great cataracts of the Zambesi, which are even higher and wider than
Niagara. He named them Victoria Falls in honor of the queen of England.
He also found the lakes from which the Zambesi flows into the eastern
sea and the Congo into the western, on opposite sides of the continent
of Africa. The two rivers are like two long watersnakes with their tiny
tails close together, but their wide-open mouths thousands of miles
apart.
Doctor Livingstone had sent his wife to England for the benefit of her
health and to educate their children. The people there were greatly
pleased with the results of Livingstone’s labors in Africa, for all of
the country discovered by him would belong to Great Britain. So the
British government gave him its support and paid him a small salary for
the work he was doing for science and for the world. By this time other
missionaries had come to help save the Dark Continent. The wives of two
of these were coming out from England with Mrs. Livingstone when she
returned. There was great joy on both sides--that of the three husbands
in the heart of Africa, and that of the three wives on their way to join
them. But Livingstone and both his friends were seized with African
fever, and, when their wives came, the two men missionaries had just
died. Even Mrs. Livingstone, although she had been brought up in Africa,
took the disease and died. The two missionaries’ wives soon returned to
England, but Doctor Livingstone could not even then be persuaded to
leave the needy people to go to England to rest awhile and see his now
motherless children.
Besides all these labors, and besides the exact reports he made on the
animal life, flowers, trees, rocks, and geography of that new land, he
wrote books about his adventures and experiences which had an immense
sale. This made him a man of considerable wealth; but, after providing
well for his family and for the education of his children, he spent the
greater part of his fortune--ten to thirty thousand dollars at a
time--for the benefit of his black “children.”
When Livingstone did go to England, it was only for a short visit. While
absent from Africa he seemed always to hear those millions of poor,
ignorant people calling him. Once he purchased the parts of a little
steamer and brought it back to Africa. The boat was put together and was
run on some of the lakes and rivers he had discovered. The vessel proved
to be a poor affair, which ran very slowly and was always breaking down.
But the natives were astonished, and would have worshipped it if he had
let them. As time went on, larger and better boats were sent out to him.
Once he had to discharge his engineer, but he ran the steamboat himself.
He found it easier, of course, to make his journeys with the help of
steam, though he had to go to many places where the boats could not be
taken. A writer has described a trip Livingstone and his friends made in
July:
“It was now the African mid winter and the nights were very cold.
The tsetse flies were more troublesome than ever. Wild beasts
became more numerous every day in this uninhabited region. Herds of
elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and many kinds of antelopes were
frequently seen, which allowed the head of the caravan to approach
within two hundred feet of them. The wild boars, of which many were
seen, were very shy; while, on the contrary, troops of monkeys
hastily retreated into the jungle at the sight of the travelers,
chattering angrily about the coming of the white man. Guinea fowl,
doves, ducks, and geese were also plentiful.
“With the darkness a new and even more numerous world of living
creatures awoke. Lions and hyenas roared and howled about the camp.
Unknown birds sang sweetly or screeched as if in fear, and all
sorts of strange insect noises were heard.
“One day Livingstone narrowly escaped losing his life from the
attack of a two-horned rhinoceros. This beast was strangely quick,
in spite of its great bulk, and very savage, being one of the few
animals which will attack a man without being first attacked.
“While making their way through a dense thicket Livingstone had
become separated from the others, and was stooping to gather some
specimen, when a black rhinoceros made a furious charge at him;
but, strange to say, it suddenly stopped short, giving him time to
escape. In his flight, his watch and chain became entangled in a
branch and, stopping to loosen it, he saw the beast still standing
in the same spot, as if held back by an unseen hand. On reaching a
safe distance he uttered a shout of warning, thinking some of the
party might be near; at this the rhinoceros rushed away, grunting
loudly.”
While Dr. Livingstone was in England he was welcomed with highest
honors. He was invited to visit Queen Victoria and her husband, the
Prince Consort. But so strong was the missionary spirit in him that he
preferred talking to cotton spinners and the people in the slums of the
East End of London. He was quite glad to go back to Africa and escape
from the medals, degrees, and other great honors showered upon him.
