THE LAST JOURNEY
While Livingstone and Stanley were together, they made a short
journey to the north end of Tanganyika. They wanted to see if any
river ran out of the lake towards the Nile; they found that a river,
the Rusizi, flowed into the lake instead. Had they now crossed the
Rusizi, and gone northwards, they would probably have settled the
question of the Nile in a few months. But Stanley had to return, and
Livingstone went with him.
Four months with Livingstone made Stanley as keen an explorer as his
new friend. On their way back they talked much about the sources of
the great rivers, and they both thought that the Lualaba might still
run into the Nile. Had they only known it, Livingstone had already
discovered enough to prove this quite impossible. At Nyangwé he had
measured the height of the Lualaba above the sea-level, and had sent
the measurements to England. Other people had sent measurements of
the Nile as far as its course was known. Geographers at once saw
from these that the Lualaba could never reach the Nile without
running uphill. The Royal Geographical Society at once wrote this to
Livingstone, and told him the Lualaba must be the Congo. But he
never received the letter.
Stanley now tried to persuade his companion to go with him to
England, but in vain. Livingstone had promised his friends at home
to find the sources of the Nile, and he would not give up his
promise. However, he returned with Stanley as far as Unyanyembé; for
here he expected to find some stores from the British Government, who
now also promised him a salary and a pension.
On their arrival they found that, as usual, the stores had been
plundered and sold. Then Stanley, like a true comrade, shared all
his supplies and spare clothes with Livingstone; and he also promised
to try and find him fifty honest bearers in Zanzibar. On 14th March
1872 they parted in much sorrow, for they had grown to like each
other greatly.
Livingstone waited at Unyanyembé till the end of August, when
fifty-seven new bearers, chosen by Stanley, came up with supplies
from Zanzibar. They were honest and faithful men; and, with them to
help him, Livingstone started in good spirits for his last journey.
He hoped to pass round the south of Lake Bangweolo, then westward of
Lake Moero to the Lualaba; and then he would try and reach the Nile.
In six weeks they were at the south end of Tanganyika; and before
January 1873 they had crossed the valley of the Chambezé, a river
which runs into Bangweolo. They then worked round the south of that
lake; but the rainy season broke early that year, and brought with it
the usual floods and fever.
Livingstone was sixty years old, and the toil and suffering of the
last seven years now told upon him terribly. He again fell very ill,
and daily grew weaker. His faithful bearers, who loved him like a
father, did all they could to take care of him, and carried him
through mile after mile of marsh and flood. If these fine fellows
had been with him six years ago, his work would long have been done.
At times he began to think that he would not finish his task. "I
shall never be able to play," he wrote to a friend who was resting
after a life of hard work.
Day after day, in the pitiless rain, they toiled over the swamp-land,
splashed through the flood, and forded swollen streams, sometimes up
to the neck, with their burdens on their heads. A stretch of hard
ground was a rarity, while food grew scarcer and scarcer, and fever
got worse and worse. The bearers made a kitanda, or stretcher slung
on a pole, for they saw that their Bwana (their master) was no longer
able to sit up. There was no proper food for a sick man--for milk,
the one thing most needed, was not to be had.
For four days Livingstone was too weak to write in his diary anything
but the date. Then, on April 27th, he feebly scrawled, "Knocked up
quite, and remain ... recover..... Sent to buy milch goats." He
still had pluck and hope of recovery, but his men had only grief.
They scoured the country for miles around, but they could not get a
single goat.
They saw the end must now come, and they pushed onward to higher
ground, reaching the village of a chief called Chitambo on April
29th. Here their quick and skilful hands in a few hours built him a
hut, and they laid him, in great pain, on a bed made of boughs and
dried grass, covered with blankets. Susi tended him all next day,
and at nightfall Majwara kept watch outside his master's door. In
the dead of night Majwara came calling, "Come to Bwana, Susi, I am
afraid."
Susi and some others crept reverently into the hut; and, by the
flickering light of a candle, they saw the saviour of Central Africa
dead on his knees at the bedside, with his hands to his face on the
pillow.
[Illustration: They saw him dead on his knees]
It is a brave thing to die for one's fellow-men; it is also brave,
and often far harder, to live for them. Livingstone did both.
Indeed, the humble Blantyre mill-boy had done the noblest and highest
thing that man can do; he had given his whole life to help God's less
happy creatures. And this he had done, not for money nor for fame,
but out of love for God and man.
