Illlllll I B 4 OOfi 2MT ■■illL bT l^BS' 4' PREFACE, The purpose of this work is to make the world better acquainted with the character of Livingstone. His discoveries and researches have been given to the public in his own books, but his modesty led him to say little in these of himself, and those who knew him best feel that little is known of the strength of his afiections, the depth and purity of his devotion, or the intensity of his aspirations as a Christian missionary. The growth of his character and the providential shaping of his career are also matters of remarkable interest, of which not much has yet been made known. An attempt has been made in this volume, likewise, to present a more complete history of his life than has yet appeared. Many chapters of it are opened up of which the public have hitherto known little or nothing. It has not been deemed necessary to dwell on events recorded in his published Travels, except for the purpose of connecting the narrative and making it complete. Even on these, however, it has been found that not a little new light and color may be thrown from his correspondence with his friends and his unpublished Journals. Much pains has been taken to show the unity and symmetry of his character. As a man, a Christian, a missionary, a philanthro- pist, and a scientist, Livingstone ranks with the greatest of our race, and shows the minimum of infirmity in connection with the maximum of goodness. Nothing can be more telling than his life as an evidence of the truth and power of Christianity, as a plea for Christian Missions and civilization, or as a demonstration of the true connection between religion and science. So many friends have helped in this book that it is impossible to thank all in a preface. Most of them are named in the body of the work. Special acknowledgmentSj however, are due to the (iii) ^ '^ O ^ /^ o iv PREFA CE. more immediate members of Dr. Livingstone's family, at whose request the work was undertaken ; also to his sisters, the Misses Livingstone, of Hamilton, to Mr. Young, of Kelley, to the vener- able Dr. Moffat, and Mrs. Vavasseur, his daughter. The use of valuable collections of letters has been given by the following (in addition to the friends already named) : The Directors of the London Missionary Society; Dr. Risdon Bennett; Rev. G. D« Watt ; Rev. Joseph Moore ; Rev. W. Thompson, Cape Town ; J. B. Braithwaite, Esq, ; representatives of the late Sir R. I. Murchi- son, Bart., and of the late Sir Thomas Maclear; Rev. Horace Waller, Mr. and Mrs. Webb, of Newstead Abbey, Mr. F. Fitch, of London, Rev. Dr. Stewart, of Lovedale, and Senhor Nunes, of Quilimane. Other friends have forwarded letters of less impor- tance. Some of the letters have reached the hands of the writer after the completion of the book, and have therefore been used but sparingly. The recovery of an important private journal of Dr. Livingstone, which had been lost at the time when the Missionary Travels was published, has thrown much new light on the part of his life immediately preceding his first great journey. In the spelling of African proper names. Dr. Moffat has given valuable help. Usually Livingstone's own spelling has been followed. A Map has been specially prepared, in which the geographical references in the volume are shown, which will enable the reader to follow Livingstone's movements from place to place. With so much material, it would have been easier to write a life in two volumes than in one ; but for obvious reasons it has been deemed desirable to restrict it to the present limits. The author could wish for no higher honor than to have his name associated with that of Livingstone, and can desire no greater pleasure than that of conveying to other minds the impressions that have been left on his own. W. G. BLAIKIE. Edinburgh, 9 Palmekston Road. 1880 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. EARLY YEARS. A.D. 1813-1836. PAGB Ulva — The Livingstones — Traditions of Ulva life — The •' Baughting- time" — " Kirsty's Rock" — Removal of Livingstone's grandfather to Blantyre — Highland blood — Neil Livingstone — His marriage to Agnes Hunter — Her grandfather and father — Monument to Neil and Agnes Livingstone in Hamilton Cemetery — David Livingstone bom 19th March, 1813 — Boyhood — At home — In school — David goes into Blan- tyre Mill — First earnings — Night-school — His habits of reading — Nat- ural-history expeditions — Great spiritual changes in his twentieth year — Dick's Philosophy of a Future State — He resolves to be a missionary — Influence of occupation at Blantyre — Sympathy with the people — Thomas Burke and David Hogg — Practical character of his religion 17 CHAPTER II. MISSIONARY PREPARATION. A.D, 1836-1840. His desire to be a missionary to China — Medical missions — He studies at Glasgow — Classmates and teachers — He applies to London Missionary Society — His ideas of mission-work — He is accepted provisionally — He goes to London — to Ongar — Reminiscences by Rev. Joseph Moore — by Mrs. Gilbert — by Rev. Isaac Taylor — Nearly rejected by the Directors — Returns to Ongar — to London — Letter to his sister — Reminiscences by Dr. Risdon Bennett — Promise to Professor Owen — Impression of his character on his friends and fellow-students — Rev. R. Moffat in England — Livingstone interested — Could not be sent to China — Is appointed to Africa — Providential links in his history — Illness — Last visits to his home — Receives Medical diploma — Parts from his family 34 CHAPTER III. FIRST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. A.i>. 1842-1843. His ordination — Voyage out — At Rio de Janeiro — At the Cape — He pro- ceeds to Kuruman — Letters — Journey of 700 miles to Bechuana country (V) vi CONTENTS. PAGE —Selection cf site for new station — Second excursion to Bechuana country — Letter to his sister — Influence with chiefs — Bubi — Construc- tion of a water-dam — Sekomi — Woman seized by a lion— The Bakaa — Sebehwe — Letter to Dr. Risdon Bennett — Detention at Kuruman — He visits Sebehwe's village — Bakhatlas — Sech61e, chief of Bakwains — Liv- ingstone translates hymns — Travels 400 miles on oxback — Returns to Kuruman — Is authorized to forrfl new station — Receives contributions for native missionary — Letters to Directors on their Mission policy — He goes to new station — Fellow-travelers — Purchase of site — Letter to Dr. Bennett — Desiccation of South Africa — Death of a servant, Sehamy — Letter to his parents 53 CHAPTER IV FIRST TWO STATIONS — MABOTSA AND CHONUANE. A.D. 1843-1847. Description of Mabotsa — A favorite hymn — General reading — Mabotsa infested with lions — Livingstone's encounter — The native deacon who saved him — His Sunday-school — Marriage to Mary Moffat — Work at Mabotsa — Proposed institution for training native agents — Letter to his mother — Trouble at Mabotsa — Noble sacrifice of Livingstone — Goes to Sechele and the Bakwains — New station at Chonuane — Interest shown by Sechele — Journeys eastward — The Boers and the Transvaal — Their occupation of the country, and treatment of the natives — Work among the Bakwains — Livingstone's desire to move on — Theological conflict at home — His view of it — -His scientific* labors and miscellaneous employ- ments 81 CHAPTER V. THIRD STATION — KOLOBENG. A.D. 1847-1852, Want of rain at Chonuane — Removal to Kolobeng — House-building and public works — Hopeful prospects — Letters to Mr. Watt, his sister, and Dr. Bennett — The church at Kolobeng — Pure communion — Conversion of Sechele — Letter from his brother Charles — His history — Livingstone's relations with the Boers — He cannot get native teachers planted in the east — Resolves to explore northward — Extracts from Journal — ^Scarcity of water — Wild animals and other risks — Custom-house robberies and annoyances — Visit from Secretaiy of London Missionary Society — Mani- fold employments of Livingstone — Studies in Sichuana — His reflection ou this period of his life while detained at Manyuema in 1870 .... 100 CONTENTS. vii CHAPTER VI. « KOLOBENG Continued — lake 'ngami. A.D. 184S-1852. PAOB Koboleng failing through drought — Sebituane's country and the Lake 'Ngami — Livingstone sets out with Messrs. Oswell and Murray — Rivers Zouga and Tamanak'le — Old ideas of the interior revolutionized — En- thusiasm of Livingstone — Discovers Lake 'Ngami — Obliged to return — Prize from Royal Geographical Society — Second expedition to the lake, with wrife and children — Children attacked by fever — Again obliged to return — Conviction as to healthier spot beyond — Idea of finding passage to sea either west or east — Birth and death of a child — Family visits Kuruman — Third expedition, again with family — He hopes to find a new locality — Perils of the journey — He reaches Sebituane — The Chiefs illness and death — Distress of Livingstone — Mr. Oswell and he go on to Linyanti — Discovery of the Upper Zambesi — No locality found for set- tlement — More extended journey necessary — He returns — Birth of Os- well Livingstone — Crisis in Livingstone's life — His guiding principles — New plans — The Makololo begin to practice slave-trade — New thoughts about commerce — Letters to Directors — The Bakwains — Pros and cons of his new plan — His unabated missionary zeal — He goes with his family to the Cape — His literary activity 114 CHAPTER VII. FROM THE CAPE TO LINYANTI. A.D. 1852-1853. Unfavorable feeling at Cape Town — Departure of Mrs. Livingstone and children — Livingstone's detention and difficulties — Letter to his wife — to Agnes — Occupations at Cape Town — The Astronomer-Royal — Living- stone leaves the Cape and reaches Kuruman — Destruction of Kolobeng by the Boers — Letters to his wife and Rev. J. Moore- — His resolution to open up Africa or perish — Arrival at Linyanti — Unhealthiness of the country — Thoughts on setting out for coast — Sekeletu's kindness — Liv- ingstone's missionary activity — Death of Mpepe, and of his father — Meeting with Ma-mochisane — Barotse country — Determines to go to Loanda — Heathenism unadulterated — Taste for the beautiful — Letter to his children — to his father — Last Sunday at Linyanti — Prospect of his falliag 145 viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. FROM LINYANTI TO LOANDA. A.D. 1853-1854. PACK Difficulties and hardships of journey — His traveling kit — Four books — His Journal — Mode of traveling — Beauty of country — Repulsiveness of the people — Their religious belief — The negro — Preaching — The magic- lantern — Loneliness of feeling — Slave-trade — Management of the natives — Danger from Chiboque — from another chief — Livingstone ill of fever — At the Quango — Attachment of followers — " The good time coming" — Portuguese settlements — Great kindness of the Portuguese — Arrives at Loanda — Received by Mr. Gabriel — His great friendship — No letters — News through Mr. Gabriel — Livingstone becomes acquainted with naval officers — Resolves to go back to Linyanti and make for East Coast — Letter to his wife — Correspondence with Mr. Maclear — Accuracy of his observations — Sir John Herschel — Geographical Society award their gold medal — Remarks of Lord Ellesmere 169 CHAPTER IX. FROM LOANDA TO QUILIMANK. A.D. 1854-1856. Livingstone sets out from Loanda — Journey back — Effects of slavery- Letter to his wife — Severe attack of fever — He reaches the Barotse country — Day of thanksgiving — His efforts for the good of his men — Anxieties of the Moffats — Mr. Moffat's journey to Mosilikatse — Box at Linyanti — Letter from Mrs. Moffat — Letters to Mrs. Livingstone, Mr. Moffat, And Mrs. Moffat — Kindness of Sekel6tu — New escort — He sets out for the East Coast — Discovers the Victoria Falls — The healthy lon- gitudinal ridges — Pedestrianism — Great dangers — Narrow escapes — Triumph of the spirit of trust in God — Favorite texts — Reference to Captain McClure's experience — Chief subjects of thought—Structure of the continent — Sir Roderick Murchison anticipates his discovery — Let- ters to Geographical Society — First letter from Sir Roderick Murchison — Missionary labor — Monasteries — Protestant mission-stations wanting in self-support — Letter to Directors — Fever not so serious an obstruction as it seemed — His own hardships — Theories of mission»work — Expan- sion V. Concentration — Views of a missionary statesman — He reaches Tette — Letter to King of Portugal — to Sir Roderick Murchison — Reaches Senna — Quilimane — Retrospect — Letter from Directors — Goes to Mauritius — Voyage home — Narrow escape from shipwreck in Bay of Tunis— He reaches England, Dec, 1856— News of his father's death . 