After his return to the Dark Continent for the last time, he went
farther than ever into the interior in an attempt to discover, or at
least to prove, where the great river Nile begins. When he had nearly
reached the goal, he was driven back by hostile tribes which had
recently suffered from attacks of slave traders. At this time the Arabs
who carried Livingstone’s letters down to the coast to be sent to
England destroyed them all, for fear he had written to England about the
slave outrages they had committed. For this reason nothing was heard of
him for years. It was thought that he had been murdered by savages or
had died of African fever.
At last the publisher of _The New York Herald_ sent Henry M. Stanley,
the newspaper’s foreign correspondent, with all the money he needed, to
find Dr. Livingstone; or, if he were no longer living, to get any
records that could be found. After a long search the American newspaper
man heard of a white man hundreds of miles farther in the interior.
Trace and trail grew more and more distinct and at last the American
company, with the American flag flying, marched up to Livingstone’s camp
on the shore of one of the great lakes he had discovered. Of this
meeting Stanley wrote:
“As I advanced slowly toward him I noticed he looked pale and
weary. He had a gray beard, and wore a cap with a faded gold band
on it. I could have run to him and embraced him, only I did not
know how he would receive me; so instead I walked up to him and
said, ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’
“‘Yes,’ said he with a kind smile. We both grasped hands.
“‘I thank God, Doctor, that I have been permitted to see you!’ said
I, and he answered, ‘I feel thankful that I am here to welcome
you.’
“I found myself gazing at the wonderful man at whose side I now sat
in the heart of Africa. Every hair of his head, every line of his
face, his pallor and the wearied look he wore, all told me what I
had longed so much to know.”
The two explorers spent months together talking over their discoveries
and experiences. Stanley had much to tell of what was going on in the
world outside. Nearly all Livingstone’s store of supplies had been
stolen, but Stanley had prepared for that. He insisted on providing the
old missionary with everything he might need. Of Stanley’s tenderness
Livingstone wrote to his daughter:
“He laid all he had at my service, divided his clothes into two
heaps, and pressed one upon me, then his medicine chest, his goods
and everything he had, with true American generosity. To coax my
appetite he often cooked dainty dishes for me with his own hands.
The tears often started to my eyes at some fresh proof of his
kindness.”
As Dr. Livingstone was again recovering from a very severe attack of
fever Stanley begged him to go home to England with him for a year of
rest, but the aged missionary shook his head sadly. Stanley returned to
the outside world.
About a year after this, David Livingstone was found kneeling beside his
bed in a hut built of bamboo poles and coarse grass. He had died while
praying. Millions of natives in the heart of the Dark Continent were
heartbroken when they heard of the medical missionary’s death. They
spent months in wailing and mourning, for they had lost their “White
Father.”
Two devoted black men carried the body of their beloved master hundreds
of miles through the swamps and jungles of Africa, and placed it on
shipboard, to be taken back to England. That ship was met at the English
seaport by a special train heavily draped in mourning, which carried the
honored remains up to London. Great Britain had strong reasons for
honoring David Livingstone. He had added a million square miles to the
known world, and put great lakes, rivers, mountains, and countries on
the map of Africa.
There was a magnificent funeral in Westminster Abbey, where the great
missionary and explorer was buried beside the sacred ashes of kings,
queens, princes, and statesmen. Thus he received the highest honors
England can bestow upon her most illustrious dead. On the black marble
slab which marks David Livingstone’s final resting place are the last
words he is known to have written. They are about the cruel slave trade:
“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
this open sore of the world.”
PEARY, A HERO OF THE GREAT WHITE NORTH
For hundreds of years after Columbus, explorers sought the Northwest
Passage through the frozen seas of North America. It was not until 1853
that such a channel was actually traced. Even then it was so filled with
ice that no sailor, however brave and skilful, could make his way
through. Long ago the search for the Northwest Passage gave place to the
great desire and purpose to reach the North Pole.