In the grey dawn of May 1st, his faithful followers clustered round
the camp fire to take counsel. They talked of their beloved Bwana,
the master who never struck his bearers, and who nursed them like his
own children when they fell sick. Had he not come from the far land
of the great Queen, not to make slaves, like the Portuguese, but to
set men free? Yes, he was a great white chief, and he must go home
to the tombs of his fathers: that was certain, and they would see to
it, or die. He had given some of his wisdom to Susi and Chuma, and
they would be head-men.
Then Susi and Chuma made their plans. With reverent care they
counted and packed all their master's things, and carried his body to
an open spot near the village. Here some of them built a new hut,
open to the sun, and began to embalm the body; while others made a
stout wooden stockade around it. Outside all they built a circle of
huts for themselves, and, night and day, they kept watch till the
embalming was done.
They buried his heart beneath a large mvula-tree, and put up two
posts and a cross-bar to mark the spot. A day of mourning was held,
and all Chitambo's people, as is their custom, came with bows and
spears; while the bearers fired volleys with their rifles. At last
the body was wrapped, like a mummy, in bark and sailcloth, and lashed
to a pole; and so the return journey was begun.
No praise is too high for the pluck and hardihood of this little band
of faithful men. Once more they faced all the old risks and
hardships of floods, fever, and want of food. They crossed the
Luapula, and made for the south end of Tanganyika. Their great fear
was about the ignorant fancies of the natives, who dislike a dead
body passing through their villages. Often they had to pay toll, and
once they were forced to fight. They came to a tribe of natives who
had a large stockade, and also two villages close at hand. The
people in the stockade had been drinking palm-wine, and the son of
their chief was drunk. The chief might have proved friendly, but his
son refused to let the travellers pass. He quickly forced on a
quarrel, and his men began to shoot arrows.
Then Susi's party cleared the stockade of natives, and put their
precious burden in one of the huts inside. Then, rifles in hand,
they stormed the two villages, burning the huts and driving the
people to their canoes. After this they lived on their spoil for a
week in the stockade, till its owners came to make peace.
When they reached Unyanyembé, they met an expedition sent from
England to search for Livingstone; and they learnt that another
relief party had started up the Congo from the west coast. The
officer at Unyanyembé wanted to bury the body at once. Susi and his
men, however, stoutly refused to give up their purpose.
So the faithful band went on their work of love; and, after nine
months on foot, reached the sea-coast at Bagamoyo, in February 1874.
Here these black men of honour and ability handed over their master's
body to the British Consul. All his property, too, was there, down
to the last button.
Their task was done, and, with sad faces and heavy hearts, they were
sent away.
Livingstone's body was carried to its grave in Westminster Abbey on
18th April 1874, by Oswell, Kirk, Young, Stanley, and others of his
old friends. But the work of his noble spirit was not ended. All
men hastened to do him honour, and many now began to do his bidding.
He had once said that, if he could only bring about the end of the
slave trade, he would count it "a far greater feat than the discovery
of all the sources together."
The dirge over his grave acted on his country like a bugle-call to
Africa. Other brave men pressed forward to carry on the work that
the unselfish Scotch peasant lad had begun; and now slavery in Africa
is all but ended. Livingstone sawed through the first slave-stick in
the Shiré Valley: Gordon, Kitchener, Macdonald, and Wingate broke up
the last strongholds of slavery on the Nile.
Livingstone just missed the Nile, but he found the source of the
Congo, the third great river of the world. Stanley finished most of
the pioneering that was left.
There is now a good road past the Murchison Cataracts, while Lake
Nyassa floats two British gunboats and a fleet of trading steamers.
The Universities' Mission, too, have their own steamer on the lake;
and others missions also are hard at work on Livingstone's plans.
Lake Tanganyika is joined by a road to Nyassa, and will soon be
reached by railway from the Victoria Falls.
Besides this, the nations of Europe have divided Africa amongst
themselves. We English have taken the land of about thirty million
blacks into our charge, and we are trying to govern them justly.
Livingstone also wanted us to teach them how to make the best use of
their lives; and he proved that gentleness and justice could make
noble men, like Susi and his faithful band. If we do this duty to
the Africans, they will stand by us when we need them; and children
who want to have a British Empire in their old age will do well to
think about this.
There are black men still in Africa whose faces light up with joy at
Livingstone's name. They will answer and ask questions, in their
quaint way, about the great man whom they called the Wise Heart and
Healer of Men. "Yes, we loved him, and we served him too. Was he
not our Bwana, who never struck his bearers? Of course we sent him
back to the great White Queen. Did she not send him to Africa, not
to get ivory and gold and slaves, like the Arabs and Portuguese, but
to give a good message of wisdom, and to set men free? Have you many
like him in your land? Ah, but his heart is still in Africa, under
the mvula-tree at Chitambo's."
THE END
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