186 CONTENTS ix CHAPTEK X. FIRST VISIT HOME. A.D. 1856-1857. PAGE Mrs. Livingstone — Her intense anxieties — Her poetical welcome — Con- gratulatory letters from Mrs. and Dr. Moffat — Meeting of welcome of Royal Geographical Society — of London Missionary Society — Meeting in Mansion House — Enthusiastic public meeting at Cape Town — ^Liv- ingstone visits Hamilton — Returns to London to write his book — Letter to Mr. Maclear — Dr. Risdon Bennett's reminiscences of this period — ' Mr. Frederick Fitch's — Interview with Prince Consort — Honors — Pub- Ucation and .great success of Missionary Travels — Character and design of the book — Why it was not more of a missionary record — Handsome conduct of publisher — Generous use of the profits — Letter to a lady in Carlisle vindicating the character of his speeches . . . 215 CHAPTEK XL FiEST VISIT HOME — Continued. A.D. 1857-1858. Livingstone at Dublin, at British Association — Letter to his wife — ^He meets the chamber of commerce at Manchester — At Glasgow, receives honors from Corporation, University, Faculty of Physicians and Sur- geons, United Presbyterians, Cotton-spinners — His speeches in reply — His brother Charles joins him — ^Interesting meeting and speech at Hamilton — Reception from " Literary and Scientific Institute of Blan- tyre" — Sympathy with operatives — Quick apprehension of all public questions — His social views in advance of the age — He plans a People's CafI — ^Visit to Edinburgh — More honors — ^Letter to Mr. Maclear — In- teresting visit to Cambridge — ^Lectures there — Professor Sedgwick's remarks on his visit — Livingstone's great satisfaction — Relations to London Missionary Society — He severs his connection — Proposal of Govenmient expedition — He accepts consulship and command of Expe- dition — ^Kindness of Lords Palme rston and Clarendon — The Portuguese Ambassador — ^Livingstone proposes to go to Portugal — Is dissuaded — Lord Clarendon's letter to Sekel6tu — Results of Livingstone 's visitfto England — Farewell banquet, February, 1858 — Interview with the Queen — Veledictory letters — Professor Sedgwick and Sir Roderick Murchison — Arrangements for Expedition — Dr., Mrs., and Oswald Livingstone set sail from Liverpool — Letters to children 234 Sfe CONTENTS, CHAPTER XII. THE ZAMBESI. AND FIKST EXPLORATIONS OF THE SHIRE. A.D. 1858-1859. PAGB Dr. and Mrs. Livingstone sail in the " Pearl" — Characteristic instructions to members of Expedition — Dr. Livingstone conscious of difficult posi- tion — Letter to Robert — Sierra Leone — Effects of British Squadron and of Christian Missions — Dr. and Mrs. Moffat at Cape Town — Splendid reception there — Illness of Mrs. Livingstone — She remains behind — The five years of the Expedition — Letter to Mr. James Young — to Dr. Moffat • — Kongone entrance to Zambesi — Collision with Naval Officer — Dis- turbed state of the country — Trip to Kebrabasa Rapids — Dr. Livingstone applies for new steamer — Willing to pay for one himself — Exploration of the Shir6 — Murchison Cataracts — Extracts from private Journal — • Discovery of Lake Shirwa — Correspondence — Letter to Agnes Living- stone — Trip to Tette — Kroomen and two members of Expedition dis- missed — Livingstone's vindication — Discovery of Lake Nyassa — Bright hopes for the future — Idea of a colony — Generosity of Livingstone — Letters to Mr. Maclear, Mr. Young, and Sir Roderick Murchison — His sympathy with the "honest poor" — He hears of the birth of his youngest •laughter . 259 CHAPTER XIII. GOING HOME WITH THE MAKOLOLO. A.D. 1860. Down to Kongone — State of the ship — Further delay — Letter to Secretary of Universities Mission — Letter to Mr. Braithwaite — At Tette — Miss Whately's sugar-mill — With his brother and Kirk at Kebrabasa — Mode of traveling — Reappearance of old friends — African warfare and its effects — Desolation — A European colony desirable — Escape from rhino- ceros — Rumors of Moffat — The Portuguese local Governors oppose Liv- ingstone — He becomes unpopular with them — Letter to Mr. Young — Wants of the country — The Makololo — Approach home — Some are dis- appointed — News of the death of the London missionaries, the Helmores and others — Letter to Dr. Moffat — The Victoria Falls re-examined — Sekel6tu ill of leprosy — Treatment and recovery — His disappointment at not seeing Mrs. Livingstone — Efforts for the spiritual good of the Mako- lolo— Careful observations in Natural History — The last of the " Ma- Robert" — Cheering prospect of the Universities Mission — Letter to Mr. Moore — to Mr. Young — He wishes another ship — Letter to Sir Roderick Manchisoa on the ramored joumej of Silva Porto. . 288 CONTENTS. & CHAPTER XIV. ROVXJMA AND NYASSA — UNIVEKSITIES MISSION. A.D. 1861-1862. PAGB Beginning of 1861 — Arrival of the " Pioneer," and of the agents of Uni- versities Mission — Cordial welcome — Livingstone's catholic feelings — Ordered to explore the Rovuma — Bishop Mackenzie goes with him — Returns to the Shir6 — Turning-point of prosperity past — Difficult navi- gation — The slave-sticks — Bishop settles at Magomero — Hostilities be- tween Manganja and Ajawa — Attack of Mission party by Ajawa — Livingstone's advice to Bishop regardin them — Letter to his son Robert — Livingstone, Kirk, and Charles start for Lake Nyassa — Party robbed at north of Lake — Dismal activity of the slave-trade — Awful mortality in the process — Livingstone's fondness for Punch — Letter to Mr. Young — Joy at departure of new steamer " Lady Nyassa" — Coloni- zation project — Letter against it from Sir R. Murchison — Hears of Dr. Stewart coming out from Free Church of Scotland — Visit at the ship from Bishop Mackenzie — News of defeat of Ajawa by missionaries — Anxiety of Livingstone — Arrangements for " Pioneer" to go to Kongone for new steamer and friends from home, then go to Ruo to meet Bishop • — " Pioneer" detained — Dr. Livingstone's anxieties and depression at New Year — " Pioneer" misses man-of-war " Gorgon" — At length " Gor- gon" appears with brig from England and *' Lady Nyassa" — Mrs. Liv- ingstone and other ladies on board — Livingstone's meeting with his wife, and with Dr. Stewart — Stewart's recollections — Difficulties of navigation — Captain Wilson of " Gorgon" goes up river and hears of death of Bishop Mackenzie and Mr. Burrup — Great distress — Misrepresentations about Universities Mission — Miss Mackenzie and Mrs. Burrup taken to " Gorgon" — Dr. and Mrs. Livingstone return to Shupanga — Illness and death of Mrs. Livingstone there — Extracts from Livingstone's Journal, and letters to the Moffats, Agnes, and the Murchisons 300 CHAPTERXV. LAST TWO YEAES OF THE EXPEDITION. A.D. 1862-1863. Livingstone again buckles on his armor — Letter to Waller — Launch of " Lady Nyassa" — Too late for season — He explores the Rovuma — Fresh activity of the slave-trade — Letter to Governor of Mozambique about his discoveries — Letter to Sir Thomas Maclear — Generous offer of a party of Scotchmen — The Expedition proceeds up Zambesi with " Lady Nyassa" in tow — Appalling desolations of Marianno — Tidings of the Mission — Death of Scudamor*— of Dickenson — of Thornton— xii CONTENTS. PAGB Illness of Livingstone — Dr. Kirk and Charles Livingstone go home- He proceeds northward with Mr. Rae and Mr. E. D. Young of the "Gorgon" — Attempt to carry a boat over the rapids — Defeated — Recall of the Expedition — Livingstone's views — Letter to Mr. James Young — to Mr. Waller — Feeling of the Portuguese Government — Offer to the Rev. Dr. Stewart — Great discouragements — Why did he not go home ? — Proceeds to explore Nyassa — Risks and sufferings — Occupation of his mind — Natural History — Obliged to turn back — More desolation — Report of his murder — Kindness of Chinsamba — Reaches the ship — Letter from Bishop Tozer, abandoning the Mission — Distress of Living- stone — Letter to Sir Thomas Maclear — Progress of Dr. Stewart — Living- stonia — Livingstone takes charge of the children of the Universities Mission — Letter to his daughter — Retrospect — The work of the Expedi- tion — Livingstone's plans for the future 824 CHAPTER XVI. QUILIMANE TO BOMBAY AND ENGLAND. A.D. 1864. Livingstone returns the "Pioneer" to the Navy, and is to sail in the. " Nyassa" to Bombay — Terrific circular storm — Imminent peril of the "Nyassa" — He reaches Mozambique — Letter to his daughter — Proceeds to Zanzibar — His engineer leaves him — Scanty crew of "Nyassa" — Livingstone captain and engineer — Peril of the voyage of 2500 miles — Risk of the monsoons — The " Nyassa" becalmed — Illness of the men — Remarks on African travel — Flying-fish — Dolphins — Curiosities of his Journal — Idea of a colony — Furious squall — Two sea-serpents seen — More squalls — The "Nyassa" enters Bombay harbor — Is unnoticed — First visit from officer with Custom-house schedules — How filled up — Attention of Sir Bartle Frere and others — Livingstone goes with the Governor to Dapuri — His feelings on landing in India — Letter to Sir Thomas Maclear — He visits mission-schools, etc., at Poonah — Slaving in Persian Gulf — Returns to Bombay — Leaves two boys with Dr. Wilson — Borrows passage-money and sails for England — At Aden — At Alex- andria — Reaches Charing Cross — Encouragement derived from his Bombay visit — Two projects contemplated on his way home 343 CHAPTER XVII. SECOND VISIT HOME. A.D. 1864-1865. Dr. Livingstone and Sir R. Murchison — At Lady Palmerstoh's reception— at other places in London — Sad new? of his son Robert — His early death ■r-Dr. Livingstone goes to Scotland — Pays visits — Consultation with CONTENTS. xiii k>AUB Professor Syme as to operation — Visit to Duke of Argyll — to Ulva — He meets Dr. Duff — At launch of a Turkish frigate — At Hamilton — Goes to Bath to British Association — Delivers an address — Dr. Colenso — At funeral of Captain Speke — Bath speech offends the Portuguese — Charges of Lacerda — He visits Mr. and Mrs. Webb at Newstead — Their great hospitality — The Livingstone room — He spends eight months there writing his book — He regains elasticity and playfulness — His book — Charles Livingstone's share — He uses his influence for Dr. Kirk — Delivers a lecture at Mansfield — Proposal made to him by Sir R. Mur- chison to return to Africa — Letter from Sir Roderick — His reply — He will not cease to be a missionary — Letter to Mr. James Young — Over- tures from Foreign Office — Livingstone displeased — At dinner of Royal Apademy — His speech not reported — President Lincoln's assassination — Examination by Committee of House of Commons — His opinion on the capacity of the negro — He goes down to Scotland — Tom Brown'' s School Days — His mother very ill — She rallies — He goes to Oxford — Hears of his mother's death — Returns — He attends examination of Os- well's school — His speech — Goes to London, preparing to leave — Parts from Mr. and Mrs. Webb — Stays with Dr. and Mrs. Hamilton — Last days in England 856 CHAPTER XVIII. FROM ENGLAND TO BOMBAY AND ZANZIBAR. A.D. 1865-1866. Object of new journey — Double scheme— He goes to Paris with Agnes — Baron Hausmann — Anecdote at Marseilles- — He reaches Bombay — Letter to Agnes — Reminiscences of Dr. Livingstone at Bombay by Rev. D. C. Boyd — by Alex. Brown, Esq. — Livingstone's dress — He visits tlie caves of Kenhari — Rumors of murder of Baron van der Decken — He delivers a lecture at Bombay — Great success — He sells the " Lady Nyassa" — Letter to Mr. James Young — Letter to Anna Mary — Hears that Dr. Kirk has got an appointment — Sets out for Zanzibar in " Thule" — Letter to Mr. James Young — His experience at sea — Letter to Agnes — He reaches Zanzibar — Calls on Sultan — Presents the " Thule" to him from Bombay Government — Monotony of Zanzibar life — Leaves in " Penguin" for the continent 376 CHAPTER XIX. FROM ZANZIBAR TO UJIjI. A.D. 1866-1869. Dr. Livingstone goes to mouth of Rovuma — His prayer — His company — His herd of animals — Loss of his buffaloes — Good spirits when setting »ut — Difficulties