The Project Gutenberg EBook of David Livingstone, by C. Silvester Horne This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: David Livingstone Author: C. Silvester Horne Release Date: May 7, 2018 [EBook #57110] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DAVID LIVINGSTONE *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive) [Image of the book's cover unavailable.] Contents. Index List of Illustrations (In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.) (etext transcriber's note) DAVID LIVINGSTONE {i} {ii} [Image unavailable.] DAVID LIVINGSTONE. DAVID LIVINGSTONE BY C. SILVESTER HORNE, M.P. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1916 [Image unavailable.] MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON . BOMBAY . CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO DALLAS . SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO All rights reserved PREFACE On March 19th, 1913, a hundred years will have passed since David Livingstone was born. It is only forty years since his body was carried by faithful hands from the centre of Africa to the coast that he might be buried among his peers in Westminster Abbey. In those forty years great and astounding changes have been witnessed in the Continent which is associated with his fame. The campaign he fought against the slave-system that desolated the vast district drained by the Zambesi had to be renewed to free the population on {iii} {iv} {v} the banks of the Congo. Southern Africa has been reconstructed and consolidated. The Upper and the Lower Nile have witnessed many strange vicissitudes of history. Other names have become great in men’s mouths. Some have been associated with vast political enterprises; while some, with a disinterestedness as noble as Livingstone’s, have been at once the pioneers and the martyrs of a Christian civilisation. But nothing that has happened since has diminished by a single laurel the wreath he won, and will wear for ever. With every decade his fame greatens; and whatever our views on African problems may be, we may all agree that her white population may well pray for a double portion of his spirit. At first it seemed unnecessary to re-write his life. The task has been so well fulfilled by many sympathetic biographers. For anyone who has the patience and the leisure it is to be found recorded in the fascinating pages of his journals. But it is so great a possession that there seemed to be room for yet another attempt to present it to those in our busy century who ask for short measure and a clear, simple narrative of facts. This is what the present biography aspires to be. The author has aimed not so much at telling the story as at allowing the story to tell itself. It may be added that, in the belief of the writer, Livingstone is greatest, not as a scientist, nor an explorer, but as a man and a missionary. CONTENTS PAGE Chapter I 1 Chapter II 22 Chapter III 54 Chapter IV 66 Chapter V 85 Chapter VI 106 Chapter VII 138 Chapter VIII 165 Chapter IX 179 Chapter X 191 Chapter XI —Characteristics 229 Index 245 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE DAVID LIVINGSTONE Frontispiece THE CLYDE AND RUINS OF THE OLD MILL AT BLANTYRE 13 WHERE LIVINGSTONE LIVED AT ONGAR 13 LIVINGSTONE ATTACKED BY A LION 32 PREACHING ON THE JOURNEY UP-COUNTRY 77 THE TRAGEDY OF CENTRAL AFRICA 161 “I READ THE BIBLE THROUGH FOUR TIMES WHILST I WAS IN MANYUEMA” 169 THE MANYUEMA AMBUSCADE 175 STANLEY FINDS LIVINGSTONE 181 ON THE LAST MARCH 211 CARRYING THE BODY TO THE SEA 223 MAP OF LIVINGSTONE’S JOURNEYS IN AFRICA At end DR. LIVINGSTONE CHAPTER I The year 1813 in which my story opens was a momentous one in the history of Europe. The titanic struggle with Napoleon was nearing its crisis. Victor at Lutzen and Bautzen, he had been defeated at Leipzig, on one of the bloodiest battlefields in modern warfare. Away in the Pyrenees, Wellington was grappling with Soult, and step by step driving him back on to French soil. Among those who were fighting in the ranks of the British army were at least two men bearing the name of Livingstone. It is doubtful whether they even heard, amid the excitement and peril of the time, that away in peaceful far Blantyre, and in their brother Neil’s home, a lad had been {vi} {vii} {viii} {1} {2} born, and christened by the good, sound scriptural name of David. Yet it may come to be believed some day that the birth of David Livingstone was of more vital influence upon the destiny of the world even than the battle in which Napoleon’s star set in blood two years later. For to open up a continent, and lead the way in the Christianisation of its countless millions was one of the “more renowned” victories of peace—a more difficult and notable achievement than to overthrow one form of military domination in Europe. The family of Livingstones or Livingstons—for David Livingstone himself spelt his name for many years without the final “e”— came from the Island of Ulva off the coast of Argyllshire. Not much of interest is known about them except that one of them died at Culloden fighting for the Stuarts; so that the “fighting blood” in their veins had its way with them before David’s more immediate kinsmen crossed the seas to the Peninsula. The most distinguished member of the family inherited the Highlander’s daring and love of exploits combined with the most pacific spirit, and left behind him an unstained record as an explorer who never lifted his hand to do hurt to anyone through all the perils of his adventurous career. Towards the close of the eighteenth century his grandfather had crossed from Ulva and settled in Blantyre, a village on the Clyde that had certainly no romantic attraction. He was employed in a cotton factory there. Most of his sons went off to the wars; but one of them, Neil, settled in Blantyre as a dealer in tea. He had been previously apprenticed to David Hunter, a tailor; and, as many a good apprentice has done before him, married his master’s daughter. Neil Livingstone and his brave wife had a hard fight of it to make a living out of a small tea business, and to educate and rear their children. Two of the children died