Of course, there is no pole standing out of the northern half of the
world. The axis, or axle, of the earth is only an unseen line which
scientists have thought of as if it ran straight through the center of
the earth. The place in the middle of the top of the globe where this
line, if there were one, would come out, is named the North Pole, and
the same place at the opposite end is called the South Pole.
It is easy to see how many boys could have a great longing to run away
to sea and seek their fortunes in foreign lands; but it is hard to
understand why any young man should wish to undertake the awful
hardships of bitter cold and blizzards, with the risk of falling down
ice-cracks hundreds of feet deep, and of starving or freezing to death,
in trying to get to the Pole, especially when there is nothing but snow
and ice to see there if he ever could find the place.
Yet, in his youth, Robert E. Peary had a strange desire to visit the
Inland Ice region of Greenland. Robert was a Pennsylvania lad whose
father had died when he was three. He grew up to care for his widowed
mother. He went to an eastern college and was graduated second in a
class of fifty-one. Then he passed the rigid tests for Engineer in the
United States Navy. Like young Robert E. Lee, Robert E. Peary was first
assigned to engineering duty on the eastern coast, in Florida. Then he
was sent as one of a number of experts in science to survey a route
through Nicaragua, as many people believed that a ship canal should run
through Nicaragua rather than across the narrow isthmus where the Panama
Canal was dug afterward.
[Illustration: PEARY IN ARCTIC DRESS WITH HIS ESKIMO DOGS
_©1909, Doubleday, Page & Co._]
So it was not until he was thirty years old that Robert E. Peary was
able to realize the dream of his boyhood and explore the bleak and
frozen plains even beyond “Greenland’s icy mountains.” Five years later
he started out to go farther north than any white man had even been. His
first attempt to reach the Pole was in 1891, when he took with him his
young wife. This was the first time a white woman ever had made the
journey into the unknown regions of the “Great White North.” With the
Pearys in this dangerous undertaking went Dr. Frederick A. Cook, a
surgeon, and Matthew Henson, the Pearys’ colored helper. On board the
_Kite_--the special ship for this journey--the leader’s leg was broken
by the sudden slipping of the rudder. This accident kept them from
advancing farther north that fall. Through the constant care of his
wife, the faithful Matthew, and Dr. Cook, Lieutenant Peary was restored
to health and strength by the following spring.
Peary knew how to make the best of everything. The half year he was laid
up by this accident was that of the Arctic night. For six months in the
year--spring and summer--the sun in the Arctic regions can be seen
moving in a complete circle up in the sky. In other parts of the world,
what is called the sunset is just the turning away of one side of the
earth from the sun; and sunrise is the whirling round of that side into
the sunlight again. What is called night is the time when the sun is
shining on the other side of the earth. But the sun moves north in
spring and summer; so that during those seasons in the Arctic region it
never sets, and there is daylight all the time. In the fall and winter
the sun moves south, and then in the Arctic region it never rises. So
there is night for six months.
While nursing his broken leg during this Arctic night, Lieutenant Peary
was by no means idle. He sent the _Kite_ thousands of miles back to the
United States. He made friends with the Eskimos, his little fat,
red-faced northern neighbors who lived in _igloos_, as they called their
small dome-shaped houses built of blocks of ice. He learned all he could
of their language and their ways. He found out how to hunt the
reindeer, the musk-ox, and other big game of the north, and studied and
trained the Eskimo dogs, which would draw his sledges the thousands of
miles he must yet go to reach the Pole. At last, when his leg was
entirely well, it was early spring, when the sun could be seen rising,
shining a little while in the middle of the day, and setting just above
the frozen plains and icebergs to the south of them.
In May, when the sun was circling a little higher in the sky for several
hours every day, Peary and a small party harnessed sixteen dogs to four
sledges and started off on a camping trip towards the Farthest North.
With one companion who was used to the life in cold northern countries,
he climbed a mountain of ice nearly a mile high. These two heroes kept
on alone, across bleak regions broken up by ice-cracks, called
_crevasses_, hundreds of feet deep, over slippery hummocks or
ice-mounds, through deep snowdrifts and fogs, in constant danger of
precipices and pitfalls. On the Fourth of July, they reached a body of
water which they named for the day, Independence Bay. Here they climbed
an icy height which they called Navy Cliff. From here they beheld a
splendid expanse of clear country stretching still farther away toward
the north.