at Rovuma — Bad conduct of Johanna men — Dismissal 2 xiv CONTENTS. PAGB of his Sepoys — Fresh horrors of slave-trade — Uninhabited tract — He reaches Lake Nyassa — Letter to his son Thomas — Disappointed hopes — His double aim, to teach natives and rouse horror of slave-trade — Tenor of rehgious addresses — Wikatami remains behind — Livingstone finds no altogether satisfactory station for commerce and missions — Question of the watershed — Was it worth the trouble? — Overruled for good to Africa — Opinion of Sir Bartle Frere — At Marenga's — The Johanna men leave in a body — Circulate rumor of his murder — Sir Roderick disbelieves it — Mr. E, D. Young sent out with Search Expedition — Finds proof against rumor — Livingstone half-starved — Loss of his goats — Review of 1866 — Reflections on Divine Providence — Letter to Thomas — His dog drowned — Loss of his medicine-chest — He feels sentence of death passed «n him — First sight of Lake Tanganyika — Detained at Chitimba's — Discovery of Lake Moero — Occupations during detention of 1867 — Great privations and difficulties — Illness — Rebellion among his men — Discovery of Lake Bangweolo — Its oozy banks — Detention — Sufferings — He makes for Ujiji — Very severe illness in beginning of 18G9— Reaches Ujiji — Finds his goods have been wasted and stolen — Most bitter disap- pointment — His medicines, etc., at Unyanyembe — Letter to Sultan of Zanzibar — Letters to Dr. Moffat and his daughter 888 CHAPTER XX. MANYUEMA. A.D. 1869-187L He sets out to explore Manyuema and the river Lualaba — Loss of forty= two letters — His feebleness through illness— He arrives at Bambarr6 — Becomes acquainted with the soko or gorilla — Reaches the Luama River — Magnificence of the country — Repulsiveness of the people — Cannot get a canoe to explore the Lualaba — Has to return to Bambarr6 — Letter to Thomas, and retrospect of his life — Letter to Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann — Miss Tmn€ — He is worse in health than ever, yet resolves to add to his programme and go round Lake Bangweolo — Letter to Agnes — Review of the past — He sets out anew in a more northerly direction — Overpowered by constant wet — Reaches Nyangwe, the farthest point northward in his last Expedition — Long detention — Letter to his brother John — Sense of difficulties and troubles — Nobility of his spirit — He sets off with only three attendants for the Lualaba — Suspicions of the natives — Influence of Arab traders — Frightful difficulties of the way — Lamed by footsores — Has to return to Bambarr6 — Long and wearisome detention — Occupations — Meditations and reveries — Death no terror — Unparalleled position and trials — He reads his Bible from beginning to end four times — Letter to Sir Thomas Maclear — To Agnes — His delight at her sentiments about his coming 'CONTENTS. vt home — Account of the soko — Grief to hear of deatb of Lady Murchison — Wretched character of men sent from Zanzibar — At last sets out with Mohamad — Difficulties — Slave-trade most horrible — Cannot get canoes for Lualaba — Long waiting — New plan — Frustrated by horrible massacre on banks of Lualaba— Frightful scene — He must return to Ujiji — New illness — Perils of journey to Ujiji — Life three times endangered in one day — Reaches Ujiji — Shereef has sold off his goods — He i? almost in despair — Meets Henry M. Stanley and is relieved — His contributions to Natural Science during last journeys — Professor Owen in the Quarttrly Review 409 CHAPTER XXI. LIVINGSTONE AND STANLEY. A.D. 1871-1872. Mr. Gordon Bennett sends Stanley in search of Livingstone — Stanley at Zanzibar — Starts for Ujiji — Reaches Unyanyembe — Dangerous illness- War between Arabs and natives — Narrow escape of Stanley — Approach to Ujiji — Meeting with Livingstone — Livingstone's story — Stanley's news — Livingstone's goods and men at Bagamoio — Stanley's account of Livingstone — Refutation of foolish and calumnious charges — They go to the north of the lake — Livingstone resolves not to go home, but to get fresh men and return to the sources — Letter to Agnes — to Sir Thomas Maclear — The travelers go to Unyanyembe — More plundering of stores — Stanley leaves for Zanzibar — Stanley's bitterness of heart at parting- Livingstone's intense gratitude to Stanley — He intrusts his Journal to him, and commissions him to send servants and stores from Zanzibar — Stanley's journey to the coast — Finds Search Expedition at Bagamoio — Proceeds to England — Stanley's reception — Unpleasant feelings — Eclair- cissement — England grateful to Stanley 436 CHAPTER XXII. FEOM UNYANYEMBE TO BANGWEOLO. A.D. 1872-1873. Livingstone's long wait at Unyanyembe — His plan of operations — His fifty-ninth birthday — Renewal of self-dedication — Letters to Agnes — to New York Herald — Hardness of the African battle — Waverings of judgment, whether Lualaba was the Nile or the Congo — Extracts from Journal — Gleams of humor — Natural history — His distress on hearing of the death of Sir Roderick Murchison — Thoughts on mission-work — Arrival of his escort — His happiness in his new men — He starts from Unyanyembe — Illness — Great amount of rain — Near Bangweolo — In- cessant moisture — Flowers of the forest — Taking of observations regu- larly prosecuted — Dreadful state of the country from rain — Hunger-" xvi CONTENTS. PAG8 Furious attack of ants — Greatness of Livingstone's sufferings — Letters t» Sir Thomas Maclear, Mr. Young, his brother, and Agnes — His sixtieth birthday — Great weakness in April — Sunday services and observations continued — Increasing illness — The end approaching — Last written words — Last day of his travels — He reaches Chitambo's village, in Ilala — Is found on his knees dead, on morning of 1st May — Courage and affection of his attendants — His body embalmed — Carried toward shore — Dangers and sufferings during the march — The party meet Lieutenant Cameron at Unyanyembe — Determine to go on — Huse at Kasek^ra — Death of Dr. Dillon — The party reach Bagamoio, and the remains are placed on board a cruiser — The Search Expeditions from England — to East Coast under Cameron — to West Coast under Grandy — Explanation of Expeditions by Sir Henry Rawlinson — Livingstone's remains brought to England — Examined by Sir W. Fergusson and others — Buried in Westminster Abbey — Inscription on slab — Livingstone's wish for a forest grave — Lines from Punch — Tributes to his memory — Sir Bartle Frere — The Lancet — Lord Polwarth — Florence Nightingale 452 CHAPTER XXIII. POSTHUMOUS INFLUENCE. History of his life not completed at his death — Thrilling effect of the tragedy of Ilala — Livingstone's influence on the slave-trade — His letters from Manyuema — Sir Bartle Frere's mission to Zanzibar — Successful efforts of Dr. Kirk with Sultan of Zanzibar — The land route — The sea route — Slave-trade declared illegal — Egypt — The Soudan — Colonel Gordon — Conventions with Turkey — King Mtesa of Uganda — Nyassa district — Introduction of lawful commerce — Various commercial enter- prises in progress — Influence of Livingstone on exploration — Enterprise of newspapers — Exploring undertakings of various nations — Living- stone's personal service to science — His hard work in science the cause of respect — His influence on missionary enterprise — Livingstonia — Dr. Stewart. — Mr. E. D. Young — Blantyre — The Universities Mission under Bishop Steere — Its return to the mainland and to Nyassa district — Church Missionary Society at Nyanza — London Missionary Society at Tanganyika — French, Inland, Baptist, and American missions — Medical missions — The Fisk Livingstone hall — Livingstone's great legacy to Africa, a spotless Christian name and character — Honors of the future . 480 APPENDIX. I. Extracts from paper on " Missionary Sacrifices" , 493 II. Treatment of African Fever 499 III. Letter to Dr. Tidman, as to future operations 501 IV. Lord Clarendon's Letter to Sekel^u . . , 606 V. Public Honors awarded to Dr. Livingstone 40'' li^^il Dayid Livingstone. CHAPTER I. EATiLY YEARS. A.D. 1813-1836. Ulva — The Livingstones — Traditions of Ulva life — The " baughting-time"— " Kirsty's Rock" — Removal of Livingstone's grandfather to Blantyre— Highland blood — Neil Livingstone — His marriage to Agnes Hunter — Her grandfather and father — Monument to Neil and Agnes Livingstone in Hamilton Cemetery — David Livingstone, born 19th March, 1813 — Boyhood — At home — In school — David goes into Blantyre Mill — First Earnings- Night-school — His habits of reading — Natural-history expeditions — Great spiritual change in his twentieth year — Dick's Philosophy of a Future State — He resolves to be a missionary — Influence of occupation at Blantyre — Sympathy with the people — Thomas Burk and David Hogg — Practical character of his religion. The family of David Livingstone sprang, as he has himsilf recorded, from the island of Ulva, on the west coast of Mull, in Argyllshire,, Ulva, "the island of ■wolves," is of the same group as Staffa, and, like it, remarkable for its basaltic columns, which, according to MacCulloch, are more deserving of admiration than those of the Giant's Causeway, and have missed being famous only from being eclipsed by the greater glory of StafFa. The island belonged for many generations to the Mac- quaires, a name distinguished in our home annals, as well as in those of Australia. The Celtic name of the Li vino-- stones was M'Leay, which, according to Dr. Livingstone's own idea, means " son of the gray-headed," but according to another derivation, "son of the physician." It has been (17) Dayid Livingstone. CHAPTER I. EAT?,LY YEARS. A.D. 1813-1836. Ulva — The Livingstones — Traditions of Ulva life — The " baughting-time"— " Kirsty's Rock" — Removal of Livingstone's grandfather to Blantyre— Highland blood — Neil Livingstone — His marriage to Agnes Hunter — Her grandfather and father — Monument to Neil and Agnes Livingstone in Hamilton Cemetery — David Livingstone, born 19th March, 1813 — Boyhood • — At home — In school — David goes into Blantyre Mill — First Earnings- Night-school — His habits of reading — Natural-history expeditions — Great spiritual change in his twentieth year — Dick's Philosophy of a Future State — He resolves to be a missionary — Influence of occupation at Blantyre — Sympathy with the people — Thomas Burk and David Hogg — Practical character of his religion. The family of David Livingstone sprang, as he has himself recorded, from the island of Ulva, on the west coast of Mull, in Argyllshirf^,. Ulva, " the island of wolves," is of the same group as Staffa, and, like it, remarkable for its basaltic columns, which, according to MacCulloch, are more deserving of admiration than those of the Giant's Causeway, and have missed being famous only from being eclipsed by the greater glory of StafFa. The island belonged for many generations to the Mac- quaires, a name distinguished in our home annals, a^ well as in those of Australia. The Celtic name of the Living- stones was M'Leay, which, according to Dr. Livingstone's own idea, means " son of the gray -headed," but according to another derivation, "son of the physician." It has been (17) 18 DAVID LIVINGSTONE, surmised that the name may have been given to some son of the famous Beatoun, who held the post of physician to the Lord of the Isles. Probably Dr. Livingstone never heard of this derivation ; if he had, he would have shown it some favor, for he had a singularly high opinion of the ' physician's office. The Saxon name of the family was originally spelt Livingstone, but the Doctor's father had shortened it by the omission of the final " e." David wrote it for many years in the abbreviated form, but about 1857, at his father's request, he restored the original spelling.