in infancy; but three sons and two daughters grew up in that humble home. David was the second son. He was born on March 19th, 1813. The small struggling tradesman has had little justice done to him either by the novelist or by common repute. He is usually represented as a man who cannot afford to keep a soul, and whose interests are limited to sordid and petty transactions across a counter, not always nor often of a scrupulous and honourable character. The reputation is very ill-deserved. The small shop has proved itself as good a training ground as any other for scholars, and saints and heroes; and, but for the fact that our prejudices die hard, we should recognise that it is so. Neil Livingstone and his wife may have lived a narrow life, serving faithfully their customers and dividing their interests between their family, their business, and the little Independent Chapel of which Neil Livingstone was a Deacon. But they found their sphere large enough for the practice of the fundamental Christian virtues, as well as for the noblest of all interests—the interest in the progress of the Kingdom of God throughout the world. There was one family tradition of which David Livingstone was immensely proud. A saying had come down to them attributed to an ancestor that in all the family history there was no record of any dishonest man. When Deacon Neil Livingstone and his wife had passed away, the epitaph on their grave recorded the gratitude of their children for “poor and honest parents.” In this simple and public fashion they expressed their thanks for the honesty of one who, when he sold a pound of tea, gave neither short weight, nor an adulterated article. They also gave thanks for the poverty of their parents, recognising in poverty one of those hard but kind necessities that make for industry and courage and patience; and that the children of the poor oftener leave the world their debtor for serviceable activities than the children of the well-to-do, who have less spur to their ambitions. It was eminently characteristic of David Livingstone that he should thus avow his thanks for the honesty and poverty of his father and mother. There are those still living who recall the manly pride with which he was wont to refer to “my own order, the honest poor.” The mother of David Livingstone was a woman of great charm and force of character—“a delicate little woman, with a wonderful flow of good spirits.” In her, rare devoutness and sterling common sense were combined. She was the careful and thrifty housewife, who had to make every sixpence go as far as possible; but she was remembered for her unfailing cheerfulness and serenity, and there was always something to be saved out of the meagre income when the work of the Church of Christ needed extra support. She came of Covenanting stock, and her father, David Hunter, the tailor, received his first religious impressions at an open-air service, held while the snow was falling fast, and used to tell that so absorbed was he in the realisation of the truth of the Gospel, that, though before the end of the sermon the snow was ankle-deep, he had no sensation of cold. He lived to be eighty-seven, was a close and prolific reader, bore severe reverses of fortune with unflinching courage, and earned the high respect of the countryside. It is impossible to exaggerate what David Livingstone owed to the stock from which he sprang and the bracing influences of his early environment. There were two drawbacks to his home education. It seems that the Deacon had put two classes of book on his private index expurgatorius, as being dangerous—novels, and books of science. So far as novels are concerned the harm done was probably slight; for no one is well-read in the Bible and the Pilgrim’s Progress without receiving a liberal education, and the cultivation of the imagination; while history, biography, books of travel, and missionary records amply served the same purpose. But the proscription of books of science was an evidence of the old evil creed that there is essential antagonism between science and religion. This assumption came near to doing David permanent injury. His religious difficulties did not disappear until in his own words “having lighted on those admirable works of Dr. Thomas Dick, ‘The Philosophy of Religion,’ and ‘The Philosophy of a Future State’ it was gratifying to find that he had enforced my own conviction that religion and science were friendly to one another.” Few people in the nineteenth century were destined to do more towards the practical reconciliation of science and religion than David Livingstone. It is interesting to find that even in his very young days he had a mind and will of his own, and that not even the love and respect he felt for his father could shake his own conviction of truth. The last time his father “applied the rod” was when David refused to read “Wilberforce’s Practical Christianity.” The boy thought the matter over in his canny Scotch way, and concluded that, on the whole, the rod was the less severe form of punishment. So he took the rod, and refused a religious book for which he had no use. Looking back upon his own religious development in after years, he used to confess that at this stage he was “colour-blind.” When he was led to see that God and Nature are “not at strife,” and that God does not say one thing to the theologian and its contrary to the scientist, he accepted in his own simple and sincere way the Christian Gospel, and drew from it the same splendid faith in the universality of the Kingdom of God that inspired the souls of the first apostles. To David Livingstone, to become a Christian was to become in spirit and desire a missionary. It is only necessary to add that the faith which he accepted with the full consent of heart and mind as a lad in Blantyre was the faith in which he died. The days of David Livingstone’s boyhood were great days for missions. The churches were everywhere awakening to their opportunity and responsibility. A new “Acts of the Apostles” was being written. Letters from remote parts of the world, where the ancient battle between Christ and heathenism was being