the village near which they were encamped, and the next morning the
villagers turned out and killed two of them. The enemy, as they
retired, cried out that as soon as the guns were gone the villagers must
look out for themselves.
Speke and Grant, however, kept their own pots boiling by shooting
antelopes and other game. The Turks ate anything they could get hold
of. Greatly to the disgust of the Seedees, they devoured a crocodile
which was killed; they also feasted off crocodiles' eggs.
They were now passing through the Bari country. Villages were numerous,
but the inhabitants fled as soon as they appeared. Whenever the Turks
halted, they sacked the villages of provisions.
At Doro, which they reached on the 13th of February, the Turks having
plundered the nearest villages, the natives turned out with their arms,
and war drums were beaten as a sign that they intended to attack the
camp. As soon as darkness set in, they attempted to steal into the
camp, but, being frightened off by the patrols, hundreds collected in
front and set fire to the grass, brandishing torches in their hands,
howling like demons, and swearing that they would annihilate their
enemies in the morning.
On the 15th of February the travellers approached Gondokoro, and to
their delight saw in the distance a white speck, which marked the
position of the Austrian mission-house. Soon afterwards the masts of
the Nile boats could be seen.
The Toorkees halting to fire a _feu de joie_, the party marched in
together.
While making enquiries for Petherick, they caught sight of a sturdy
English figure approaching them. Uttering a hearty cheer and waving
their hats, they rushed forward and, greatly to their delight, found
themselves shaking hands with Mr, now Sir Samuel, Baker, the elephant
hunter of Ceylon, who had bravely come out in search of them.
They had had no news from England later than April, 1860, and it was now
February, 1863. It was believed in England that they never would have
been able to get through the savage tribes. They had reason to be
grateful for the kind sympathy of their friends and countrymen.
The long-looked-for Petherick was away on a trading expedition, and had,
as yet, made no attempt to succour them.
They waited at Gondokoro till the 26th, that Speke might ascertain, by
lunar observation, the longitude, which was 31 degrees 46 minutes 9
seconds east, the latitude being 4 degrees 54 minutes 5 seconds north.
The thermometer ranged between 94 degrees and 100 degrees in the shade.
The climate was considered better than that of Khartoum.
While Mr Baker, accompanied by his devoted wife, continued his journey
southward, they proceeded down the Nile in his boats to Khartoum.
At Gondokoro an Austrian mission has been established for thirty years;
but, owing to utter want of success, it was now about to be abandoned.
They here found three Dutch ladies--the Baroness Capellen, Madame Tinne,
and her daughter--who had, in the most spirited way, come up the Nile in
a steamer for the purpose of assisting them, intending to proceed
overland to Fernando Po.
They had, while at Gondokoro, been shocked by seeing a number of slaves,
attacked by small-pox, thrown overboard by the native traders. These
noble and philanthropic ladies had rescued some of the unfortunate
natives from slavery. Unhappily, overcome by the climate, Madame Tinne
and most of her companions some time afterwards died, and their proposed
expedition was arrested.
The voyage down the Nile to Khartoum took from the 26th of February to
the 30th of March, and was performed in a _diabeah_, the usual Nile
boat, the after part being covered with a deck, on which was built a
comfortable poop cabin. Their Seedees followed them in two large boats.
They were hospitably welcomed by Ali Bey, and by a number of European
and Turkish inhabitants.
They now felt themselves in a civilised country. Fifty years ago
Khartoum was a mere military post on the Egyptian frontier; it now
contains quarters for fifteen thousand troops.
At a banquet, given in their honour by an Italian hunter, Monsieur
Debono, upwards of twenty gentlemen and four ladies were present. They
here met also Mr Aipperly, a minister of the Pilgrim Mission from the
Swiss Protestant Church. He was stationed at Gallabat, and, having
learned blacksmith's work and other trades, he was able to make friends
with the natives by assisting them to put up their irrigation wheels and
other carpenter's work.