^ The significance of the original form of the name was not without its influence on him. He used to refer with great pleasure to a note from an old friend and fellow-student, the late Professor George Wilson, of Edinburgh, acknowl- edging a copy of his book in 1857: "Meanwhile, may your name be propitious; in all your long and weary journeys may the Living half of your title outweigh the other ; till after long and blessed labors, the white stone is given you in the happy land." Livingstone has told us most that is known of his fore- fathers ; how his great-grandfather fell at CuUoden, fight- ing for the old line of kings ; how his grandfather could go back for six generations of his family before him, giving the particulars of each; and how the only tradition he himself felt proud of was that of the old man who had never heard of any person in the family being guilty of dishonesty, and who charged his children never to intro- duce the vice. He used also to tell his children, when spurring them to diligence at school, that neither had he ever heard of a Livingstone who was a donkey. He has also recorded a tradition that the people of the island were converted from being Roman Catholics "by the laird coming round with a man having a yellow staff, which would seem to have attracted more attention than his * See Journal of Geographical Society, 1857, p. clxviii. EARLY YEARS. 19 teaching, for the new religion went long afterward — perhaps it does so still — by the name of the religion of the yellow stick." The same story is told of perhaps a dozen other places in the Highlands; the "yellow stick" seems to have done duty on a considerable scale. There were traditions of Ulva life that must have been very congenial to the temperament of David Livingstone. In the "Statistical Account" of the parish to which it belongs^ we read of an old custom among the inhabitants, to remove with their flocks in the beginning of each summer to the upland pastures, and bivouac there till they were obliged to descend in the month of August. The open- air life, the free intercourse of families, the roaming frolics of the young men, the songs and merriment of young and old, seem to have made this a singularly happy time. The writer of the account (Mr. Clark, of Ulva) says that he had frequently listened with delight to the tales of pastoral life led by the people on these occasions ; it was indeed a relic of Arcadia. There were tragic traditions, too, of Ulva; notably that of Kirsty's Rock, an awful place where the islanders are said to have administered Lynch law to a woman who had unwittingly killed a girl she meant only to frighten, for the alleged crime — denied by the girl — of stealing a cheese. The poor woman was broken-hearted when she saw what she had done ; but the neighbors, filled with horror, and deaf to her remonstrances, placed her in a sack, which they laid upon a rock covered by the sea at high water, where the rising tide slowly terminated her existence. Livingstone quotes Macaulay's remark on the extreme savagery of the Highlanders of those days, like the Cape Caffres, as he says ; and the tradition of Kirsty's Rock would seem to confirm it. But the stories of the " baughting-time " presented a fairer aspect of Ulva life, and no doubt left happier impressions on his mind. His * Kilninian and Kilmore. See New Statistical Account of Scotland, ArgylL shire, p. 345. 20 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. grandfather, as he tells us, had an almost unlimited stock of such stories, which he was wont to rehearse to his grand- children and other rapt listeners. When, for the first and last time in his life, David Living- stone visited Ulva, in 1864, in a friend's yacht, he could hear little or nothing of his relatives. In 1792, his grand- father, as he tells us, left it for Blantyre, in Lanarkshire, about seven miles from Glasgow, on the banks of the Clyde, where he found employment in a cotton factory. The dying charge of the unnamed ancestor must have sunk into the heart of his descendant, for, being a God-fearing man and of sterling honesty, he was employed in the con- veyance of large sums' of money from Glasgow to the works, and in his old age was pensioned off, so as to spend las declining years in ease and comfort. There is a tradition in the family, showing his sense of the value of education, that he was complimented by the Blantyre school-master for never grudging the price of a school-book for any of his children — a compliment, we fear, not often won at the present day. The other near relations of Livingstone seem to have left the island at the same time, and settled in Canada, Prince Edward's Isle, and the United States. The influence of his Highland blood was apparent in many ways in David Livingstone's character. It modified the democratic influences of his earlier years, when he lived among the cotton spinners of Lanarkshire. It en- abled him to enter more readily into the relation of the African tribes to their chiefs, which, unlike some other missionaries, he sought to conserve, while purifying it by Christian influence. It showed itself in the dash and daring which were so remarkbly combined in him with Saxon forethought and perseverance, "We are not sure but it gave a tinge to his aff'ections, intensifying his likes, and some of his dislikes too. His attachment to Sir Roderick Murchison was quite that of a Highlander, and hardly less so was his feeling toward the Duke of Argyll, — a man whom EARLY YEARS. 21 he had no doubt many grounds for esteeming highly, but of whom, after visiting him at Inveraray, he spoke with all the enthusiasm of a Highlander for his chief The Ulva emigrant had several sons, all of whom but one eventually entered the King's service during the French war, either as soldiers or sailors. The old man was somewhat disheartened by this circumstance, and especially by the fate of Charles, head-clerk in the office of Mr. Henry Monteith, in Glasgow, who was pressed on board a man-of-war, and died soon after in the Mediter- ranean. Only one son remained at home, Neil, the father of David, who eventually became a tea-dealer, and spent his life at Blantyre and Hamilton. David Livingstone has told us that his father was of the high type of charac- ter portrayed in the Cottar's Saturday Night. There are friends still alive who remember him well, and on whom, he made a deep impression. He was a great reader from his youth upward, especially of religious works. His reading and his religion refined his character, and made him a most pleasant and instructive companion. His "Conversational powers were remarkable, and he could pour out in a most interesting way the stores of his reading and observation. Neil Livingstone was a man of great spiritual earnest- ness, and his whole life was consecrated to duty and the fear of God. In many ways he was remarkable, being in some things before his time. In his boyhood he had seen the evil effects of convivial habits in his immediate circle, and in order to fortify others by his example he became a strict teetotaler, suffering not a little ridicule and opposi- tion from the firmness with which he carried out his resolution. He was a Sunday-school teacher, an ardent member of a missionary society, and a promoter of meet- ings for prayer and fellowship, before such things had ceased to be regarded as badges of fanaticism. While traveling through the neighboring parishes in his voca- 22 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. tion of tea-merchant, he acted also as colporteur, distribu- ting tracts and encouraging the reading of useful books. He took suitable opportunities when they came to him of speaking to young men and others on the most important of all subjects, and not without effect. He learned Gaelic that he might be able to read the Bible to his mother, who knew that language best. He had indeed the very soul of a missionary. Withal he was kindly and affable, though very particular in enforcing what he believed to be right. He was quick of temper, but of tender heart and gentle ways; anything that had the look of sternness was the result not of harshness but of high principle. By this means he commanded the affection as well as the respect of his family. It was a great blow to his distinguished son, to whom in his character and ways he bore a great resemblance, to get news of his death, on his way home after his great journey, dissipating the cherished pleasure of sitting at the fireside and telling him all his adventures in Africa. ..-y^^^^zLi^ The wife of Neil Livingstone was Agnes Hunter, a member of a family of the same humble rank and the same estimable character as his own. Her grandfather, Gavin Hunter, of the parish of Shotts, was a doughty Covenanter, who might have sat for ^the portrait of David Deans. His son' David (after wlfom the traveler was named) was a man of the same type, who got his first religious impressions in his eighteenth year, at an open- air service conducted by one of the Secession Erskines. Snow was falling at the time, and before the end of the sermon the people were standing in snow up to the ankles ; but David Hunter used to say he had no feeling of cold that day. He married Janet Moffat, and lived at first in comfortable circumstances at Airdrie, where he owned a cottage and a croft. Mrs. Hunter died, when her daughter Agnes, afterward Mrs. Neil Livingstone, was but fifteen Agnes was her mother's only nurse during a long EARLY YEARS. 23 illness, and attended so carefully to her wants that th« 'minister of the family laid his hand on her head, anci said, " A blessing will follow you, my lassie, for your duty to your mother." Soon after Mrs. Hunter's death a reverse of fortune overtook her husband, who had been too good- natured in accommodating his neighbors. He removed to Blantyre, where he worked as a tailor. Neil Livingstone was apprenticed to him by his father, much against his will ; but it was by this means that he became acquainted with Agnes Hunter, his future wife. David Hunter, whose devout and intelligent character procured for him great respect, died at Blantyre in 1834, at the age of eighty- seven. He was a great favorite with his grandchildren, to whom he was alwavs kind, and whom he allowed to rum- mage freely among his books, of which he had a consider- able collection, chiefly theological. Neil Livingstone and Agnes Hunter ivere married in 1810, and took up house at first in Glasgow. The furnish- ing of their house indicated the frugal character and self- respect of the occupants; it included a handsome chest of drawers, and other traditional marks of respectability. Not liking Glasgow, they returned to Blantyre. In a humble home there, five sons and two daughters wero born. Two of the sons died in infancy, to the great sorrow of the parents. Mrs. Livingstone's family spoke and speak of her as a very loving mother, one who con- tributed to their home a remarkable element of brightness and serenity Active, orderly, and of thorough cleanli- ness, she trained her family in the same virtues, exempli- fying their value in their own home. She was a delicate little woman, with a wonderful flow of good spirits, and remarkable for the beauty of her eyes, to which those of her son David bore a strong resemblance. She was most careful of household duties, and attentive to her children. Her love had no crust to penetrate, but came beaming out freely like the light of the sun. Her son loved her, and 24 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. in many ways followed her. It was the genial, gentle influences that had moved him under his mother's train- ing that enabled him to move the savages of Africa. She, too, had a great store of family traditions, and, like the mother of Sir Walter Scott, she retained the power of telling them with the utmost accuracy to a very old age. In one of Livingstone's private journals, written in 1864, during his second visit home, he gives at full length one of his mother's stories, which some future Macaulay may find useful as an illustration of the social condition of Scotland in the early part of the eighteenth century : " Mother told me stories of her youth : they seem to come back to her in her eighty-second year very vividly. Her grandfather, Gavin Hunter, could write, while most common people were ignorant of the art. A poor woman got him to write a petition to the minister of Shotts parish to augment her monthly allowance of sixpence, as she could not live on it. He was taken to Hamilton jail for this, and having a wife and three children at home, who without him would certainly starve, he thought of David's feigning madness before the Philistines, and beslabbered his beard with saliva. All who were found guilty were sent to the army in America, or the plantations. A sergeant had compassion on him, and said, 'Tell me, gudeman, if you are really out of your mind. I'll befriend you.' He confessed that he only feigned insanity, because he had a wife and three bairns at home who would starve if he were sent to the army. 