It was now the Arctic midsummer. They were surprised to find flowers
blooming in sheltered nooks and to hear the hum of bees and flies. There
were birds also--snow-bunting and sandpiper--flitting and flying about.
On the little patches of bright green that showed through the snows of
ages, musk-oxen--which look like both sheep and buffalo--were grazing.
Peary shot five of these to supply meat for men and dogs on the return
journey of five hundred miles or more.
The way back was beset with even greater dangers than before. While they
were on their way north they had known that the shifting and breaking up
of fields of ice might cut them off forever from their friends and
supplies. So every few hundred miles they had “cached,” or buried, tools
and provisions, and marked the places so that they could find them again
when a little food might save them from starving. In spite of such
precautions, many exploring parties found only hardship, starvation, and
death in the cruel ice. But Peary and his party succeeded in making
their return to the Inland Ice fields, the region of young Peary’s
boyish dreams, through violent wind-storms, drifting snows, and freezing
fogs. Even the hardy little Arctic dogs were half famished and worn out.
Finding the _Kite_, with other explorers, waiting for them there, the
Peary party sailed down to the United States, meeting mountain-like
icebergs, and shooting walruses and polar bears by the way.
Lieutenant Peary at once went to work preparing for a second attempt at
the discovery of the North Pole. Mrs. Peary again accompanied her
husband into the Arctic regions, and the twelfth of September, 1893, the
first white baby ever seen in that far northern country was born. This
was the Pearys’ little blue-eyed daughter, “bundled deep in soft, warm
Arctic furs, and wrapped in the Stars and Stripes.” During the first
half year of her life, Marie Snowbaby Peary--as they named her--never
saw the sunlight.
Before the sun began to show above the southern horizon again, Papa
Peary started off on another twelve-hundred mile ice journey. This time
he took with him eight men, twelve sledges, and ninety-two Eskimo dogs.
But some of the dogs were strangers to the rest, and those from
different places fought one another. As it is hard enough to separate
only two fighting dogs, it was impossible to stop the wholesale
dog-fight that went on constantly and kept the party from going forward.
The cold became even more intense; the temperature went down to sixty
degrees below zero. Conditions were so much worse than on the previous
trip that Peary decided to _cache_ all the provisions and other things
they did not need to preserve life, and returned to the place where he
had left his wife and baby. The feet of the men, even of the Eskimos of
the party, were badly frozen, and when they returned to their base of
supplies, out of the ninety-two dogs, there were only twenty-six left.
But the heroic explorer would not give up. He and his little family
stayed north of the Arctic Circle while he made discoveries and proved
the truth of the statements of those who had been there before him.
Little Snowbaby also made her observations. She saw Eskimo children
living in their small round hives of ice, and heard them teasing their
mothers for whale blubber and other kinds of grease, just as the
children at home plead for candy or ice-cream. An Eskimo child likes a
tallow candle much better than a stick of candy, and will chew the
cotton candle-wick until there is no more grease left in it.
Lieutenant Peary made eight trips to the Arctic regions. Sometimes he
would advance farther north than any explorer before him; then, when he
was almost within reach of the Pole, everything would fail and he would
have to retreat and go back thousands of miles to the United States and
begin to raise a fortune for the next attempt. At one time his ship, on
the way to the north, would be caught in the ice and crushed like an
egg-shell. On another occasion the boat would be frozen up in miles and
miles of ice, so that he and his men would have to wait for spring to
come and thaw it out of the clutches of the terrible white giant, Jack
Frost.
It needed the patience of Job to endure and overcome the trials which
came thick and fast upon him. One summer the wealthy friend died who had
promised him all the money he needed to reach the Pole; but a newspaper
owner in London, England, offered his yacht, the _Windward_, for the
next polar trip. This time the great Arctic explorer froze both his feet
and had to have eight toes cut off. The cold was awful--from fifty-one
to sixty-three degrees below zero. After many weeks of acute suffering,
he was removed to a less severe climate.