fought out anew, were eagerly read and deeply pondered. The romance and {3} {4} {5} {6} {7} {8} {9} {10} heroism of the majestic campaign captured and kindled both young and old. The year of Livingstone’s birth was a year of singular triumph in the South Seas. It was the year when his great countryman Robert Morrison completed his translation of the New Testament into Chinese. When he was some six or seven years old, another famous Scotch missionary, Robert Moffat, was settling on the Kuruman; and Mrs. Moffat bore in her arms a baby girl destined to become David Livingstone’s wife. The life of Henry Martyn was a supreme call to consecration; while the story of the heroes and heroines of the Moravian missions was almost as familiar in that humble Scottish home as the history of the Apostle Paul. A specially powerful influence in moving Livingstone to his life-decision was the appeal of Charles Gutzlaff for medical missionaries for China. Livingstone was a born naturalist; and despite his father’s old-fashioned prejudices, he made himself a scientist at a very early age, searching old quarries for the shells in the carboniferous limestone, “scouring Clyde-side for simples,” and arranging the flora of the district in botanical order. These expeditions were often very prolonged, and involved the endurance of fatigue and hunger; but the lad could not be discouraged. Unconsciously he was bracing himself physically for the toils and tasks of after years. There is a fine story about the revenge he took upon his native African escort, on one occasion, who had been misguided enough to talk disrespectfully about his slim figure and shortness of stature. Thereupon, Livingstone took them along for two or three days at the top of their speed till they cried out for mercy! He had not scoured Clyde-side for simples for nothing. His fearlessness is well illustrated in his daring and reckless exploit of climbing the ruins of Bothwell Castle, so that he might carve his name higher than any other boy had carved his. There, too, was the childlike ambition, which remained with him to the end, to do something which nobody else could surpass. “No one,” he wrote at the very end of his life, on his last expedition, “will cut me out after this exploration is accomplished.” Then he adds finely, “and may the good Lord of all help me to show myself one of his stout-hearted servants, an honour to my children, and perhaps to my country and race.” The story of Livingstone is told there: it is the story of one of the good Lord’s stout- hearted servants. All the drudgery and hardship of his lot went to make him the man he was. The days of his boyhood were “the good old days”— the days when children of ten years old were sent to work in the factories; and David went with the rest. No eight hours’ day his! No humane legislature thought it wise and well to forbid or curtail child labour. From six o’clock in the morning till eight o’clock at night he worked as a piecer; and all the world knows how he used to place the book he was studying on a portion of the spinning-jenny, and snatch a sentence or two as he passed at his work. He tells us he thus kept “a pretty constant study, undisturbed by the roar of machinery,” and that this habit [Image unavailable.] THE CLYDE AND RUINS OF THE OLD MILL AT BLANTYRE. [Image unavailable.] {10} {11} {12} {13} WHERE LIVINGSTONE LIVED AT ONGAR. of concentration stood him in good stead in after years when he wanted to read and write even “amidst the dancing and song of savages.” As if this were not enough, after a fourteen hours’ day in the factory he would go off to a night-school provided by the employers; and then home to work at his Latin till “mother put out the candle.” It is well for ten-year-old humanity when it has a mother to put out the candle, or Mother Nature might have put out another candle, and where would Africa have been then? Nine years of such severe and determined work as this brought him to University age; and as Glasgow University was hard by, and as he was promoted to be a spinner by this time and able to earn enough in the summer to keep him during the other six months, he entered as a student for Greek and medicine, and seems to have successfully schemed to attend some Divinity lectures even in the summer months. The Scotch Universities are the paradise of poor and struggling students who have more brains and character than bawbees: but the education was not free in those days. The money for fees had to be pinched and scraped; but it was found somehow, and in the early winter of 1836, David and his father walked to the city from Blantyre and trudged the streets of Glasgow all day, with the snow upon the ground, till at last they found a room in “Rotten Row” that could be had for two shillings a week. Lodged thus as cheaply as could be managed, he applied himself with all his unfailing diligence and zest to learn Greek and medicine, as well as to such theological studies as could be undertaken under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Wardlaw—one of Glasgow’s most famous divines—who trained men for the Congregational ministry, and for whom Livingstone had a great admiration. During his second session at Glasgow (1837-8) David Livingstone came to the most fateful decision of his life. He decided to offer himself to one of the Missionary Societies for foreign service. He chose the London Missionary Society because of his sympathy with the catholicity of its basis. It existed “to send neither Episcopacy, nor Presbyterianism, nor Independency to the heathen, but the Gospel of Christ.” “This,” said Livingstone “exactly agreed with my ideas.” He was a member of a Congregational church, and the London Missionary Society has always been in the main supported by these churches. But the Society was founded by Evangelical churchmen and prominent Presbyterians, as well as by Congregationalists, and nothing appealed more to Livingstone than this union of Christian people in the service of an un-Christian world. In due course the acceptance of his offer arrived, and in the early autumn of 1838 he travelled to London, where he was to appear