Lord, despatch to, 155
Congo, 90 , 141

Damara Land, 42
Davis, Jeff, 133
Delagoa Bay, 42
Dillon, Dr., 224 ;
suicide of, 225
Dilolo, Lake, 90
Dugumbé, 172-4

East Coast under Portuguese authority, 132
England, en route to, 130

Farijala , 205 ;
{246} makes post-mortem, 220
Fastings and Vigils, Livingstone on, 197
Fergusson, Sir W., examines body, 226
Final illness begun, 209
Forerunner , loss of, with despatches, 87
Freedom of Cities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, 106
Frere, Sir Bartle, 138

Gabriel , Mr., kindness of, 85
Gardner, Mr., 199
“Goat Island,” 97
Government officials, limitations of, 131
Gutzlaff, C., calls for medical missionaries, 10

Hamaydah , 190
Helmore, Mr., 121
Hogg, David, 19
Hughes, Thomas, 17 , 132
Hunter, David, 3 , 6

Ilala , 129
Inscription on grave, 227-8

Johanna men, 146
Journey to coast, 222

Kalahari Desert, 27 , 40 , 42
Kalongosi River, 159 , 203
Kasai, 90
Kasekera, 225
Katema, chief, 78
Kirk, Dr., 120 , 227
Kizinga, 159
Kolobeng, 38 , 40 , 45 , 46
Kuruman, 47 , 113
Kwihaha, 189

Lacerda , Senhor, accuses Livingstone of robbing Portugal of her rights, 134
Lake Nyassa , 116 , 129 , 138
Last birthday, 207
Last journey begun, 200
Last march, start of the, 140
Leeambye, 61
Letters that never reached the coast, 164
Libonta, 91
Liemba, Lake, 151 , 155
Limpopo River, 42
Line of march of body to coast, 221
Lintipé, the, 147
Linyanti, 59 , 60 , 66 , 69 , 72 , 88 , 91 , 96 , 115
Livingstone, Charles, 111
Livingstone, David, birth of, 2 , 3 ;
Blantyre home, 3 ;
mother, 3-6 ;
father, 3-4 ,
death of, 5 ;
religious difficulties, 7 ;
boyhood, 9 ;
as naturalist, 10 ;
endurance and fearlessness, 11 , 80 , 89 ;
employed in factory, 12-14 ;
at Ongar, 13 ;
at Glasgow University, 14 ;
Licentiate of Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons, 19 ;
ordination, 19 ;
departure for S. Africa, 19 ;
at Kuruman, 23-4 , 33 ;
contest with rainmakers, 26 ;
at Mabotsa, 29 ;
attacked by lion, 30 ;
marriage, 33 ;
children of, 33 ;
wife and children return to England, 39 ;
astronomy student, 55 ;
Dutch marauders seek vengeance on, 56-8 ;
object of suspicion at the Cape, 51 ;
farewell to wife and children, 52 ;
vows prevention of slave traffic, 55 ;
researches into flora and fauna, 54-5 ;
first taste of malaria, 60 ;
medicine stolen, 71 ;
preaches on journey up-country, 77 ;
attacked by fever, 81 ;
rewrites lost papers, 87 ;
names the Victoria Falls, 97 ;
carves initials on tree at Victoria Falls, 98 ;
escapes shipwreck, 104 ;
reaches Dover, 104 ;
back home, 106 ;
Oxford and Cambridge degrees, 106 ;
father’s death, 106 ;
receives medal of Roy. Geogr. Soc., 106 ;
{247} entertained by distinguished people, 107 ;
second illness, 162 ;
eighty days prisoner in a hut, 168 ;
narrow escapes from death, 176 ;
down with dysentery, 204 ;
his unconquerable hope, 212 ;
last written words, 213 ;
devotion of his followers, 213 ;
last words, 216 ;
found dead on his knees, 217 ;
body dried in the sun, 221 ;
body handed over to the Consul at Bagamoio, 226 ;
arrival of in England, 226 ;
personal details, 229 et seq. ;
clearness of scientific observations, 232 ;
devotion to children, 234 ;
dislike of compliments, 234-5 ;
humility and sincerity, 235 ;
first letter from Africa, 238 ;
single-mindedness, 240
Livingstone, Mrs., anxiety of, 106 ;
left behind at Cape Town, 113 ;
death of, 126
Loanda, 72 , 73 , 87-8 , 101 , 131
Loangwa River, 147-8
Lobingela, 209
Lofu River, 202
London Hospitals, Livingstone’s studies at, 197
London Missionary Society, 15 , 16 , 108 ;
Livingstone’s letter to, 51 ;
sends mission to Linyanti, 121
Lotembwa, 90
Lualaba River, 155 , 164 , 166 , 168 , 170 , 172
Luamo River, 166
Luapula River, 221-2

