DAVID LIVINGSTONE
"I shall open up a path to the interior or perish."
Such were the words of one of the greatest explorers of Africa in the
nineteenth century. Determination was the keynote of his character
even as a young boy. At the age of ten he was at work in a cotton factory
in Scotland: with his first week's wages he bought a Latin grammar.
Fourteen hours of daily work left little time for reading, but he
educated himself, till at nineteen he was resolved to be a medical
missionary.
"In the glow of love which Christianity inspires, I resolved to devote
my life to the alleviation of human misery." He was accepted for service
by the London Missionary Society, and in the year 1840 he sailed for
South Africa. After a voyage of three months he arrived at Cape Town
and made his way in a slow ox-waggon seven hundred miles to Kuruman,
a small mission station in the heart of Bechuanaland where Dr. Moffat
had laboured for twenty years. He did well, and two years later he
was sent north to form another mission station at Mabotsa (Transvaal).
Having married Moffat's daughter Mary, he worked in these parts till
June 1849, when, with his wife and three children, he started with
oxen and waggon for a journey northwards. Across the great Kalahari
Desert moved the exploring family, till they came to the river called
Zouga, which, said the natives, led to a large lake named Lake Ngami.
In native canoes, Livingstone and his little family ascended this
beautifully wooded river, "resembling the river Clyde above Glasgow,"
till on 1st August 1849, Lake Ngami appeared, "and for the first time,"
says Livingstone, "this fine sheet of water was beheld by Europeans."
The lake was two thousand eight hundred feet above the sea, but the
climate was terribly unhealthy. The children grew feverish, and
mosquitoes made life a misery to them, while the tsetse fly made further
exploration for the moment impossible. So the family journeyed back
to headquarters for a time. But Livingstone was unsatisfied, and once
more in 1851 we find him starting again with wife and children to seek
the great river Zambesi, known to exist in central Africa, though the
Portuguese maps represented it as rising far to the east of
Livingstone's discovery.
[Illustration: LIVINGSTONE, WITH HIS WIFE AND FAMILY, AT THE DISCOVERY
OF LAKE NGAMI. From Livingstone's _Missionary Travels_.]
"It was the end of June 1851," he tells us, "that we were rewarded
by the discovery of the Zambesi in the centre of the continent. This
was an important point, for that river was not previously known to
exist there at all. As we were the very first white men the inhabitants
had ever seen, we were visited by prodigious numbers of Makololo in
garments of blue, green, and red baize." Livingstone wanted to know
more of this unknown river, but he now decided that exploring with
a wife and family was not only perilous, but difficult, so he returned
to the coast, put them on a homeward-bound ship for England, and
returned to central Africa to continue his work of exploration alone.
It was 11th November 1853 when Livingstone left the town of Linyanti
in the very heart of central Africa for his great journey to the west
coast to trace the course of the Zambesi.
"The Zambesi. Nobody knows
Whence it comes and whither it goes."
So ran an old canoe-song of the natives.
With twenty-seven faithful black Makololos, with "only a few biscuits,
a little tea and sugar, twenty pounds of coffee and three books," with
a horse rug and sheepskin for bedding and a small gipsy tent and a
tin canister, fifteen inches square, filled with a spare shirt,
trousers, and shoes for civilised life, and a few scientific
instruments, the English explorer started for a six months' journey.
Soon his black guides had embarked in their canoes and were making
their way up the Zambesi. "No rain has fallen here," he writes on 30th
November, "so it is excessively hot. The atmosphere is oppressive both
in cloud and sunshine." Livingstone suffered badly from fever during
the entire journey. But the blacks took fatherly care of him. "As soon
as we land," he says, "the men cut a little grass for my bed, while
the poles of my little tent are planted. The bed is made and boxes
ranged on each side of it, and then the tent pitched over all. Two
Makololos occupy my right and left both in eating and sleeping as long
as the journey lasts, but my head boatman makes his bed at the door
of the tent as soon as I retire."