before the Mission Board at 57 Aldersgate Street. One can imagine that, apart altogether from the momentous character of his visit, and the anxiety he must have felt as to his acceptance by the Directors, this first visit to London must have been a most impressive one to the young Scotsman. He heard many distinguished preachers, and visited the famous sites of London. Among other places, he went with a companion to Westminster Abbey. It is a thrilling thought, as Mr. Thomas Hughes reminds us, that he was never known to enter that Abbey again until his remains were borne thither amid the lamentations of the whole civilised world, and all the honours that the living can ever pay to the dead. The examination by the Directors was satisfactory; and according to the custom of the time Livingstone was committed for a short period of probation to the tutorship of the Rev. Richard Cecil, the minister of the little town of Chipping Ongar in Essex. There he was expected to give proof of his preaching ministry, with what result is generally known. He was sent one Sunday evening to preach in the village of Stanford Rivers, where the tradition of Livingstone’s first effort at preaching is still cherished. The raw, somewhat heavy-looking Scotch youth, to whom public speech was always a difficulty, gave out his text “very deliberately.” That was all the congregation got. The sermon composed on the text had fled, owing to the nervous embarrassment produced by a handful of people in a village chapel. “Friends,” said the youth, “I have forgotten all I had to say”—“and hurrying out of the pulpit he left the chapel.” I have no doubt that “hurrying” is the right word. Never was failure more absolute. It is hardly to be wondered at that the Rev. Richard Cecil reported to the Directors his fears that Livingstone had mistaken his vocation. It was a risk to send someone to preach to the heathen who might possibly forget what he had come to say when he arrived. Moreover, criticism was made of his extreme slowness and hesitancy in prayer. Yet the man who was nearly rejected by the Society on this account, died on his knees in the heart of Africa, while all the world was awed by the thought that David Livingstone passed away in the act of prayer. As it was his probation was extended, and at the end of another two months he was finally accepted, and went up to London to continue his medical studies in the London Hospitals. One of the most striking things ever written about him was by the celebrated Dr. Isaac Taylor, of Ongar. “Now after nearly forty years,” he writes, “I remember his step, the characteristic forward tread, firm, simple, resolute, neither fast nor slow, no hurry and no dawdle, but which evidently meant—getting there!” In November, 1840, he was able to return to Glasgow, and qualify as a Licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons; and a few days later he said goodbye to the old folks at home, one of whom— his father—he was never to see on earth again. On November 20th he was ordained at Albion Chapel, London, and three weeks later he sailed on the “George” to Algoa Bay in South Africa. One chapter in his memorable life was now definitely closed. Among the memories in it there are few if any that he cherished more than that of his old Sunday School teacher, David Hogg, who sent for him as he lay dying and said, “Now lad, make religion the every-day business of your life, and not a thing of fits and starts, for if you do, temptation and other things will get the better of you.” It is hardly too much to say that the old man’s death-bed counsel became the watchword of his life. CHAPTER II A voyage of five months saw Livingstone at Algoa Bay, preparing for his first journey into the interior of Africa, the grave of so many reputations, but the land of his renown. Until within a short time of his departure from London he had hoped and intended to go to China as a medical missionary. But the “Opium War” was still in progress; and for the time being China was impossible. Moreover, Livingstone was brought under the influence of one of the greatest personalities in modern missionary enterprise. Robert Moffat was home on furlough, and his wonderful story no less than his striking presence, exerted their spell over the young Scot and changed the goal of his ambition. Dr. Moffat was wont to describe the numberless African villages stretching away to the north where no missionary had yet penetrated; and his appeal found a ready response in Livingstone’s heart. None of us who have heard the old man eloquent, and on whose memories the stately striking figure, with the flowing beard, and the iron-grey tousled hair, made an indelible impression, {14} {15} {16} {17} {18} {19} {20} {21} {22} will wonder that any young man’s imagination should be kindled by his address, or should discover in the mysterious depths of the vast African continent the field for his life work. It was to Dr. Moffat’s station at Kuruman that David Livingstone took his first journey. The distance was seven hundred miles; and he immediately surrendered to the interest and delight of travel by ox waggon, the freedom of the open air life, the variety of the scenery and sport, and the attractiveness of the natives, who engaged his sympathy from the first. It was now that his hardy training in Scotland stood him in good stead. He knew how to put up with inconveniences cheerfully, and face difficulties with resolution, while his resourcefulness was as inexhaustible as his kindliness. That “characteristic forward tread” of which Isaac Taylor had spoken which “meant getting there” was put to the proof and not found wanting. To him there was a way out of every situation, however critical; and the “bold free course” which he took with the natives, together with his medical skill and unwearying goodness, won their loyalty. They recognised him as a great chief, and his whole career is eloquent of the extraordinary devotion which he inspired in them. At the end of May, 1841, he was at Kuruman, with instructions from the Directors of the Society to turn his attention to the North—instructions that absolutely coincided with