[Illustration: Cover art]
[Frontispiece: DAVID LIVINGSTONE]
THE STORY OF
DAVID
LIVINGSTONE
BY
VAUTIER GOLDING
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
TORONTO: THE COPP, CLARK CO. LTD.
PROEM
_To little Ardale and all his merry kind_
LIGHTS OF LIFE
The dew stands on the dormer panes,
The cross November sun
Has sent the daylight off to bed
Before the night's begun;
The dull red embers, half aglow,
Are sulking in the grate,
And let the lonely shadows grow
All dark and desolate;
Shadows of things that go awry,
Or waver to and fro;
Shadows of playthings bought so dear
And broken long ago;
Shadows of friends who played till mirth
Grew sad and went in pain:--
Where is the merry light that makes
Old shadows smile again?
Hark! little sandals softly beat
Upon the attic stair,
And truant mischief breathless creeps
With whispered, "Is he there?"
A story? 'Tis a fateful task
To fill the open brow:
Who knows what plans of God depend
On all it garners now?
Where shall we lead the clambering limbs,
The big blue fearless eyes?
Down to the gold mine's narrowing drift,
Or to the widening skies
Where, in the space around the stars,
Are countless worlds astray,
Whose peoples call for pioneers
To find the safer way?
Ay, let us tell the generous tale
Of giants real and bold,
Who grew so great they would not stoop
To gather fame and gold;
But hurled the mountains from our path,
And drained our quagmires dry,
And held our foes at bay the while
They bore our weaklings by;
Giants by whose unselfish toil
Our land was first begun,
Where good and useful men and maids
Make merry as they run.
Ah, may you miss the dismal tracks
That aimless feet have trod,
And follow where our pioneers
Make open ways to God.
VAUTIER GOLDING.
CONTENTS
Chapter
I. Early Life
II. First Years in Africa
III. Beyond the Kalahari Desert
IV. From Coast to Coast
V. The Zambesi Expedition
VI. The Upper Shiré and Lake Nyassa
VII. Foiled by the Slavers
VIII. In the Heart of Africa
IX. A Death-blow to Slavery
X. The Last Journey
LIST OF PICTURES
Portrait of Livingstone .... Frontispiece
The brute charged full tilt at his waggon
The lion began to crunch the bone of his arm
The Victoria Falls
A long file of slaves
They burnt the village
Often he had to wade through marshes up to the waist
They saw him dead on his knees
[Illustration: (map of Central Africa and Cape Colony)]
THE STORY OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE
CHAPTER I
EARLY LIFE
The story of this brave and gentle hero, and of his noble toil for
the sake of other men, is truly a tale of more than ordinary wonder.
Few men's lives can better show how even the poorest and weakest can
gain for themselves the power to do great things, and to make the
harder paths of life more easy for those who follow. For David
Livingstone began life in a workman's cottage, without knowledge or
skill, and without money to obtain them. Yet, when he died, the
world was so full of praise and wonder at his work that his body was
brought from Africa to rest in Westminster Abbey among the graves of
his country's greatest men. He had grown to be a great pioneer, an
explorer, a scientist, a doctor, a missioner, and a freer of slaves.
In thirty years he travelled 29,000 miles, through the wild and
unknown parts of Africa, exploring rivers, lakes, plains, forests,
and mountains. He found out places where white settlers might make
farms and plantations in health and safety. He sought for paths and
waterways by which they might bring their cotton, grain, coffee,
sugar, ivory, and skins to the seaports for sale. Among the black
tribes he made many friends, doctored their sick, and lost no chance
of showing them how to do their duty to God and make better use of
their lives.
But his last and greatest work was to follow up the slave-hunters,
and make known in England all the brutal and wicked horrors of the
slave-trade. This was the work that wore him to death, but his noble
self-sacrifice roused his countrymen to take possession of Central
Africa and put an end to slavery. And if we look into his life, we
shall find that the power to do all this came little by little, and
day by day, from one simple source, namely, his earnest and unselfish
desire to show his love for God by doing good to men. He was always
trying to help and befriend others, and this made other men befriend
him and give him the means of carrying on his work.
Livingstone's forefathers were Highlanders, and lived in the wild and
lonely island of Ulva, till hard times drove the family to settle in
the village of Blantyre, among the Lanarkshire cotton-mills, where
work was more plentiful.
Here David was born in the year 1813. His father, Neil Livingstone,
an honest, steady, and hard-working man, took a great interest in all
that was going on in the world. He was a great reader in many
subjects, but was especially fond of books on missionary work. From
him David inherited his Highland pluck and hardihood, and also his
thirst for every kind of knowledge.
His mother, Agnes Hunter, came of an old family which, in the days of
the Covenanter persecution, had been driven from home to the hills,
and had risked torture and death rather than do what they believed to
be wrong. She gave him her gentle and kindly nature, and taught him
to be neat, orderly, and exact. From her tender but firm upbringing
also, he gained the brave grip of truth, honour, and justice that
makes men do and dare all things for duty's sake.
This was his heritage from his parents, and it proved of more value
to him than all the money on earth.
At the village school of Blantyre David soon learnt to read and
write. So poor, however, were his parents, that they had to take him
away from his lessons at the early age of ten, and set him to work in
a cotton-mill. Summer and winter, wet or fine, he had to appear at
the factory at six in the morning, and stay there till eight at
night, with short spaces allowed him for meals. Fourteen hours a day
at the mill might well have broken his pluck and ruined his health,
as, indeed, happened to many poor children, but David was made of
harder stuff. He was bent on getting knowledge by some means or
other. Very quickly he learnt to work the machine called the
"spinning jenny," and was then raised to be a spinner with a small
wage.