'Dinna say onything mair to ony body,' &aid the kind-hearted sergeant. He then said to the commanding officer, 'They have given us a man clean out of his mind: I can do nothing with the like o' him.' The officer went to him and gave him three shillings, saying, ' Tak' that, gudeman, and gang awa' hame to your wife and weans.' 'Ay,' said mother, 'mony a prayer went up for that sergeant, for my grandfather was an unco godly man. He had never had so much money in his life before, for his wages were only threepence a day.' " Mrs. Livingstone, to whom David had always been a ost dutiful son, died on the 18th June, 1865, after a lingering illness which had confined her to bed for several years. A telegram received by him at Oxford announced her death ; that telegram had been stowed away in one of his traveling cases, for a year after (19th June, 1866), in EARLY YEARS. 25 his Last Journals, he wrote this entry: "I lighted on a telegram to-day: * Your mother died at noon on the 18th June. This was in 1865 ; it affected me not a little."^ The home in which David Liviiigstone grew up was bright and happy, and presented a remarkable example of all the domestic virtues. It was ruled by an industry that never lost an hour of the six days, and that welcomed and honored the day of rest ; a thrift that made the most of everything, though it never got far beyond the bare necessaries of life ; a self-restraint that admitted no stimu- lant within the door, and that faced bravely and steadily all the burdens of life; a love of books that showed the presence of a cultivated taste, with a fear of God that dignified the life which it moulded and controlled. To the last David Livingstone was proud of the class from which he sprang. When the highest in the land were showering compliments on him, he was writing to his old friends of " my own order, the honest poor," and trying, by schemes of colonization and otherwise, to promote their benefit. He never had the least hankering for any title or distinction that would have seemed to lift him out of his own class; and it was with perfect sincerity that on the tombstone which he placed over the resting-place of his parents in the cemetery of Hamilton, he expressed his feelings in these words, deliberately refusing to change thr "and" of the last line into "but": TO SHOW THE RESTING-PLACE OF NEIL LIVINGSTONE, AND AGNES HUNTER, HIS WIFE, AND TO EXPRESS THE THANKPtTLNESS TO GOD OF THEIR CHILDREN, JOHN, DAVID, JANET, CHARLES, AND AGNES, FOR POOR AND PIOUS PARENTS. * Lasi Journals, vol. i. p. 66. 26 DA VID LIVINGSTONE. David Livingstone's birthday was the 19th March, 1813. Of his early boyhood there is little to say, except that he was a favorite at home. The children's games were merrier when he was among them, and the fireside brighter. He contributed constantly to the happiness of the family. Anything of interest that happened to him he was always ready to tell them. The habit was kept up in after-years. When he went to study in Glasgow, returning on the Saturday evenings, he would take his place by the fireside and tell them all that had occurred during the week, thus sharing his life with them. His sisters still remember how they longed for these Saturday evenings. At the village school he received his early education. He seems from his earliest childhood to have been of a calm, self-reliant nature. It.was his father's \ habit to lock the door at dusk, by which time all the \ children were expected to be in the house. One evening >David had infringed this rule, and when he reached the door it was barred. He made no cry nor disturbance, but having procured a piece of bread, sat down contentedly to Ipass the night on the doorstep. There, on looking out, his mother found him. It was an early application of the rule which did him such service in later days, to make the best of the least pleasant situations. But no one could yet have thought how the rule was to be afterward applied. Looking back to this period, Livingstone might have said, in the words of the old Scotch ballad : " little knew my mother, The day she cradled me, The lands that I should wander o'er, The death that I should dee." At the age of nine he got a New Testament from his Sunday-school teacher for repeating the 119th Psalm on two successive evenings with only five errors, a proof that perseverance was bred in his very bone. His parents were poor, and at the age of ten he was put EARLY YEARS. 27 to work in the factory as a piecer, that his earnings might aid his mother in the struggle with the wolf which had followed the family from the island that bore its name. After serving a number of years as a piecer, he was ipTO-~ he labors, by introducing MISSIONARY PREPARATION. 41 the arts and sciences of civilization, and doing everything to commend Christianity to their hearts and consciences. He will be exposed to great trials of his faith and patience from the indifference, distrust, and even direct opposition and scorn of those for whose good he is laboring ; he may be tempted to despondency from the little apparent fruit of his exertions, and exposed to all the contaminating influence of heathenism." He was not about to undertake this work without counting the cost. " The hardships and dangers of missionary life, so far as I have had the means of ascertaining their nature and extent, have been the subject of serious reflection, and in dependence on the' promised assistance of the Holy Spirit, I have no hesita- tion in saying that I would willingly submit to them, considering my constitution capable of enduring any ordinary share of hardship or fatigue." On one point he was able to give the Directors very explicit informa- tion: he was not married, nor under any engagement of marriage, nor had he ever made proposals of marriage, nor indeed been in love 1 He would prefer to go out unmar- ried, that he might, like the great apostle, be without family cares, and give himself entirely to the work. His application to the London Missionary Society was provisionally accepted, and in September, 1838, he was summoned to London to meet the Directors. A young Englishman came to London on the same errand at the same time, and a friendship naturally arose between the two. Livingstone's young friend was the Rev. Joseph ■Moore, afterwards missionary at Tahiti ; now of Congleton, in Cheshire. Nine years later, Livingstone, writing to Mr. Moore from Africa, said : " Of all those I have met since we parted, I have seen no one I can compare to you for sincere, hearty friendship." Livingstone's family used to speak of them as Jonathan and David. Mr. Moore ha? kindly furnished us with his recollections of Livingstoaff At this time :— 42 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. "I met with Livingstone first in September, 1838, at 57 Alderegate street, London. On the same day we had received a letter from the Secretary informing ua severally that our applications had been received, and that we must appear in London to be examined by the Mission Board there. On the same day, he from Scotland, and I from the south of England, arrived in town. On that night we simply accosted each other, as those who meet at a lodging house might do. After breakfast on the following day we fell into conversation, and finding that the same object had brought us to the metropolis, and that the same trial awaited us, naturally enough we were drawn to each other. Every day, as we had not been in town before, we visited places of renown in the great city, and had many a chat about our prospects. " On Sunday, in the morning, we heard Dr. Leifchild, who was then in his prime, and in the evening Mr. Sherman, who preached with all his accustomed persuasiveness and mellifluousness. In the afternoon we worshiped at St. Paul's, and heard Prebendary Dale. " On Monday we passed our first examination. On Tuesday we went to Westminster Abbey. Who that had seen those two young men passing from monument to monument could have divined that one of them would one day be buried with a nation's — rather with the civilized world's — lament, in that sacred shrine ? The wildest fancy could not have pictured that such an honor awaited David Livingstone. I grew daily more attached to him. If I were asked why, I should be rather at a loss to reply. There was truly an indescribable charm about him, which, with all his rather ungainly ways, and by no means winning face, attracted almost every one, and which helped him eo much in his after-wanderings in Africa. •* He won those who came near nim by a kind of spell. There happened to be in the boarding-house at that time a young M.D., a a saddler from Hants, and a bookseller from Scotland. To this hour they all speak of him in rapturous terms. " After passing two examinations, we were both so far accepted by the Society that we were sent to the Rev. Richard Cecil, who resided at Chipping Ongar, in Essex, Most missionary students were sent to him for three months' probation, and if a favorable opinion was sent to the Board of Directors, they went to one of the Independent colleges. The students did not for the most part live with Mr. Cecil, but took lodgings in the town, and went to his house for meals and instruction in clasBics and theology. Livingstone and I lodged together. We read Latin and Greek, and began Hebrew together. Every day we took walks, and Tisited all the spots of interest in the neighborhood, among them the country churchyard which was the burial-place of John Locke. In a place so quiet, and a life so ordinary as that of a student, there did not •ftdflur many events worthy of recital. I will, however, mention one or MISSION AR Y PREP A RA TION. 43 two things, because they give an insight — a kind of prophetic glance— into Livingstone's after-career. *'One i'oggy November morning, at three o'clock, he set out from Ongar to walk to London to see a relative of his father's.* It waa about twenty-seven miles to the house he sought. After spending a few hours with his relation, he set out to return on foot to Ongar. Just out of London, near Edmonton, a lady had been thrown out of a gig. She lay stunned on the road. Livingston immediately went to her, helped to carry her into a house close by, and having examined her and found no bones broken, and recommending a doctor to be called, he resumed his weary tramp. Weary and footsore, when he reached Stanford Kivers he missed his way, and finding after some time that he wa3 wrong, he felt so dead-beat that he was inclined to lie down and sleep; but finding a directing-post he climbed it, and by the light of the stars deciphered enough to know his whereabouts. About twelve that Saturday night he reached Ongar, white as a sheet, and so tired he could hardly utter a word. I gave him a basin of bread and milk, and I am not exaggerating when I say I put him to bed. He fell at once asleep, and did not awake till noonday had passed on Sunday. ^' Total abstinence at that time began to be spoken of, and Living- stone and I, and a Mr. Taylor, who went to India, took a pledge together to abstain.' Of that trio, two, I am sorry to say {heu me miserum!), enfeebled health, after many years, compelled to take a little wine for our stomachs' sake. Livingstone was one of the two. " One part of our duties was to prepare sermons, which were sub- mitted to Mr. Cecil, and, when corrected, were committed to memory, and then repeated to our village congregations. Livingstone prepared one, and one Sunday the minister of Stamford Rivers, where the cele- brated Isaac Taylor resided, having fallen sick after the morning service, Livingstone was sent for to preach in the evening. He took his text, read it out very deliberately, and then — then — his sermon had fled I Midnight darkness came upon him, and he abruptly said: ' Friends, I have forgotten all I had to say,' and hurrying out of the pulpit, he left the chapel. ^ We learn from the family that the precise object of the visit was to transact some business for his eldest brother, who had begun to deal in lace. In the darkness of the morning Livingstone fell into a ditch, smearing his clothes, and not improving his appearance for smart business purposes. The day was spent in going about in London from shop to shop, greatly increasing Livingstone's fatigue. * Livingstone had always practiced total abstinence, according to the invari- tbie custom of his father's house. The third of the trio was the Rev. Joseph V. S, Taylor, now of the Irist Presbyt«jirian Missiop, Gujerat, Bombay. 