his own aspiration. It is notable that he formed the very highest opinion of the value of Christian missions from the results that he saw. Let it be remembered that he was always a slow, cautious Scot in all his judgments, with a severely truthful and scientific mind, and his testimony becomes the more valuable. “Everything I witnessed surpassed my hopes,” he writes home; “if this is a fair sample the statements of the missionaries as to their success are far within the mark.” He is full of the praises of the Christian Hottentots, who are “far superior in attainments to what I had expected;” their worship reminded him of the old covenanters. It was thus, then, that with his zeal for his mission of evangelism greatly stimulated, he started north to the country of the Bakwains. A short circuit sufficed to reveal the problem, and he returned to Kuruman to think out the best plan of campaign. The first step was a characteristic one. It was to isolate himself absolutely from all European society and live among the natives, so as to learn their language and study their habits and their laws. For six months he rigorously pursued his plan, and found his reward in the new appreciation he gained of the native character and mode of thinking, and the extent to which he conquered their confidences. So far advanced had he become in the knowledge of their language that he was able to enjoy a laugh at himself for “turning poet.” One can believe that to Livingstone this was no easy work; but he succeeded in making Sechuana translations of several hymns which were afterwards adopted and printed by the French missionaries. “If they had been bad,” he says in his naïve way, “I don’t see that they can have had any motive for using them.” He was waiting now for the final decision of the directors authorising the advance into the unoccupied district of the north. The decision was long in coming. We must recognise that such a resolution was not an easy one for those who carried all the responsibilities at home. Even their most trusted advisers on the actual field were not agreed. Dr. Philip, the special representative of the Society at the Cape, and a man of great personal power and sagacity, shook his head over Livingstone’s impetuosity and talked about the dangers. “If we wait till there is no danger,” said Livingstone, “we shall never go at all.” It was quite true; but there were big problems of policy to be decided. Many held by the watchword “concentration,” which is always plausible, and often conclusive. Settlements for educational and industrial developments had proved their value. On the other hand Livingstone had unanswerable logic on his side when he argued that the missionaries in the South had too scanty a population and that the call to possess the North was urgent, for the traders and the slavers were pushing out there, and the gospel of humanity was imperatively needed. There was long delay, but in the meantime Livingstone was making proof of his ministry. His medical knowledge helped to spread his fame. He fought the rainmakers at their own arts with the scientific weapon of irrigation and won his battle. He made friends with the Bechuana Chief, Sechele, one of the most intelligent and interesting of the many great natives who surrendered to the charm of Livingstone. Sechele was deeply impressed by the missionary’s message, but profoundly troubled in spirit. He said, “You startle me— these words make all my bones to shake—I have no more strength in me. But my forefathers were living at the same time yours were, and how is it that they did not send them word about these terrible things sooner. They all passed away into darkness without knowing whither they were going.” When Livingstone tried to explain to him the gradual spread of the Gospel knowledge, the chief refused to believe that the whole earth could be visited. There was a barrier at his very door—the Kalahari desert. Nobody could cross it. Even those who knew the country would perish, and no missionary would have a chance. As for his own people there was no difficulty in converting them, always assuming that Livingstone would go to work in the right way. “Do you imagine these people will ever believe by your merely talking to them? I can make them do nothing except by thrashing them, and if you like I will call my head-men and with our litupa (whips of rhinoceros hide) we will soon make them all believe together.” It must be confessed, however, that Sechele’s state-church principles did not commend themselves to the mind of an ardent voluntaryist like Livingstone. “In our relations with the people,” he writes, “we were simply strangers exercising no authority or control whatever. Our influence depended entirely on persuasion; and having taught them by kind conversation as well as by public instruction, I expected them to do what their own sense of right and wrong dictated.” He then sets on record “five instances in which by our influence on public opinion war was prevented,” and pays a high tribute to the intelligence of the natives who in many respects excel “our own uneducated peasantry.” This attitude of appreciation and respectful sympathy was the secret of Livingstone’s unparalleled influence over the African tribes. It was on a return from a visit to Sechele in June, 1843, that Livingstone heard the good news of the formal sanction of the forward movement. He hailed the decision, as he said, “with inexpressible delight”; and in a fine letter written to Mr. Cecil declared his fixed resolve to give less attention to the art of physical healing and more to spiritual amelioration. He has no ambition to be “a very good doctor but a useless drone of a missionary.” He feels that to carry out this purpose will involve some self-denial, but he will make the sacrifice cheerfully. As for the charge of ambition, “I really am ambitious to preach beyond other men’s lines.... I am only determined to go on and do all I can, while able, for the poor degraded people of the north.” In less than two months he was ready for the new move. The first journey was two hundred miles to the north-east, to Mabotsa, which he had previously