Among other interesting places they visited was a Coptic church. In the
centre was a desk, at which a man was reading aloud to a number of other
persons wearing large turbans, their shoes placed on one side, and
several children, all sitting on a carpet, listening devoutly. On the
walls were draperies and pictures of the Saviour, and within a doorway
was a high altar, covered with a cloth marked with the figure of the
cross. The service was in Arabic. A handsome old man entered, bearing
a staff surmounted by a golden cross. After kneeling at the altar, he
invited the strangers to his house to have coffee. Grant says that he
never saw a finer face than that of this venerable Copt, Gabriel by
name, who is at the head of the Coptic Church at Khartoum.
They left Khartoum on the 15th of April, and continued their journey
down to Berber by water. Here they landed, and had a fatiguing camel
ride across the desert to a place called Korosko, whence they continued
it by water to Cairo. Here they were to part from their faithful
Seedees, of whom Bombay was appointed captain. The Seedees received
three years' pay, and an order for a freeman's garden to be purchased
for them at Zanzibar, when each man was to receive ten dollars more as
soon as he could find a wife. They ultimately, after many adventures,
reached their destination.
The two travellers, whose adventures we have thus far followed, embarked
for England, on the 4th of June, on board the "Pera," where they safely
arrived, after an absence of eleven hundred and forty-six days.
His friends had shortly afterwards to mourn Captain Speke's untimely
death, from his gun accidentally going off while at shooting. His
gallant companion, now Colonel Grant, survives.
Although not, as he supposed, the discoverer of the remotest source of
the Nile, Speke was undoubtedly the first European who saw the Victoria
Nyanza, while the adventurous and hazardous journey he and Grant
performed together deservedly places them in the first rank of African
travellers. They also opened up an extensive and rich district hitherto
totally unknown, into which the blessings of Christianity and commerce
may, in a few years, be introduced. It is to be hoped that King
Rumanika, the most intelligent ruler with whom they came in contact,
still survives, as he would afford a cordial welcome both to
missionaries and legitimate traders, and his beautiful and healthy
country might become the centre of civilisation in that part of Eastern
Africa. Were a mission sent to him by way of Zanzibar, backed by a body
of disciplined, well-armed men, he would probably greatly assist in
clearing the district intervening between the north of his dominions and
that lately brought under subjection by Sir Samuel Baker, and a speedy
end might be put to the horrible cruelties of the barbarous Mtesa, King
of Uganda. It is sad to reflect, however, that while Mahommedan Turks
and Arabs are allowed to range at will over the wide regions of Africa
and proselytise the heathen, so few Christian merchants or missionaries
have made their way into the interior with the advantages their superior
civilisation and pure faith would bestow on the hapless inhabitants.
We may yet hope with Captain Burton that, "as the remote is gradually
drawn nigh, and the difficult becomes accessible, the intercourse of
man--strongest instrument of civilisation in the hands of Providence--
will raise Africa to that place in the great republic of nations, from
which she has hitherto been unhappily excluded."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
TRAVELS OF DR. LIVINGSTONE--FIRST EXPEDITION.
HIS PARENTAGE AND EARLY LIFE--SETS OUT FOR AFRICA AS A MISSIONARY FROM
THE LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY--ARRIVES AT CAPE TOWN--LEPELOLE--MABOTSA--
SECHELE--DR. LIVINGSTONE FINDS HIM AT KOLOBENG--A MISSIONARY'S NECESSARY
ACCOMPLISHMENTS--THE KALAHARA DESERT DESCRIBED--STARTING--THE BANKS OF
THE ZOUGA--LAKE NGAMI--RETURN TO KOLOBENG--RETURN TO LAKE NGAMI--FEVER--
SET OUT AGAIN AND REACH THE CHOBE--SEBITUANE--BANKS OF THE ZAMBESI--
RETURNS TO KOLOBENG--ARRIVES AT CAPE TOWN, WHERE HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN
EMBARK FOR ENGLAND--REACHES KURUMAN--THE DUTCH BOERS--LINYANTI--RECEIVED
BY THE MAKOLOLO--FEVER.
David Livingstone comes of a race whose chief pride was that they were
honest men. His great grandfather fell at the battle of Culloden. His
grandfather was a small farmer in Ulva, one of the western islands of
Scotland. Here his father was born, but his grandfather after that
event migrated to a large cotton factory at the Blantyre Works, situated
on the Clyde, above Glasgow. His uncles all entered His Majesty's
service either as soldiers or sailors, but his father remained at home,
and his mother, being a thrifty housewife, in order to make the two ends
meet, sent her son David, at the age of ten, to the factory as a piecer.