In 1902, for the seventh time, Peary came within a few degrees of the
Pole, and finding that he could not go farther, was forced to return to
the United States. In the first gloom of this defeat he wrote:
“The game is off. My dream of sixteen years is ended. I have made
the best fight I knew. I believe it has been a good one. But I
cannot do the impossible.”
But this hopeless state of mind did not last long. Peary spent six more
years in preparing for one last desperate attempt. On the sixth of July,
1908, he left New York City for his eighth voyage to the Arctic, on his
latest ship, the _Roosevelt_--determined to reach the Pole or die in the
attempt. This time, when he came within a few degrees of his goal, he
decided to leave all behind but the faithful Matthew and one Eskimo,
while he made the last dash. When he came within a few miles of the spot
he had sought for nearly twenty years, he was prostrated by overwork
and excitement. After a short rest he went on and stood, on the sixth of
April, 1909, in the place called the North Pole. There was nothing to
see--not a living thing but themselves and their dogs. But he was now on
the top of the world. There was no North, no East, no West--only South.
The only North he could see was up in the cold, gray sky. Directly
overhead was the North Star, toward which the Pole points.
Peary stayed in that desolate neighborhood thirty hours, taking
observations and “planting” five United States flags to show to future
comers that America had been first to discover and take possession of
the North Pole. One flag he mounted on a pole which he set in the top of
a hummock of ice, as if the North Pole were a flag pole standing up out
of the surface of the earth. This was called “nailing the American flag
to the North Pole.” Then he wrote this postal card to mail to his wife:
“90 NORTH LATITUDE, April 7th, 1909.
“MY DEAR JO:--I have won out at last. Have been here a day. I start
for home and you in an hour. Love to the kidsies.
“BERT.”
COLONISTS AND PIONEERS
JOHN SMITH, THE CAPTAIN OF MANY ADVENTURES
Stories of the strange adventures of Columbus, John Cabot, and other
explorers made a restless lad of little motherless John Smith, of
Willoughby, England. When he was fourteen he had made ready to run away
from home; but then his father died and left him the owner of an estate,
in the charge of guardians. Those mean men cared more for the property
than for the boy who was to have it when he was old enough. So they gave
him only a little pocket-money and hired him out by law as apprentice to
a tradesman, who treated the well-to-do lad as if he were a slave.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH]
In less than a year young John Smith ran away in good earnest, leaving
master, guardians, and property behind. He had attended two free schools
and had gained what would be equal to a common-school education in these
days. He went right to Paris, because France and Spain were at war just
then; but peace was declared almost as soon as he was able to enlist.
After several hard experiences, young Smith engaged in the service of
the duke of a little kingdom which was fighting the Turks. In one of his
books, John Smith describes his adventures in these desperate battles.
He tells of killing three Turks single-handed in mortal combat, and of
how his princely master designed for him a coat-of-arms having in it
three Turks’ heads.
But ill fortune soon befell young Captain John Smith. In a battle with
the Turks he was wounded and left for dead, and became the property of a
Turkish chief, who, as Smith goes on to tell, “sent him forthwith to
Constantinople to his fair mistress for a slave. By twenty and twenty,
chained by the necks, they marched in file to this great city where they
were delivered to their several masters.”
The princess, to whom Captain John Smith was sent, was too young to own
any kind of property. Afraid her mother would sell her white slave
before she was of age, she sent him to her brother, a distant chief,
asking him to be kind to her prize. But the brother treated his sister’s
slave so brutally that Smith killed him and escaped in his master’s
clothes to Russia. Here he found people who were unfriendly enough to
the Turks to file off the iron collar which he still wore. On his way
back to England, Smith found himself on the ship of a friendly French
pirate, where he had to fight for his life against two Spanish
men-of-war. The French ship succeeded in escaping from the Spaniards
into a port on the northern coast of Africa. From here Smith took ship
for London and entered the service of the Virginia Company, whose
business it was to carry on the settling of America, begun by Sir Walter
Raleigh.