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Title: David Livingstone
Author: Horne, C. Silvester (Charles Silvester)
Language: English
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DAVID LIVINGSTONE
[Illustration: DAVID LIVINGSTONE.]
DAVID LIVINGSTONE
BY
C. SILVESTER HORNE, M.P.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
[Illustration]
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO
DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
_All rights reserved_
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 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.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I 1
CHAPTER II 22
CHAPTER III 54
CHAPTER IV 66
CHAPTER V 85
CHAPTER VI 106
CHAPTER VII 138
CHAPTER VIII 165
CHAPTER IX 179
CHAPTER X 191
CHAPTER XI--CHARACTERISTICS 229
INDEX 245
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
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_
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
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 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.
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 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 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
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 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 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 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 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 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
[Illustration: THE CLYDE AND RUINS OF THE OLD MILL AT BLANTYRE.]
[Illustration: WHERE LIVINGSTONE LIVED AT ONGAR.]
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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 “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
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 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 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 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
[Illustration: LIVINGSTONE ATTACKED BY A LION.]
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 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 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 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. 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.
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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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
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.
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
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 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 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, 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
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 highway 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 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.
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, 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 necessarily 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 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 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,
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 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
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 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.” 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. 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 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.
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. 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 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 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 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 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 Livingstone’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 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
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.”
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. 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,
[Illustration: PREACHING ON THE JOURNEY UP-COUNTRY.]
who he promised would conduct them to the sea.
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 “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 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 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
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 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
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.
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 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 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 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, 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 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 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
gratification 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 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 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, “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 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.”
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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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.”
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 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 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 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. 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 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 Livingstone’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 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.
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 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 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 suspicious 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.
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
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 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
enterprises. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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 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.
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 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 expedition 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 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 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 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 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 Livingstone’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.
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 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 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.”
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 Providential 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 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 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 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 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 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
Tanganyika, 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 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, 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!
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 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
[Illustration: THE TRAGEDY OF CENTRAL AFRICA.]
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,” 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 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.
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 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 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,” 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,
[Illustration: “I READ THE BIBLE THROUGH FOUR TIMES WHILST I WAS IN
MANYUEMA.”]
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 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.
The year 1871 dawns. “O Father! Help me to finish this work to Thy
glory.”
It was February before the men arrived who were bringing letters and
stores for him; but, alas! “only one letter reached, and forty 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 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; 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
[Illustration: THE MANYUEMA AMBUSCADE.]
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 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 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.
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,” 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
[Illustration: STANLEY FINDS LIVINGSTONE.]
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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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
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.
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
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 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 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.”
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 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
training, 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 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
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 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 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 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
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
composed 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 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 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, 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 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.”
“_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.” 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.
He has service on Sunday, April 20th, as usual.
The last entries are quite short.
“_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
[Illustration: ON THE LAST MARCH.]
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.
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 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 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 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.
Then he said, very faintly, “All right! you can go now.”
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. 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,
“And his fair soul unto his Captain Christ.”
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 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. 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 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 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 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
[Illustration: CARRYING THE BODY TO THE SEA.]
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
disturbed 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 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 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.
[A] There appears to be a conflict of evidence as to the date of
Livingstone’s death. Whilst the Diary gives the date as the 1st of May,
that on the grave in Westminster Abbey is the 4th.
For thirty years his life was spent
in an unwearied effort to evangelise
the native races, to explore the
undiscovered secrets,
And abolish the desolating slave-trade
of Central Africa, where, with
his last words, he wrote:
“All I can say in my solitude is,
may Heaven’s rich blessing come
down on every one--American,
English, Turk--who will help to
heal the open sore of the world.”
Along the right border of the stone the happily-chosen words:--
Tantus amor veri, nihil est quod
noscere malim
Quam fluvii causas,
per saecula tanta latentes.
And along the left border,
“Other sheep I have which are
not of this fold, them also I must
bring, and they shall hear my
voice.”
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 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 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 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 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 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 achievements. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 endowment alone, whether of the genius of
those
“Who seem not to compete nor strive,
Yet with the foremost aye arrive”;
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.
[Illustration: Map of LIVINGSTONE’S JOURNEYS IN AFRICA]
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;
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;
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;
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
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