As they advanced up the Barotse valley, rains had fallen and the woods
had put on their gayest hue. Flowers of great beauty grew everywhere.
"The ground begins to swarm with insect life, and in the cool, pleasant
mornings the place rings with the singing of birds."
On 6th January 1854 they left the river and rode oxen through the dense
parts of the country through which they had now to pass. Through heavy
rains and with very little food, they toiled on westward through miles
and miles of swamp intersected by streams flowing southward to the
Zambesi basin. One day Livingstone's ox, Sindbad, threw him, and he
had to struggle wearily forward on foot. His strength was failing.
His meagre fare varied by boiled zebra and dried elephant, frequent
wettings and constant fever, were reducing him to a mere skeleton.
At last on 26th March he arrived at the edge of the high land over
which he had so long been travelling. "It is so steep," he tells us,
"that I was obliged to dismount, and I was so weak that I had to be
led by my companions to prevent my toppling over in walking down. Below
us lay the valley of the Kwango in glorious sunlight." Another
fortnight and they were in Portuguese territory. The sight of white
men once more and a collection of traders' huts was a welcome sight
to the weary traveller. The commandant at once took pity on Livingstone,
but after a refreshing stay of ten days the English explorer started
off westward to the coast. For another month he pursued his way. It
was 31st May 1854. As the party neared the town of Loanda, the black
Makololos began to grow nervous. "We have stood by each other hitherto
and will do so to the last," Livingstone assured them, as they all
staggered into the city by the seashore. Here they found one Englishman
sent out for the suppression of the slave trade, who at once gave up
his bed to the stricken and emaciated explorer. "Never shall I forget,"
he says, "the luxury I enjoyed in feeling myself again on a good English
bed after six months' sleeping on the ground."
Nor were the Makololos forgotten. They were entertained on board an
English man-of-war lying off the coast. Livingstone was offered a
passage home, but he tells us: "I declined the tempting offers of my
friends, and resolved to take back my Makololo companions to their
Chief, with a view of making a path from here to the east coast by
means of the great river Zambesi."
With this object in view, he turned his back on home and comfort, and
on 20th September 1854 he left Loanda and "the white man's sea," as
the black guides called the Atlantic Ocean that washes the shores of
West Africa. Their way lay through the Angola country, rich in wild
coffee and cotton plantations. The weather was as usual still and
oppressive, but slowly Livingstone made his way eastward. He suffered
badly from fever as he had done on the outward journey. It had taken
him six months to reach Loanda from central Africa; it took a year
to complete the return journey, and it was September 1855 before
Linyanti was again reached. Waggons and goods left there eighteen
months before were safe, together with many welcome letters from home.
The return of the travellers after so long an absence was a cause of
great rejoicing. All the wonderful things the Makololos had seen and
heard were rehearsed many times before appreciative audiences.
Livingstone was more than ever a hero in their eyes, and his kindness
to his men was not forgotten. He had no difficulty in getting recruits
for the journey down the Zambesi to the sea, for which he was now making
preparations.
On 3rd November he was ready to resume his long march across Africa.
He was much better equipped on this occasion; he rode a horse instead
of an ox, and his guide, Sekwebu, knew the river well. The first night
out they were unfortunately caught in a terrific thunderstorm
accompanied by sheet-lightning, which lit up the whole country and
flooded it with torrents of tropical rain.
A few days' travelling brought the party to the famous Zambesi Falls,
called by the natives "where smoke sounds," but renamed by Livingstone
after the Queen of England, Victoria. The first account of these now
famous Falls is very vivid. "Five columns of vapour, appropriately
named smoke, bending in the direction of the wind, appeared to mingle
with the clouds. The whole scene was extremely beautiful. It had never
been seen before by European eyes. When about half a mile from the
Falls, I left the canoe and embarked in a lighter one with men well
acquainted with the rapids, who brought me to an island in the middle
of the river and on the edge of the lip over which the water rolls.