noted as suitable for a station. Here he built a house with his own hands, and settled down for three years’ work among the Bakatlas. During this period two events occurred that were especially notable. The first went far towards ending his career. The facts are well-known from Livingstone’s own graphic but simple description. He had gone with the Bakatlas to hunt some lions which had committed serious depredations in the village. The lions were encircled by the natives but broke through the line and escaped. As Livingstone was returning, however, he saw one of the beasts on a small hill, and fired into him at about thirty yards’ {23} {24} {25} {26} {27} {28} {29} {30} distance. Loading again, he heard a shout, and “looking half-round saw the lion just in the act of springing upon me.” The lion seized him by the shoulder and “growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier dog does a rat.” We now see the advantage of a scientific education. Livingstone was able to analyse his own feelings and emotions during the process of being gnawed by a lion. He observed that “the shock produced a stupor, a sort of dreaminess”; there was “no sense of pain, nor feeling of terror.” He compares it to the influence of chloroform; and argues that “this peculiar state is probably produced in all animals killed by the carnivora, and if so is a merciful provision by our benevolent Creator for lessening the pain of death.” In this judgment he anticipated some [Image unavailable.] LIVINGSTONE ATTACKED BY A LION. weighty modern conclusions by noted physiologists. So interesting does Livingstone find these observations, that it seems as if he must have been almost disappointed when the lion released him and turned his attention to others less well equipped for scientific investigation. On the whole Livingstone escaped marvellously well, but the bone was crunched into splinters, and there were eleven teeth wounds on the upper part of his arm. The arm indeed was never really well again. It will be remembered that it was by the false joint in this limb that the remains of Livingstone were identified on their arrival in England. It will also be remembered that, as has been so well said, “for thirty years afterwards all his labours and adventures, entailing such exertion and fatigue, were undertaken with a limb so maimed that it was painful for him to raise a fowling-piece, or in fact to place the left arm in any position above the level of the shoulder.” This was a bad business. But Providence has a way of making up to good men for afflictions of this kind; and Livingstone’s compensation came to him in the following year, when he had something to face that demanded more daring than a mere every-day encounter with lions. He had been a bachelor in Africa for four years, and he had resolved to try his fortune with Mary Moffat, Dr. Moffat’s eldest daughter. The proposal was made “beneath one of the fruit trees” at Kuruman in 1844. He got the answer he desired and deserved, and Mary Moffat took him with all his erratic ways, and became his devoted wife. “She was always the best spoke in the wheel at home,” he writes; “and when I took her with me on two occasions to lake Ngami, and far beyond, she endured more than some who have written large books of travels.” In course of time three sons and a daughter came to “cheer their solitude,” and increase their responsibilities. But from the first they set themselves to fulfil what Livingstone called the ideal missionary life, “the husband a jack-of-all-trades, and the wife a maid-of-all-work.” The catalogue of necessary accomplishments sounds somewhat embarrassing, and one realises that the ordinary college training is in many respects incomplete. Here it is, as Livingstone expresses it —“Building, gardening, cobbling, doctoring, tinkering, carpentering, gun-mending, farriering, waggon-mending, preaching, schooling, lecturing on physics, occupying a chair in divinity, and helping my wife to make soap, candles, and clothes.” It was certainly a busy and catholic career. He was carrying the whole of his world upon his own broad shoulders, and was guide, philosopher, and friend to a vast district. He had his enemies, too, as those who champion the rights of the poor and helpless are sure to have. To the north were to be found settlements of unscrupulous and marauding Boers, who held by all the unenlightened views of the relation of the white races to the black which were only recently extinct in England where the financial interest in slavery died hard in 1833. These Boer marauders lived largely on slave-labour and on pillage; and Livingstone was brought into open conflict with them. On one side they may be said to have barred his advance. The tribes he served and loved lived under the shadow of a Boer invasion. The time was to come when the cloud would burst over Sechele and his unoffending people, when his wives would be slain and his children carried away into slavery; when many of the bravest of his people would be massacred, and Livingstone’s house sacked and gutted in his absence. This complicity of the northern Boers in those outrages on native tribes which history most frequently associates with the Portuguese, earned Livingstone’s stern indignation and detestation; though he never did the Boers of South Africa the injustice of {31} {32} {33} {34} {35} confounding the lawless raiders with the main body of settlers, of whom he wrote “the Boers generally ... are a sober, industrious, and most hospitable body of peasantry.” He had, however, already begun to have glimpses of what his life-witness was to be. He saw that the curse of Africa lay not only in the eternal conflicts of tribe with tribe. That form of misery was original to the continent and its savage inhabitants. But a new curse had fallen upon the unhappy people by the intrusion of those who united with a higher material civilisation a more developed and refined form of cruelty. The diabolical cunning and callousness that, under the guise of trading, would gain the confidence of a peaceful tribe, only at last to rise up some fatal night, murder the old, enslave the young, burn the