44 DAVID LIVINGSTONE, " He never became a preacher" [we shall see that this does not apply to his Breaching in the Sichuana language], " and in the first letter I received from him from Elizabeth Town, in Africa, he says : * I am a very poor preacher, having a bad delivery, and some of them said if they knew I was to preach again they would not enter the chapel. Whether this was all on account of my manner 1 don't know; but the truth which I uttered seemed to plague very much the person who sup- plies the missionaries with wagons and oxen. (They were bad ones.) My subject was the necessity of adopting the benevolent spirit of the Son of God, and abandoning the selfishness of the world.' Each stu- dent at Ongar had also to conduct family worship in rotation. I was much impressed by the fact that Livingstone never prayed without the petition that we might imitate Christ in all his imitable perfec- tions." * In the Autobiography of Mrs. Gilbert, an eminent member of the family of the Taylors of Ongar, there occur some reminiscenses of Livingstone, corresponding to those here given by Mr. Moore.^ The Rev. Isaac Taylor, LL.D., now rector of Settring- ham, York, son of the celebrated author of The Natural History of Enthusiasm, and himself author of Words and Places, Etruscan Researches, etc., has kindly furnished us with the following recollection : " I well remember as a boy taking country rambles with Livingstone when he was studying at Ongar. Mr. Cecil had several missionary students, but Livingstone was the only one whose per- sonality made any impression on my boyish imagination. I might sum up my impression of him in two words — • simplicity and resolution. Now, after nearly forty years, I remember his step, the characteristic forward tread, firm, *In connection with this prayer, it is interesting to note the impression mado 6y Livingstone nearly twenty years afterward on one who saw him but twice — > once at a public breakfast in Edinburgh, and again at the British Association in Dublin in 1857. We refer to Mrs. Sime, sister of Livingstone's early fria4d. Professor George Wilson, of Edinburgh. Mrs. Sime writes : " 1 never knew any one who gave me more the idea of power over other men, such power as our Saviour showed while on earth, the power of love and purity co]»- bined." » Page 386, third edition. MISSIONARY PREPARATION. 45 simple, resolute, neither fast nor slow, no hurry and no dawdle, but which evidently meant — getting there." ^ We resume Mr. Moore's reminiscences : " When three months had elapsed, Mr. Cecil sent in his report to the Board. Judging from Livingstone's hesitating manner in conducting family worship, and while praying on the week-days in the chapel, and also from his failure so complete in preaching, an unfavorable report, was given in. . . . Happily, when it was read, and a decision was about to be given against him, some one pleaded hard that his probation should be extended, and so he had several months' additional trial granted. 1 Bailed m the same boat, and was also sent back to Ongar as a naughty boy. ... At last we had so imp-oved that both were fully accepted, Livingstone went to Loudon to pursue his medical studies, and I went to Cheshnnt College. A day or two after reaching college, I sent to Livingstone, asking him to purchase a second-hand carpet for my room. He was quite scandalized at such an exhibition of effeminacy, and positively refused to gratify my wish. ... In the spring of 1840 I met Livingstone at London in Exeter Hall, when Prince Albert delivered his maiden speech in England. I remember how nearly he was brought to silence when the speech, which he had lodged on the brim of his hat, fell into it, as deafening cheers made it vibrate. A day or two after, we heard Binney deliver his masterly missionary sermon, * Christ seeing of the travail of his soul and being satisfied.' " The meeting at Exeter Hall was held to inaugurate the Niger Expedition. It was on this occasion that Samuel Wilberforce became known as a great platform orator.^ It must have been pleasant to Livingstone in after-years to *0n one occasion, in conversation with his former pastor, the Rev. John Moir, Livingstone spoke of Mr. Isaac Taylor, who had shown him much kind- ness, and often invited him to dine in his house. He said that though Mr. Taylor was connected with the Independents, he was attached to the principles of the Church of England. Mr. Taylor used to lay very great stress on acquaintance with the writings of the Fathers as necessary for meeting the claims of the Tractarians, and did not think that that study was sufficiently encouraged by the Nonconformists. Any one who has been in Mr. Taylor's study at Stanford Rivers, and who remembers the top-heavy row of patristic folios that crowned his collection of books, and the glance of pride he cast on them as he asked his visitor whether many men in his Church were well read in the Fathers, will be at no loss to verify this reminiscence. Certainly Living* Stone had no such qualification, and undoubtedly he never missed it. ^ Life of Bishop Wilberforce, vol. i. p. 160. 46 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. recall the circumstance when he became a friend and cor- respondent of the Bishop of Oxford. Notwithstanding the dear postage of the time, Living- stone wrote regularly to his friends, but few of his letters have survived. One of the few, dated 5th May, 1839, is addressed to his sister, and in it he says that there had been some intention of sending him abroad at once, but that he was very desirous of getting more education. The letter contains very little news, but is full of the most devout aspirations for himself and exhortations to his sister. Alluding to the remark of a friend that they should seek to be " uncommon Christians, that is, eminently holy and devoted servants of the Most High," he urges : " Let us seek — and with the conviction that we cannot do without it — that all selfishness be extirpated, pride banished, unbelief driven from the mind, every idol dethroned, and everything hostile to holiness and opposed to the divine will crucified ; that ' holiness to the Lord ' may be engraven on the heart, and evermore characterize our whole conduct. This is what we ought to strive after ; this is the way to be happy ; this is what our Saviour loves — entire surrender of the heart. May He enable us by his Spirit to persevere till we attain it ! All comes from Him, the disposition to ask as well as the blessing itself. " I hope you improve the talents committed to you whenever there is an opportunity. You have a class with whom you have some influence. It requires prudence in the way of managing it ; seek wisdom from above to direct you ; persevere — don't be content with once or twice recommending the Saviour to them — again and again, in as kind a manner as possible, familiarly, individually, and privately, exhibit to them the fountain of happiness and joy, never forgetting to implore divine energy to accompany your endeavors, and you need not fear that your labor will be unfruitful. If you have the willing mind, that la accepted ; nothing is accepted if that be wanting. God desires that. He can do all the rest. After all, He is the sole agent, for the ' willing mind' comes alone from Him. This is comforting, for when we think of the feebleness and littleness of all we do, we might despair of having our services accepted, were we not assured that it is not these God looks to, except in so far as they are indications of the state of the heart." Dr. Livingstone's sisters have a distinct recollection that the field to which the Directors intended to send him was MISSION AR Y PREPARA TION. 47 the West Indies, and that he remonstrated on the ground that he had spent two years in medical study, but in the West Indies, where there were regular practitioners, his medical knowledge would be of little or no avail. He pleaded with the Directors, therefore, that he might be allowed to complete his medical studies, and it was then that Africa was provisionally fixed on as his destination. It appears, however, that he had not quite abandoned the thought of China. Mr. Moir, his former pastor, writes that being in London in May, 1839, he called at the Mission House to make inquiries about him. He asked whether the Directors did not intend to send him to the East Indies, where the field was so large and the demand so urgent, but he was told that though they esteemed him highly, they did not think that his gifts fitted him for India, and that Africa would be a more suitable field. On returning to London, Livingstone devoted himself with special ardor to medical and Gcientific study. The church with which he was connected was that of the late Rev. Dr. Bennett, in Falcon Square. This led to his becoming intimate with Dr. Bennett's son, now the well- known J. Risdon Bennett, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., and Presi- dent of the Royal College of Physicians, London. The friendship continued during the whole of Dr. Livingstone's life. From some recollections with which Dr. Bennett has kindly furnished us we take the following: "My acquaintance with David Livingstone was through the London Missionary Society, when, having offered himself to that Society, he canoe to London to carry on those medical and other studies which he 'lad commenced in Glasgow. From the first, I became deeply interested n his character, and ever after maintained a close friendship with him. i entertained toward him a sincere afltection, and had the highest admi- ration of his endowments, both of mind and heart, and of his pure and noble devotion of all his powers to the highest purposes of life. One could not fail to be impressed with his simple, loving. Christian spirit, and the combined modest, unassuming, and self reliant character of the man. 48 DA VID LIVINGSTOKE. " He placed himself under my guidance in reference to his medical studies, and I was struck with the amount of knowledge that he had already acquired of those subjects which constitute the foundation of medical science. He had, however, little or no acquaintance with the practical departments of medicine, and had had no opportunities of studying the nature and aspects of disease. Of these deficiencies he was quite aware, and felt the importance of acquiring as much practical knowledge as possible during his stay in London. I was at that time physician to the Aldersgate Street Dispensary, and was lecturing at the Charing Cross Hospital on the practice of medicine, and thus was able to obtain for him free admission to hospital practice as well as attend- ance on my lectures and my practice at the dispensary. I think that I also obtained for him admission to the opthalmic hospital in Moorfielda. With these sources of information open to him, he obtained a consider- able acquaintance with the more ordinary forms of disease, both surgical and medical, and an amount of scientific and practical knowledge that could not fail to be of the greatest advantage to him in the distant regions to which he was going, away from all the resources of civiliza- tion. His letters to me, and indeed all the records of his eventful life, demonstrate how great to him was the value of the medical knowledge with which he entered on missionary life. There is abundant evidence that on various occasions his own life was preserved through his cour- ageous and sagacious application of his scientific knowledge to his own needs; and the benefits which he conferred on the natives to whose welfare he devoted himself, and the wonderful influence which he exercised over them, were in no small degree due to the humane and skilled assistance which he was able to render as a healer of bodily disease. The account which he gave me of his perilous encounter with the lion, and the means he