Mabotsa , 37
Mabruki, 199
Mackenzie, Bishop, 122 , 124 , 128 , 139
Maclear, Sir Thomas, 55 , 166
Majwara, 214 , 217
Makololo, the, 49 , 54 , 59 , 61 , 72 , 73 , 118 , 128
Mamire, 95-6
Manyuema, 164
Matabele, 96
Mataka’s country, 144
Matisa, deceit of, 207-8
Mazitu, the, 152 , 213
Mbame village, 123
Mburuma, chief, 101
Meroe, Lake, 152-6 , 170
Mikindany Bay, 140
Milk, vain efforts to obtain, in last illness, 213
Misinjé, the, 145
Moffat, Dr., 10 , 21-2 , 64 , 91 , 104 , 113 , 227
Moffat, Mr. J., at Makololo, 108
Moffat, Mrs., 10 , 91 , 113
Mohamad Bogharib, 154 , 157 , 159 , 162 , 168
Molilamo, 213
Monze, chief, 100
Morémi, 59
Mpende, chief, 103
Mtemése, guide, 76 , 77
Murchison Falls, 116
Murchison, Sir Roderick, his theory confirmed by Livingstone, 90
Murphy, Lieut., 224-5
Murray, Mr., 43

Nassick , 139
New York Herald , 179 ;
articles for, 187 ;
letter to, 193
Ngami, Lake, 39 , 45 , 54 ;
Mrs. Livingstone first white lady to see, 46
Nsama, chief, 153
Nuanyaséré, 217
Nyangwé, 172
Nyassa, Lake, 118 , 142 , 147 , 151 , 155

On the last march, 211
Orange River, 42
Oswell, Mr., 43 , 47 , 49 , 227
Outrages on native tribes, 35

Pall bearers, 227
Palmerston, Lord, offers Consulship, 108 ;
request from, 135
Pearl at Zambesi, 114 ;
{248} Livingstone leaves for Africa on, 111
Philip, Dr., 25
Pioneer to be handed back to Government, 128
Portuguese half-caste slave owners, 74

Quilimane , 93 , 103 , 108

Rhodesia , 96
Robert, Livingstone’s son, fights and dies in Federal ranks, 133
Rovuma, arrival at mouth of the, 140
Royal Geographical Society grants help, 136
Ruse to get Livingstone’s body through to the coast, 225
Russell, Lord, recalls Bishop Mackenzie, 128

St . Paul de Loanda, 66
Sambanza, orator, 75
Sebituane, 45 , 47 , 48 , 57 , 60 , 97 , 239
Sechele, 26 , 28 , 35 , 37 , 45 , 56 , 239 ;
baptism of, 42
Sekeletu, 57 , 59 , 60-2 , 70 , 82 , 92 , 94 , 96 , 98 , 239 ;
joy at Livingstone’s return, 121
Sekwebu, 103 ;
death of, 104
Seshéke, 49 , 70
Shinté, 74 et seq. ;
odd wardrobe of, 75
Shiré, 117-9 , 123 , 135 , 146
Shongwe, 97
Shupanga, 126
Slave dealers follow Livingstone, 120
Slavery, fight against, by Livingstone, 127
Slave trade, villainies of, 131
Stanford Rivers, 17-8
Stanley, H. M., meets Livingstone, 178 ;
arrival at Ujiji, 180 ;
brings news of £ 1 ,000 vote by Government, 182 ;
Livingstone’s story told to, 182 ;
pictures Livingstone, 184 ;
Livingstone’s journal committed to, 187 ;
precautions in sealing, 187 ;
departure, 189 ;
meets English relief expedition, 192 ;
first impressions, 230 et seq. ;
on Livingstone’s religion, 236-7
Steele, Col., 43
Stewart, Dr., 124 , 126
Susi, 139 , 168 , 171 , 177 , 190 , 199 , 205 , 207 , 215-6 , 219 , 222 , 224

Tanganyika , Lake, 93 , 147 , 150 , 151 , 158 , 165 , 183 , 201 , 222 ;
Livingstone’s illness at, 152
Taylor, Dr. Isaac, 19 , 23 , 150
Tette, 19 , 103 , 115 , 122
Tsetse fly, 67 , 93 , 140 , 142