He was fond of study, and with part of his first week's wages he
purchased "Ruddiman's Rudiments of Latin," and for many years afterwards
studied that language at an evening school after his work was done. He
also, when promoted at the age of nineteen to cotton-spinning, took his
books to the factory, and read by placing one of them on a portion of
the spinning-jenny, so that he could catch sentence after sentence as he
passed at his work. He was well paid, however, and having determined to
prepare himself for becoming a medical missionary in China, was enabled,
by working with his hands in summer, to support himself while attending
medical and Greek classes in Glasgow in winter, as also the divinity
lectures of Dr Wardlow. He was thus able to pass the required
examinations, and was at length admitted a licentiate of the Faculty of
Physicians and Surgeons.
The war in China preventing him from proceeding thither, he offered
himself as a missionary to the London Missionary Society, and embarked
for Africa in 1840.
After reaching Cape Town, he went round to Algoa Bay, whence he
proceeded about eight hundred miles into the interior to Kuruman, the
missionary station of the Reverend R. Moffat, whose daughter he
afterwards married.
Thence he went to Lepelole, where, to gain a knowledge of the language
and habits of the inhabitants, the Bakwains, he cut himself off from
European society for six months. The Bakwains, however, being driven by
another tribe from their country, he was unable, as he had intended, to
form a station at that place.
He was more successful at Mabotsa, also inhabited by the Bakwains, to
which place he removed in 1843. It was here, while in chase of a lion,
that he nearly lost his life. He had fired both the barrels of his gun,
and was re-loading, when the lion, though desperately wounded, sprang
upon him, catching his shoulder, both man and beast coming to the ground
together. Growling horribly, the fierce brute shook the doctor as a
terrier dog does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that
which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of a cat. The
gun of his companion, a native schoolmaster, who came to his assistance,
missed fire, when the lion, leaving Dr Livingstone, attacked him.
Another native came up with a spear, when the lion flew at him also, but
the bullets at that moment taking effect, the fierce brute fell down
dead.
The chief of the Bakwains, Sechele, became a Christian, and exerted
himself for the conversion of his people, restoring his wives to their
fathers, and living in every respect a thoroughly consistent life.
The Dutch Boers, who had pushed forward to the confines of the country,
proved, however, most adverse to the success of the mission, by carrying
off the natives and compelling them to labour as slaves.
By the advice of Dr Laidley, Sechele and his people moved to Kolobeng,
a stream about two hundred miles to the north of Kuruman, where Dr
Livingstone formed a station.
He here built a house with his own hands, having learned carpentering
and gardening from Mr Moffat, as also blacksmith work. He had now
become handy at almost any trade, in addition to doctoring and
preaching, and, as his wife could make candles, soap, and clothes, they
possessed what may be considered the indispensable accomplishments of a
missionary family in Central Africa.
Among the gentlemen who had visited the station was Mr Oswell, in the
East India Company's service. He deserves to take rank as an African
traveller. Hearing that Dr Livingstone purposed crossing the Kalahara
Desert in search of the great Lake Ngami, long known to exist, he came
from India on purpose to join him, accompanied by Mr Murray,
volunteering to pay the entire expenses of the guides.
The Kalahara, though called a desert from being composed of soft sand
and being destitute of water, supports prodigious herds of antelopes,
while numbers of elephants, rhinoceros, lions, hyenas, and other animals
roam over it. They find support from the astonishing quantity of grass
which grows in the region, as also from a species of water-melon, and
from several tuberous roots, the most curious of which is the
_leroshua_, as large as the head of a young child, and filled with a
fluid like that of a turnip. Another, the _mokuri_, an herbaceous
creeper, the tubers of which, as large as a man's head, it deposits in a
circle of a yard or more horizontally from the stem. On the
water-melons especially, the elephants and other wild animals revel
luxuriously.
Such was the desert Dr Livingstone and his party proposed to cross when
they set out with their wagon on the 1st of June, 1849, from Kolobeng.