adopted for the repair of the serious injuries which he received, excited the astonishment and admiration of all the medical friends to whom I related it, as evincing an amount of courage, sagacity, skill, and endurance that have scarcely been surpassed in the annals of heroism." Another distinguished man of science with whom Livingstone became acquainted in London, and on wl:iom he made an impression similar to that made on D.' Bennett, was Professor Owen. Part of the little time at his disposal was devoted to studying the series of compara- tive anatomy in the Hunterian Museum, under Professor Owen's charge Mr. Owen was interested to find that the Lanarkshire student was born in the same neighborhood MISSWIURY PREPARATION, 49 as Hunter,^ but still more interested in the youth himself and his great love of natural history. On taking leave, Livingstone promised to bear his instructor in mind if any curiosity fell in his way. Years passed, and as no communication reached him, Mr. Owen was disposed to class the promise with too many others made in the like circumstances. But on his first return to this country Livingstone presented himself, bearing the tusk of an elephant with a spiral curve. He had found it in the heart of Africa, and it was not easy of transport. " You may recall," said Professor Owen, at the Farewell Festival in 1858, " the difiiculties of the progress of the weary sick traveler on the bullock's back. Every pound weight was of moment ; but Livingstone said, * Owen shall have this tusk,' and he placed it in my hands in London." Pro- fessor Owen recorded this as a proof of Livingstone's inflexible adherence to his word. With equal justice we may quote it as a proof of his undying gratitude to any one that had shown him kindness. On all his fellow-students and acquaintances the sim- plicity, frankness, and kindliness of Livingstone's character made a deep impression. Mr. J. S. Cook, now of London, who spent three months with him at Ongar, writes : " He was so kind and gentle in word and deed to all about him that all loved him. He bad always words of sympathy at command, and was ready to perform acts of sympathy for those who were suffering." The Rev. G. D. Watt, a brother Scotchman, who went as a missionary to India, has a vivid remembrance of Livingstone's mode of dis- cussion; he showed great simplicity of view, along with a certain roughness or bluntness of manner; great kindli- ness, and yet great persistence in holding to his own ideas. But none of his friends seem to have had any foresight of ^ Not in the same parish, as stated afterward by Professor Owen, Hunter was born in East Kilbride, and Livingstone in Blantyre. The error is repeated in notices of Livingstone in some other quarters. 5 50 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. the eminence he was destined to attain. The Directors of the Society did not even rank him among their ablest men. It is interesting to contrast the opinion entertained of him then with that expressed by Sir Bartle Frere, after much personal intercourse, many years afterward. " Of his intellectual force and energy," wrote Sir Bartle, " he his given such proof as few men could afford. Any five years of his life might in any other occupation have estab- lished a character and raised for him a fortune such as none but the most energetic of our race can realize." * But his early friends were not so much at fault. Livingstone was somewhat slow of maturing. If we may say so, his intellect hung fire up to this very time, and it was only during his last year in England that he came to his intellectual manhood, and showed his real power. His very handwriting shows the change ; from being cramped and feeble it suddenly becomes clear, firm, and upright, very neat, but quite the hand of a vigorous, independent man. Livingstone's prospects of getting to China had been damaged by the Opium War ; while it continued, no new appointments could be made, even had the Directors wished to send him there. It was in these circumstances that he came into contact with his countryman, Mr. (now Dr.) Mofiat, who was then in England, creating much interest in his South African mission. The idea of his going to Africa became a settled thing, and was soon carried into effect. " I had occasion" (Dr. Moffat has informed us) "to call for some one At Mrs. Sewell's, a boarding-house for young missionaries in Aldersgate street, where Livingstone lived. I observed soon that this young man was interested in ray story, that he would sometimes come quietly and ask me a question or two, and that he was always desirous to know where I was to speak in public, and attended on these occasions. By and by he asked me whether I thought he would do for Africa. I said I believed he would, if he would not go to an old station, but would advance to unoccupied ground, specifying the vast plain to the north, where I had sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thou- " » GooJ Words, 1874, p. 286. MISSIONARY PREPARATION 51 sand villagea, where no missionary had ever been. At last Livingstone said : * What is the use of my waiting for the end of this abominable opium war? I will go at once to Africa.' The Directors concurred, and Africa became his sphere." It is no wonder that all his life Livingstone had a very strong faith in Providence, for at every turn of his career up to this point, some unlooked-for circumstance had come in to give a new direction to his history. First, his reading Dick's Philosophy of a Future State, which led him to Christ, but did not lead him away from science ; then his falling in with Gutzlaff's Appeal, which induced him to become a medical missionary ; the Opium War, which closed China against him; the friendly word of the Director who pit)cured for him another trial ; Mr. Moffat's visit, which deepened his interest in Africa ; and finally, the issue of a dangerous illness that attacked him in London — all indicated the unseen hand that was prepar- ing him for his great work. The meeting of Livingstone with Moffat is far toa important an event to be passed over without remark. Both directly and indirectly Mr. Moffat's influence on hift young brother, afterward to become his son-in-law, was remarkable. In after-life they had a thorough apprecia- tion of each other. No family on the face of the globe could have been so helpful to Livingstone in connection with the great work to which he gave himself If the old Roman fashion of surnames still prevailed, there is no household of which all the members would have been better entitled to put Africanus after their name. The interests of the great continent were dear to them all. In 1872, when one of the Search Expeditions for Livingstone was fitted out, a grandson of Dr. Moffat, another Robert Moffat, was among those who set out in the hope of reliev- ing him ; cut off at the very beginning, in the flower of his youth, he left his bones to moulder in African soil. The illness to which we have alluded was an attack of 52 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. congestion of the liver, with an affection of the lungs. It seemed likely to prove fatal, and the only chance of recovery appeared to be a visit to his home, and return to his native air. In accompanying him to the steamer, Mr. Moore found him so weak that he could scarcely walk on board. He parted from him in tears, fearing that he had brt a few days to live. But the voyage and the visit had a wonderful effect, and very soon Livingstone was in his usual health. The parting with his father and mother, as they afterward told Mr. Moore, was very affecting. It happened, however, that they met once more. It was felt that the possession of a medical diploma would be of service, and Livingstone returned to Scotland in Novem- ber, 1840, and passed at Glasgow as Licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons. It was on this occa- sion he found it so inconvenient to have opinions of his own and the knack of sticking to them. It seemed as if he was going to be rejected for obstinately maintaining his views in regard to the stethoscope; but he pulled through. A single night was all that he could spend with his family, and they had so much to speak of that David proposed they should sit up all night. This, however, his mother would not hear of. "I remember my father and him," writes his sister, " talking over the prospects of Christian missions. They agreed that the time would come when rich men and great men would think it an honor to sup- port whole stations of missionaries, instead of spending their money on hounds and horses. On the morning of 17th November we got up at five o'clock. My mother mao? coffee. David read the 121st and 135th Psalms, and prayed. My father and he walked to Glasgow to catch the Liverpool steamer." On the Broomielaw, father and son looked for the last time on earth on each other's faces. The old man walked back slowly to Blantyre, with a lonely heart no doubt, yet praising God. David's face was now set in earnest toward the Dark Continent. FIEST TWO YEARS IN AFUICA 53 CHAPTER III. FIRST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. A.D. 1841-1843. His ordination — Voyage out — At Rio de Janeiro — At the Cape — He proceeds to Kuruman — Letters — Journey of 700 miles to Bechuana country — Selection of site for new station — Second excursion to Bechuana country — Letter to his sister — Influence with chiefs — Bubi — Construction of a water- dam— Sekomi — Woman seized by a lion — The Bakaa — Sebehwe — Letter to Dr. Risdon Bennett — Detention at Kuruman — He visits Sebehwe's village — ■ Bakhatlas — Sech^le, chief of Bakwains — Livingstone translates hymns- Travels 400 miles on oxback — Returns to Kuruman — Is authorized to form new station — Receives contributions for native missionary — Letters to Directors on their Mission policy — He goes to new station — Fellow-travelers — Purchase of site — Letter to Dr. Bennett — Desiccation of South Africa- Death of a servant, Sehamy — Letter to his parents. On the 20th November, 1840, Livingstone was ordained a missionary in Albion Street Chapel, along with the Rev. William Ross, the service being conducted by the Rev. J. J. Freeman and the Rev. R. Cecil. On the 8th of Decem- ber he embarked on board the ship " George," under Cap- tain Donaldson, and proceeded to the Cape, and thence to Algoa Bay. On the way the ship had to put in at Rio de Janeiro, and he had a glance at Brazil, with which he was greatly charmed. It was the only glimpse he ever got of any part of the great continent of America. Writing to the Rev. G. D. Watt, with whom he had become intimate in London, and who was preparing to go as a missionary to India, he says : *' It is certainly the finest place I ever saw ; everything delighted me except man. . . . We lived in the home of an American Episcopal Methodist minister — the only Protestant missionary in Brazil. , , . Tracts and Bibles are circulated, and some effects might be expected, were a most injurious influence not exerted by European visitors. 