Ujiji , 156-9 , 162-7 , 174 , 177 , 212
Universities’ Mission, 122 , 130 , 145
Unyanyembe, 180 , 186 , 191 , 221 , 224

Victoria Falls, 98 , 121

Wadé Salé, 205
Wainwright, Jacob, makes inventory, 219 ;
reads burial service, 220 ;
carves Livingstone’s name and date of death, 221 ;
erects cross at place of death, 221 ;
pall-bearer, 227
Wardlaw, Dr., 15
Webb, Mr., 134
Webb, Mrs., 134
Westminster Abbey, first visit to, 17 ;
body laid in, 226

Young , Mr. James, 135
Young, Mr. E. D., starts for Africa in the Search , 146

Zalanyama range, 147
Zambesi Falls, 97
Zambesi River, 9 , 49 , 54 , 61 , 66 , 70 , 93 , 100 , 101 , 114 , 116-7 , 122 , 135 , 141
Zanzibar, 93 , 167
Zouga River, 43-7

“The Christian world was thrilled over thirty years ago by the story of Dr. Clough’s work. Now for the first time we have opportunity to study his methods, to get at the social, economic and religious principles which lay behind it.”— W. H. Faunce , D.D., President of Brown University.

“Dr. Clough was one of the founders of the modern era in missions. Before him the purpose largely had been to produce a western type of Christianity in Oriental lands. Dr. Clough caught a vision of the transforming of peoples. Upon the foundation of the crude village organization which he found he built a Christianity of Oriental type. His method of baptizing converts from heathenism, thousands at a time, on credible profession of faith in Christ, has profoundly affected the methods of Christianity in India and other lands. In this book we have a graphic description of his ideas and methods and experiences.”— E. F. Merriam , D.D., Managing Editor of the Watchman-Examiner .

“As a life-like delineation or revelation of character, the book seems to me almost beyond criticism. We see Dr. Clough as he was, with all the complexity of his extraordinary character.”— Thomas S. Barbour , D.D., Foreign Secretary, American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1899-1912.

This comprehensive survey of present day religious tendencies in India is of tremendous importance and significance to every student of religion. In it are described the various new religious organizations which, under the impact of the West, have arisen in India during the past century. The Brahma, Prarthana, Arya, and Deva Samajes, the Ramakrishna Movement, Theosophy, the Bharata Dharma Mahamandal, the Caste and Sect Conferences, the Social Reform Movement, and the efforts of Muhammedans, Parsis, Jains and Sikhs to accommodate their systems to the needs of modern times are all dealt with in turn. Portraits of the leaders are included in the volume. The original basis of this work is the Hartford Lamson Lectures on the Religions of the World, though in its printed form the material has been revised and enlarged.

By Arthur S. Hoyt , Professor of Homiletics and Sociology in Auburn Theological Seminary, and Author of “The Work of Preaching” and “The Preacher.” Cloth, 12mo. $1.50

The Work of Preaching , one of Dr. Hoyt’s former books, deals with the sources and formation of the sermon for the present age. The Preacher , still another of his works, places emphasis upon a vital spiritual personality in giving the message. This volume touches the temper of the man both as to the truth and the lives of his hearers. “Preaching,” writes Dr. Hoyt in his preface, “is a social virtue. Nothing can be more fundamental to the preacher than his humanity. The deepest needs and desires of the age must be felt in his life if his word interprets aright the gospel of the new man.”

The author here discusses the psychology of preaching, though without formal and philosophic analysis. He always has in mind the question, How shall we speak so as to help men into the largest life?

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	PAGE
DAVID LIVINGSTONE	Frontispiece
THE CLYDE AND RUINS OF THE OLD MILL AT BLANTYRE	13
WHERE LIVINGSTONE LIVED AT ONGAR	13
LIVINGSTONE ATTACKED BY A LION	32
PREACHING ON THE JOURNEY UP-COUNTRY	77
THE TRAGEDY OF CENTRAL AFRICA	161
“I READ THE BIBLE THROUGH FOUR TIMES WHILST I WAS IN MANYUEMA”	169
THE MANYUEMA AMBUSCADE	175
STANLEY FINDS LIVINGSTONE	181
ON THE LAST MARCH	211
CARRYING THE BODY TO THE SEA	223
MAP OF LIVINGSTONE’S JOURNEYS IN AFRICA	At end