huts, and march the chained gang hundreds of miles to the sea, have made the records of African Slavery the most awful reading in human history. Imagination carries the story one step further. We hardly need the genius of a Turner to suggest to us the horror of a slave-ship under the torrid tropical skies, with its dead and dying human freight. When the slave-trade is realised in all its accumulated horrors, it is easy to understand how, to a man of Livingstone’s noble Christian sensibility, the manifest duty of the Church of Christ was to engage in a war-to-the-death struggle against this darkest of all inhumanities. He was planning his campaign during the years when he passed with his wife and children from one settlement to another. Three houses he built with his own hands, and made some progress in the cultivation of gardens round them. The first was at Mabotsa. It was the home to which he brought his young bride and to leave it went to his heart. His going was the result of the attitude adopted towards him by a brother missionary. Sooner than cause scandal among the tribe he resolved to give everything up and go elsewhere. “Paradise will make amends for all our privations and sorrows here,” he says simply. It is something to know that the missionary who did him this injustice lived “to manifest a very different spirit.” Livingstone next cast in his lot with Sechele and his people, and built his second house at Chonuane, some forty miles from Mabotsa. It was hard work, and it made a big drain on his very small income, but it was not his way to complain. The hardship fell more severely on his wife and infant children, and he felt the deprivations and inconveniences most for them. The house was finished in course of time, and a school was erected too, where the children were instructed, and services held. But nature was against a long settlement at Chonuane. A period of prolonged drought set in. Supplies were exhausted. The people had to go further afield, and the position became untenable. There was nothing for it but for the Livingstones to go too. All the labour of rebuilding had to be undertaken again, this time at Kolobeng, another forty miles on. Providence was indeed to Livingstone “like as an eagle stirring up the nest.” Such of the tribe as were left went with him and a new village was constructed. Livingstone and his family lived for a year in “a mere hut.” In 1848 the new house was actually built, despite some serious personal accidents of which he made light in his usual way. “What a mercy to be in a house again!” he writes home; “a year in a little hut through which the wind blew our candles into glorious icicles (as a poet would say) by night, and in which crowds of flies continually settled on the eyes of our poor little brats by day, makes us value our present castle. Oh Janet, know thou, if thou art given to building castles in the air, that that is easy work compared to erecting cottages on the ground!” Such was the building of his third house, the one that was afterwards sacked by the Boers. Then he built no more houses. Indeed, he never had a home of his own in Africa afterwards. The dark problem of Central Africa had him in its grip. He sent his wife and children home to England; and he himself became like that Son of Man whose example he followed so nearly, one “who had not where to lay his head.” Before that time came, however, he had laid the foundations of his fame as an explorer by crossing the Kalahari Desert, and discovering Lake Ngami. The circumstances that gave rise to this journey are easily detailed. The drought continued at Kolobeng as pitilessly as at Chonuane. Only the power of Livingstone’s personality sufficed to retain the faith and loyalty of the tribes. He writes that they were always treated with “respectful kindness” and never had an enemy among the natives. His enemies were among the “dirty whites,” who knew that he was the most dangerous obstacle to the slave-raids, and who objected to his policy of training Christian native teachers to be evangelists among their own kinsfolk. But though the tribes remained loyal, the fact remained that Livingstone had led a migration which had not resulted in a permanent settlement; neither could he command the rain as their own rainmakers professed to be able to do. The heathen superstition that hostile doctors had put their country under an evil charm so that no rain should fall on it, prevailed even against their faith in the missionary. Sechele’s more enlightened mind found it difficult to understand why Livingstone’s God did not answer the prayer for rain. Yet the work went forward at Kolobeng. The chief Sechele, after long hesitation on Livingstone’s part, was baptised and entered into communion with the little church. Trouble followed when he “went home, gave each of his superfluous wives new clothing, and all his own goods, which they had been accustomed to keep in their huts for him, and sent them to their parents with an intimation that he had no fault to find with them, but that in parting with them he wished to follow the will of God.” It was his solution of a social problem that can never be satisfactorily solved, and it was both courageous and generous, but the result was seen in the fiercer resentment of the relatives of the women; and while little or none of this fell upon Livingstone, it served seriously to prejudice the religion which was responsible for Sechele’s action. On every count, it was desirable to find the new and permanent station, where that central training-ground for native missionaries could be established which Livingstone had constantly in view, and where the water supply would be less likely to fail. But where to go? In the south, the field was well supplied with missionaries. To the east were the unfriendly Dutch, bent on making mischief. To the north lay the Kalahari desert, which Sechele had pronounced to be an impassable barrier to the progress of Christianity. “It is utterly impossible even to us black men,” he said. But the word “impossible” was not in Livingstone’s dictionary. If my readers will take the trouble to look at an old map of South