Creeping with care to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which
had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambesi. In looking down
into the fissure one sees nothing but a dense white cloud; from this
cloud rushed up a great jet of vapour exactly like steam, and it mounted
two or three hundred feet high."
[Illustration: THE "SMOKE" OF THE ZAMBESI (VICTORIA) FALLS. After a
drawing in Livingstone's _Missionary Travels_.]
Livingstone now continued his perilous journey with his hundred men
along the Zambesi, the country once densely populated, now desolate
and still. The Bakota tribes, "the colour of coffee and milk," were
friendly, and "great numbers came from all the surrounding villages
and expressed great joy at the appearance of a white man and harbinger
of peace." They brought in large supplies of food, and expressed great
delight when Livingstone doctored their children, who were suffering
from whooping-cough. As they neared the coast, they became aware of
hostile forces. This was explained when they were met by a Portuguese
half-caste "with jacket and hat on," who informed them that for the
last two years they had been fighting the natives. Plunging thus
unconsciously into the midst of a Kafir war rendered travelling
unpleasant and dangerous. In addition, the party of explorers found
their animals woefully bitten by the tsetse fly, rhinoceroses and
elephants were too plentiful to be interesting, and the great white
ant made itself tiresome.
It was 3rd March before Livingstone reached Tete, two hundred and sixty
miles from the coast. The last stages of the journey had been very
beautiful. Many of the hills were of pure white marble, and pink marble
formed the bed of more than one of the streams. Through this country
the Zambesi rolled down toward the coast at the rate of four miles
an hour, while flocks of water-fowl swarmed upon its banks or flew
over its waters. Tete was the farthest outpost of the Portuguese.
Livingstone was most kindly received by the governor, but fever again
laid him low, and he had to remain here for three weeks before he was
strong enough to start for the last stage of his journey to the coast.
He left his Makololos here, promising to return some day to take them
home again. They believed in him implicitly, and remained there three
years, when he returned according to his word. Leaving Tete, he now
embarked on the waters of the Zambesi, high with a fourth annual rise,
which bore him to Sena in five days. So swift is the current at times
that twenty-four hours is enough to take a boat from Tete to Sena,
whereas the return journey may take twenty days.
"I thought the state of Tete quite lamentable," says Livingstone, but
that of Sena was ten times worse. "It is impossible to describe the
miserable state of decay into which the Portuguese possessions here
have sunk."
Though suffering badly from fever, Livingstone pushed on; he passed
the important tributary of the Zambesi, the Shire, which he afterwards
explored, and finally reached Quilimane on the shores of the Indian
Ocean. It was now 20th May 1856, just four years after he had left
Cape Town on his great journey from west to east, since when he had
travelled eleven thousand miles. After waiting six weeks on the "great
mud bank, surrounded by extensive swamps and rice grounds," which form
the site of Quilimane, Livingstone embarked on board a gunboat, the
_Frolic_, for England. He had one Makololo with him--the faithful
Sekwebu. The poor black man begged to be allowed to follow his master
on the seas.
"But," said Livingstone, "you will die if you go to such a cold country
as mine."
"Let me die at your feet," pleaded the black man.
He had not been to Loanda, so he had never seen the sea before. Waves
were breaking over the bar at Quilimane and dashing over the boat that
carried Sekwebu out to the brig. He was terribly alarmed, but he lived
to reach Mauritius, where he became insane, hurled himself into the
sea, and was drowned!
On 12th December 1856, Livingstone landed in England after an absence
of sixteen years. He had left home as an obscure missionary; he returned
to find himself famous. The Royal Geographical Society awarded him
its gold medal; France and Scotland hastened to do him honour. Banquets
and receptions were given for him, and finally this "plain,
single-minded man, somewhat attenuated by years of toil, and with his
face tinged by the sun of Africa," was received by the Queen at Windsor.
The enthusiasm aroused by this longest expedition in the history of
African travel was unrivalled, and the name of Livingstone was on every
lip. But meanwhile others were at work in central Africa, and we must
turn from the discoveries of Livingstone for the moment.