Instead, however, of taking a direct course across it, they determined
to take a more circuitous route, which, though longer, they hoped would
prove safer.
Continuing on, they traversed three hundred miles of desert, when, at
the end of a month, they reached the banks of the Zouga, a large river,
richly fringed with fruit-bearing and other trees, many of them of
gigantic growth, running north-east towards Lake Ngami. They received a
cordial welcome from the peace-loving inhabitants of its banks, the
Bayeiye.
Leaving the wagons in charge of the natives, with the exception of a
small one which proceeded along the bank, Dr Livingstone embarked in
one of their canoes. Frail as are the canoes of the natives, they make
long trips in them, and manage them with great skill, often standing up
and paddling with long light poles. They thus daringly attack the
hippopotami in their haunts, or pursue the swift antelope which ventures
to swim across the river. After voyaging on the stream for twelve days,
they reached the broad expanse of Lake Ngami. Though wide, it is
excessively shallow, and brackish during the rainy season. They here
heard of the Tamunacle and other large rivers flowing into the lake.
Livingstone's main object in coming was to visit Sebituane, the great
chief of the Makololo, who live about two hundred miles to the
northward. The chief of the district, Sechulatebe, refused, however,
either to give them goods or to allow them to cross the river. Having
in vain attempted to form a raft to ferry over the wagon, they were
reluctantly compelled to abandon their design. The doctor had been
working at the raft in the river, not aware of the number of alligators
which swarmed around him, and had reason to be thankful that he escaped
their jaws.
The season being far advanced, they determined to return to Kolobeng,
Mr Oswell generously volunteering to go down to the Cape and bring up a
boat for the next season.
Half the royal premium for the encouragement of geographical science and
discoveries was awarded by the council of the Royal Geographical Society
to Dr Livingstone for the discoveries he made on this journey.
Sechele, the Christian chief of the Bakwains, who was eager to assist
him in reaching Sebituane, offered his services, and with him as a
guide, accompanied by Mrs Livingstone and their three children, he set
out, in April, 1850, taking a more easterly course than before.
They again reached the lake, but the greater number of the party being
attacked by fever, he was compelled to abandon his design of visiting
Sebituane.
He here heard of the death of a young artist, Mr Rider, who had shortly
before visited the lake for the purpose of making sketches.
The natives inhabiting the banks of the rivers falling into Lake Ngami
are famed for their skill in hunting the hippopotamus. In perfect
silence they approach in their light canoes, and plunge their sharp
spears, with thongs attached, into the back of one of the huge
creatures, which dashes down the stream, towing the canoe at a rapid
rate. Thus the animal continues its course, the hunters holding on to
the rope, till its strength is exhausted, when, other canoes coming up,
it is speared to death. Frequently, however, the hippopotamus turns on
its assailants, bites the canoe in two, and seizes one of them in its
powerful jaws. When they can manage to do so, they tow it into shallow
water, and, carrying the line on shore, secure it to a tree, while they
attack the infuriated animal with their spears, till, sinking exhausted
with its efforts, it becomes their prey.
Mr Oswell, who had arrived too late for the journey, spent the
remainder of the season in hunting elephants, liberally presenting Dr
Livingstone with the proceeds of his sport, for the outfit of his
children.
The third journey was commenced in the spring of 1851, when, rejoined by
Mr Oswell, he set out once more, accompanied by Mrs Livingstone and
their children.
First travelling north, and then to the north-east, through a region
covered with baobab-trees, abounding with springs, and inhabited by
Bushmen, they entered an arid and difficult country. Here, the supply
of water being exhausted, great anxiety was felt for the children, who
suffered greatly from thirst. At length a small stream, the Mababe, was
reached, running into a marsh, across which they had to make their way.
During the night they traversed a region infested by the _tsetse_, a fly
not much larger than the common house-fly, the bite of which destroys
cattle and horses. It is remarkable that neither man, wild animals, nor
even calves as long as they continue to suck, suffer from the bite of
this fearful pest. While some districts are infested by it, others in
the immediate neighbourhood are free, and, as it does not bite at night,
the only way the cattle of travellers can escape is by passing quickly
through the infested district before the sun is up. Sometimes the
natives lose the whole of their cattle by its attacks, and travellers
frequently have been deprived of all means of moving with their wagons,
in consequence of the death of their animals; some, indeed, have
perished from being unable to proceed.