Africa they will find the whole vast track of the west which lies to the north of the Orange River, and includes Bechuana Land and Damara Land, described as desert, and the Kalahari Desert in the eastern portion of it. Kolobeng lay at the extreme west of what we know to-day as the Transvaal, some two hundred and fifty miles from Pretoria, and was more than four thousand feet above sea level, near the sources of the Limpopo River, which flows north and east, until it finally joins the ocean at Delagoa Bay. A straight line to Lake Ngami would have taken the travellers in a north-westerly direction a distance of little more than three hundred miles. But it is doubtful whether they could have survived such a journey across an untrodden route, even if they had known accurately where the great lake lay. They were certainly well inspired to go due north to the Zouga River, and then follow it westward to the lake, though this route must have added two hundred miles to their journey. Three other Europeans, Colonel Steele, Mr. Murray, and Mr. Oswell—the latter one of Livingstone’s life-long friends and a mighty African hunter, joined the expedition, which started on June 1st, 1849, and reached the lake on August 1st. Livingstone has given us a most {36} {37} {38} {39} {40} {41} {42} {43} graphic and detailed description of the desert with its sandy soil, its dry beds of ancient rivers, its trackless plains, its prairie grass, its patches of bushes, and the singular products of its soil with roots like large turnips that hold fluid beneath the soil, and above all the desert water-melons on which the Bushmen as well as the elephants and antelopes, and even lions and hyænas subsist. The Bushmen he found a thin, wiry, merry race capable of great endurance, as indeed the denizens of the desert must be. They existed under conditions that inspired the Bechuana with terror, for to add to the other dangers the desert was at times infested with serpents. It was a hazardous enterprise to which Livingstone and his fellow travellers were committed, and, humanly speaking, its success depended wholly on the discovery of water at periodical intervals. The “caravan” was a considerable one. Eighty cattle and twenty horses were not deemed too many for the waggons and for riding; these had to be watered, and the twenty men besides. Progress was necessarily slow. None could face the burning heat of the mid-day hours. They had to move forward in the mornings and the evenings. The waggon-wheels sank deep into the soft, hot sand; and the poor oxen dragging them laboriously forward were, at a critical time, nearly four days without water, “and their masters scarcely better off.” Aided, however, by the experience and keen instinct of the natives, they found wells in unsuspected places, and eventually made the banks of the Zouga River. After that, progress was easy. Leaving the waggons and oxen, they took to canoes, or wended their way along the riverbanks, until, on the morning of August 1st, they found themselves gazing on the waters of Lake Ngami, the first white people to see it so far as they knew. It had been one of the principal arguments with Livingstone for the journey that he would meet the famous chief Sebituane, who had saved the life of Sechele in his infancy, and who was renowned as a warrior and as a powerful and intelligent ruler. It meant another two hundred miles of travel to the north, and the jealousies of the chiefs, and their real or assumed fears for Livingstone’s safety, prevented the realisation of his hopes on this journey. There was nothing for it but to go back to Kolobeng, where the drought persisted as absolute as ever. Livingstone’s congregation and Mrs. Livingstone’s school had disappeared in search of better watered lands. It was clear that for Livingstone there was here “no abiding city.” He resolved to transport his wife and three children to the north. He made more of an eastward circuit this time, and Sechele accompanied them to the fords of the Zouga. Mrs. Livingstone was the first white lady to see Lake Ngami; but the purposed visit to Sebituane had again to be deferred. Livingstone’s aid was invoked for a fever-stricken party of Englishmen who were hunting ivory. One was already dead, but the others recovered under his treatment. His own children, however, sickened; and the party precipitately retired to “the pure air of the desert,” and so home to Kolobeng where another child was born to them, only to be carried away by an epidemic. “Hers is the first grave in all that country,” writes the bereaved father, “marked as the resting-place of one of whom it is believed and confessed that she shall live again.” After a visit to Kuruman to rest and recruit, they were ready in April, 1851, for a third attempt to reach Sebituane. Mr. Oswell, the most valuable of comrades, was again with them. The journey was successful, but it came dangerously near to being disastrous to the whole family. This crisis occurred on the far side of the Zouga river, as they were travelling northward across absolute desert. The Bushman guide lost his way, and the supply of water in the waggons had been wasted by one of the servants. Livingstone tells the incident in a single paragraph, but the agony of it must nearly have killed him and his wife. “The next morning, the less there was of water the more thirsty the little rogues became. The idea of their perishing before our eyes was terrible. It would almost have been a relief to me to have been reproached with being the entire cause of the catastrophe, but not one syllable of upbraiding was uttered by their mother, though the tearful eye told the agony within. In the afternoon of the fifth day, to our inexpressible relief, some of the men returned with a supply of that fluid of which we had never before felt the true value.” At last the often-postponed pleasure of meeting and greeting Sebituane was fulfilled, and the famous chief more than justified all expectations. He met the party on the Chobe river and conducted them with great ceremony and hospitality to his home. The way seemed to be opening for a new and auspicious missionary set...