The first half-crown of his earning he took home, and slipped it into
his mother's lap. To him it was a small fortune, and would have
bought him many coveted things, but he thought of his mother's wants
before his own. Later on, as he earned more wage, he bought himself
books, and these he used to fix on the "jenny," snatching a few lines
from them whenever he could spare an eye from his work. His hard and
tiring day at the mill was long enough for any one, but in spite of
this he joined night classes and sat up reading till sometimes his
mother took away his books and drove him to bed.
His holidays were spent in ranging over the countryside with his
brothers and sisters, and here too nothing escaped his keen eye and
love of knowledge. Every animal, bird, insect, and plant was an
interest to him, and he studied them closely, trying to find out all
he could about their forms and habits. And while he thus began to
learn the wonderful science of nature, he never dreamt that one day
in the wilds of Africa he would use his knowledge in digging roots
for his supper, or in avoiding vicious beasts and poisonous snakes.
As the years went on he grew restless, and was sometimes not very
happy, without quite knowing why. In reality his mind was growing
very fast, and wanted bigger and better work than watching the
mill-wheels. Spinning cotton was useful enough in its way, but he
wanted to do for mankind something greater and more lasting than that.
His father had many books and papers on mission work in China and
India, and as David read of the wonderful beauty of these countries,
and the ignorance and cruelty of their peoples, he sometimes thought
he would like to be a missionary. The idea returned to him again and
again, but he kept doubting whether he was the right person for the
work. One day, however, when he was twenty years old, he happened to
read a booklet that told such sad tales about the poor of China that
his mind was troubled and stirred. So heavily did the story of human
suffering and wrong weigh upon him that he began to take his country
walks alone, in order to think the matter over undisturbed. Every
morning he asked himself if he could do nothing to help, and every
night he went to bed with the question still unanswered.
But at last there came an evening when he found an answer that made
his way quite clear. He watched the sunset lights creep off the
hills and clouds and die away in the growing: starlight. He heard
the thrush, all grateful for the joy of life, sing out its evensong
till the calm hush of night stole over the tired world. The peace
and beauty of it all seemed to make him sadder than ever. In such a
lovely world, where there was room for all, food for all, and joy
enough for all, it seemed to him so utterly strange that men could
ever even want to cheat, rob, bully, and kill each other, and grab
for themselves more than they could possibly use. The depth of his
own sadness made him remember how once, in the stillness of the
sunset hour, Jesus of Nazareth had wandered into an olive grove, and
there had wept in bitter grief over the troubles of men.
Then suddenly the idea flashed into his mind that at least he could
try and imitate the life of Christ as far as lay in his power. In a
moment his mind was made up. He walked home with a brisk step and
light heart, and told his parents that he was going to college at
Glasgow to learn to be a doctor; and then he would go out to the far
East to help the sick, and to tell men how they could make the world
better and happier by imitating the life of Christ.
David lost no time in carrying out his plan, and at once began to put
by all he could from his earnings at the cotton-mill. Want of money
was his chief difficulty. Indeed, when at last he went up to
Glasgow, he and his father walked all the way, and then had to trudge
the streets till they found a lodging for David that cost no more
than two shillings a week.
It was a hard struggle for young Livingstone, but still, by spending
his savings very carefully, he managed to keep at his studies for a
whole winter. Then he was forced to go back to the cotton-mills in
order to save more money to pay for another winter's training. He
was a quick and thorough learner, and at once it became quite clear
to those who taught him that he would soon be fit for the life he had
chosen.
Livingstone did not want to be ordained a regular missionary and take
the title of "Reverend" before his name, for he did not wish to teach
the special creed and services of any one particular set of
Christians. His own idea was to go among the natives as a plain and
simple man, trying every hour and minute of his daily life to do as
Christ had done; and in this way he hoped to win their love and
respect, and to lead them towards a nobler life of duty to God and
man. But his family and friends so strongly advised him to be made a
missionary in the usual way that he yielded to their wishes, and
offered himself to the London Missionary Society. His offer was
accepted, and after a short examination in London before the
governors of the Society, he was sent to Ongar, in Essex, for a three
months' training among the other missionary students.
Here, with his usual care and thoroughness, he quickly learnt all
that was set before him, but there was one thing he never could
master: do what he would, he never could learn to preach. Once he
was sent to a neighbouring parish with a most carefully prepared
sermon; but he could get no further than the text, and so with a
hasty apology he fled from the pulpit. Probably that was the only
time in his life that he ran away from anything, but the event nearly
ended his career.
His failure in preaching vexed the soul of his pastor so much, that
Livingstone was sent back to the governors at the end of the three
months with a bad report of his powers as a missionary. On the
strength of this report he was nearly sent away as useless. One of
the governors, however, who was wiser than his fellows, saw that
Livingstone could both think well and do well, although he could not
talk well. He accordingly took the young student's part, and
insisted that he should have a further trial at Ongar. The result of
this timely aid was that, after three more months of study, no one
doubted Livingstone's fitness, and so in the year 1840 he was
formally ordained a missionary.
Meanwhile, war had broken out in China, and no one could go there in
safety. This was a disappointment to Livingstone, but while waiting
for peace he would not be idle, so he went on with his medical
studies at London, and also took his degree as a physician and
surgeon at Glasgow. But the war still dragged on, and rather than
waste any time, he decided to go to Africa; and accordingly, on 8th
December 1840, he set sail for that vast and unknown continent, into
which he was one day to bring new light, new hope, and new freedom.