Having reached the Chobe, a large river, which falls into the Zambesi,
leaving their attendants encamped with their cattle on an island, Dr
Livingstone and his family, with Mr Oswell, embarked in a canoe on the
former river, and proceeded down it about twenty miles to an island,
where Sebituane was waiting to receive them.
The chief, pleased with the confidence the doctor had shown in bringing
his wife and children, promised to take them to see his country, that
they might chose a spot where they might form a missionary station. He
had been engaged in warfare nearly all his life, under varying fortunes,
with the neighbouring savage tribes, and had at length established
himself in a secure position behind the Chobe and Leeambye, whose broad
streams guarded him from the inroads of his enemies. He had now a
larger number of subjects and was richer in cattle than any chief in
that part of Africa.
The rivers and swamps, however, of the region produced fever, which had
proved fatal to many of his people. He had long been anxious for
intercourse with Europeans, and showed every wish to encourage those who
now visited him to remain in his territory.
Unhappily, a few days after the arrival of his guests the chief was
attacked with inflammation of the lungs, originating in an old wound,
and, having listened to the gospel message delivered by the doctor, he
in a short time breathed his last.
Dr Livingstone says that he was decidedly the best specimen of a native
chief he had ever met. His followers expressed the hope that the
English would be as friendly to his children as they intended to have
been to himself.
The chieftainship devolved at his death on a daughter, who gave the
visitors leave to travel through any part of the country they chose.
They accordingly set out, and traversing a level district covered with
wild date-trees, and here and there large patches of swamp, for a
distance of a hundred and thirty miles to the north-east, they reached
the banks of the Zambesi, in the centre of the continent.
From the prevalence of the _tsetse_, and the periodical rise of its
numerous streams causing malaria, Dr Livingstone was compelled to
abandon the intention he had formed of removing his own people thither
that they might be out of the reach of their savage neighbours, the
Dutch boers. It was, however, he at once saw, the key of Southern and
Central Africa.
The magnificent stream, on the bank of which he now stood, flows
hundreds of miles east to the Indian Ocean--a mighty artery supplying
life to the teeming population of that part of Africa. He therefore
determined to send his wife and children to England, and to return
himself and spend two or three years in the new region he had
discovered, in the hopes of evangelising the people and putting a stop
to the trade in slaves, which had already been commenced even thus far
from the coast.
He accordingly returned to Kolobeng, and then set out with his family a
journey of a thousand miles, to Cape Town. Having seen them on board a
homeward-bound ship, he again turned his face northward, June, 1852.
Having reached Kuruman, he was there detained by the breaking of a
wagon-wheel. During that time the Dutch Boers attacked his friends, the
Fakwains, carrying off a number of them into slavery, the only excuse
the white men had being that Sechele was getting too saucy--in reality,
because he would not prevent the English traders from passing through
his territory to the northward. The Dutch plundered Dr Livingstone's
house, and carried off the wagons of the chief and that of a trader who
was stopping in the place. Dr Livingstone therefore found great
difficulty in obtaining guides and servants to proceed northward. Poor
Sechele set out for Cape Town, intending, as he said, to lay his
complaint before the Queen of England, but was compelled by want of
funds to return to his own country, where he devoted himself to the
evangelisation of his people.
Parting with the chief, Dr Livingstone, giving the Boers a wide berth,
proceeded across the desert to Linyanti, the capital of the Makololo,
where he had visited the Chief Sebituane in 1851. The whole population,
amounting to nearly seven thousand souls, turned out to welcome him. He
found that the princess had abdicated in favour of her brother Sekeletu,
who received him with the greatest cordiality. The young king, then
only nineteen, exclaimed: "I have now got another father instead of
Sebituane." The people shared this feeling, believing that by the
residence of a missionary among them they would obtain some important
benefits, though of the real character of the blessing they might
receive they were totally ignorant.
A rival of the young king existed in the person of a cousin, Mpepe, who
had been appointed by the late king chief over a portion of his
subjects, but whose ambition made him aim at the command of the whole.