64 DAVID LIVINGSTONK These alike disgrace themselves and the religion they profess by drunk- enness. All other vices are common in Rio. When will the rays of Divine light dispel the darkness in this beautiful empire? The climate is delightful. I wonder if disabled Indian missionaries could not make themselves useful there." During the voyage his chief friend was the captain of the ship. " He was very obliging to me," says Living- stone, " and gave me all the information respecting the use of the quadrant in his power, frequently sitting up till twelve o'clock at night for the purpose of taking lunar observations with me." Thus another qualification was acquired for his very peculiar life-work. Sundays were not times of refreshing, at least not beyond his closet. " The captain rigged out the church on Sundays, and we had service; but I being a poor preacher, and the chaplain addressing them all as Christians already, no moral influ- ence was exerted, and even had there been on Sabbath, it would have been neutralized by the week-day conduct. In fact, no good was done." Neither at Rio, nor on board ship, nor anywhere, could good be done without the ele- ment of personal character. This was Livingstone's strong conviction to the end of his life. In his first letter to the Directors of the London Mis- sionary Society he tells them that he had spent most of his time at sea in the study of theology, and that he was deeply grieved to say that he knew of no spiritual good having been done in the case of any one on board the ship. His characteristic honesty thus showed itself in his very first dispatch. Arriving at the Cape, where the ship was detained a month, he spent some time with Dr. Philip, then acting as agent for the Society, with informal powers as superinten- dent. Dr. Philip was desirous of returning home for a time, and very anxious to find some one to take his place as minister of the congregation of Cape Town, in hig a.bsence. The office was offered to Livingstone, who FIBST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 55 rejected it with no little emphasis — not for a moment would he think of it, nor would he preach the gospel within any other man's line. He had not been long at the Cape when he found to his surprise and sorrow that the missionaries were not all at one, either as to the general policy of the mission, or in the matter of social intercourse and confidence. The shock was a severe one ; it was not lessened by what he came to know of the spirit and life of a few — happily only a few — of his brethren afterward ; and undoubtedly it had an influence on his future life. It showed him that there were missionaries whose profession was not supported by a life of consistent well-doing, although it did not shake his confidence in the character and the work of missionaries on the whole. He saw that in the mission there was what might be called a colonial side and a native side ; some sympathizing with the colonists and some with the natives. He had no diflB- culty in making up his mind between them ; he drew instinctively to the party that were for protecting the natives against the unrighteous encroachments of the settlers. On leaving the ship at Algoa Bay, he proceeded by land to Kuruman or Lattakoo, in the Bechuana country, the most northerly station of the Society in South Africa, and the usual residence of Mr. Moffat, who was still absent in England. In this his first African journey the germ of' the future traveler was apparent. " Crossing the Orange River," he says, " I got my vehicle aground, and my oxen got out of order, some with their heads where their tails should be, and others with their heads twisted round in the yoke so far that they appeared bent on committing suicide, or overturning the wagon. ... I like travel- ling very much indeed. There is so much freedom con- . nected with our African manners. "We pitch our tent, make our fire, etc., wherever we choose, walk, ride, or ahoot at abundance of all sorts of game as our inclination 6$ DAVID LIVINGSTONE. leads us ; but there is a great drawback : we can't study or read when we please. I feel this very much. I have made but very little progress in the language (can speak a little Dutch), but I long for the time when I shall give my undivided attention to it, and then be furnished with the means of making known the truth of the gospel." While at the Cape, Livingstone had heard something of a fresh-water lake ('Ngami) which all the missionaries were eager to see. If only they would give him a month or two to learn the colloquial language, he said they might spare themselves the pains of being "" the first in at the death." It is interesting to remark further that, in this first journey, science had begun to receive its share of attention. He is already bent on mais:ing a collection for the use of Professor Owen,^ and is enthusiastic in describ- ing some agatized trees and other cunosities which he met with. Writing to his parents from Port Elizabeth, 19th May, 1841, he gives his first impressions of Africa. He had been at a station called Hankey : "The scenery was very fine. The white sand in some places near the beach drifted up in large wreaths exactly like snow. One might imagine himself in Scotland were there not a hot sun overhead. The woods present an aspect of strangeness, for everywhere the eye meets the foreign-looking tree from which the bitter aloes is extracted, popping up its head among the mimosa bushes and stunted acacias. Beautiful humming-birds fly about in great numbers, sucking the nectar from the flowers, which are in great abundance and very beautiful. I was much pleased with my visit to Hankey. . . . The state of the people presents so many features of interest, that one may talk about it and convey some idea of what the Gospel has done. The full extent of the benefit received can, however, be understood only by those who witness it in contrast with other places that have not been so highly favored. My expectations have been far exceeded. Everything I witnessed sur- passed my hopes, and if this one station is a fair sample of the whole, the statements of the missionaries with regard to their success are far within the mark. The Hottentots of Hankey appear to be in a state ^ This collection never reached its destination. FIBST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 57 eirailar to that of our forefathers in the days immediately preceding the times of the Covenanters. They have a prayer-meeting every morning at four o'clock, and well attended. They began it during a visitation of measles among them, and liked it so much that they still continue." He goes on to say that as the natives had no clocks or watches, mistakes sometimes occurred about ringing the bell for this meeting, and sometimes the people found themselves assembled at twelve or one o'clock instead of four. The welcome to the missionaries (their own mis- sionary was returning from the Cape with Livingstone) was wonderful. Muskets were fired at their approach, then big guns; and then men, women, and children rushed at the top of their speed to shake hands and welcome them, The missionary had lost a little boy, and out of respect each of the people had something black on his head. Both public worship and family worship were very interesting, the singing of hymns being very beauti- ful. The bearing of these Christianized Hottentots was in complete contrast to that of a Dutch family whom he visited as a medical man one Sunday. There was no Sunday ; the man's wife and daughters were dancing before the house, while a black played the fiddle. His instructions from the Directors were to go to Kuru- man, remain there till Mr. Moffat should return from England, and turn his attention to the formation of a new station farther north, awaiting more specific instructions. He arrived at Kuruman on the 31st July, 1841, but no instuctions had come from the Directors; his sphere of work was quite undetermined, and he began to entertain the idea of going to Abyssinia. There could be no doubt that a Christian missionary was needed there, for the country had none ; but if he should go, he felt that pro- bably he would never return. In writing of this to his friend Watt, he used words almost prophetic : " Whatever way my life may be spent so as but to promote the glory 58 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. of our gracious God, I feel anxious to do it. . . . My life may be spent as profitably as a pioneer as in any other way." In his next letter to the London Missionary Society, dated Kuruman, 2od September, 1841, he gives his impres- sions of the field, and unfolds an idea which took hold of him at the very beginning, and never lost its grip. It was, that there was not population enough about the South to justify a concentration of missionary labor there, and that the policy of the -Society ought to be one of expansion, moving out far and wide wherever there was an opening, and making the utmost possible use of native agency, in order to cultivate so wide a field. In England lie had thought that Kuruman might be made a great missionary institute, whence the beams of divine truth might diverge in every direction, through native agents supplied from among the converts ; but since he came to the spot he had been obliged to abandon that notion ; not that the Kuruman mission had not been successful, or that the attendance at public worship was small, but simply because the population was meagre, and seemed more likely to become smaller than larger. The field from which native agents might be drawn was thus too small. Farther north there was a denser population. It was therefore his purpose, along with a brother missionary, to make an early journey to the interior, and bury himself among the natives, to learn their language, and slip into their modes of thinking and feeling. He purposed to take with him two of the best qualified native Christians of Kuruman, to plant them as teachers in some promising locality ; and in case any difficulty should arise about their maintenance, he offered, with characteristic generosity, to defray the cost of one of them from his own resources. Accordingly, in company with a brother missionary from Kuruman, a journey of seven hundred miles was performed before the end of the year, leading chiefly to two results: FIRST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 59 in the first place, a strong confirmation of his views on the subject of native agency ; and in the second place, the selection of a station, two hundred and fifty miles north of Kuruman, as the most suitable for missionary operations. Seven hundred miles traveled over more Africano seemed to indicate a vast territory ; but on looking at it on the map, it was a mere speck on the continent of heathenism. How was that continent ever to be evangelized ? He could think of no method except an extensive method of native agency. And the natives, when qualified, were admirably qualified. Their warm, affectionate manner of dealing with their fellow-men, their ability to present the truth to their minds freed from the strangeness of which foreigners could not divest it, and the eminent success of those employed by the brethren of Griqua Town, were greatly in their favor. Two natives had likewise been employed recently by the Kuruman Mission, and these had been highly efficient and successful. If the Directors would allow him to employ more of these, conversions would in- crease in a compound ratio, and regions not yet explored by Europeans would soon be supplied with the bread of life. In regard to the spot selected for a mission, there were many considerations in its favor. In the immediate neighborhood of Kuruman the chiefs hated the gospel, because it deprived them of their supernumerary wives. In the region farther north, this feeling had not yet estab- lished itself; on the contrary, there was an impression favorable to Europeans, and a desire for their alliance. These Bechuana tribes had suff'ered much from the marauding invasions of their neighbors; and recently, the most terrible marauder of the country, Mosilikatse, after • being driven westward by the Dutch Boers, had taken up his abode on the banks of a central lake, and resumed his raids, which were keeping the whole country in alarm. The more peaceful tribes had heard of the value of the white man, and of the weapons by which a mere handful 60 DAVID LIVINGSTONE, of whites had repulsed hordes of marauders. They were therefore disposed to welcome the stranger, although this state of feeling could not be relied on as sure to continue, for Griqua hunters and individuals from tribes hostile to the gospel were moving northward, and not only circula- ting rumors unfavorable to missionaries, but by their wicked lives introducing diseases previously unknown. If these regions, therefore, were to be taken possession of by the gospel, no time was to be lost. For himself, Living- stone had no hesitation in going to reside in the midst of these savages, hundreds of miles away from civilization, not merely for a visit, but, if necessary, for the whole of his life. In writing to his sisters after this journey (8th Decem- ber, 1841), he gives a graphic account of the country, and some interesting notices of the people: "Janet, I suppose, will feel anxious to know v hat our dinner was. We boiled a piece of the flesh of a rhinoceros which was toughness itself, the night before. The meat was our supper, and porridge made of Indian corn-meal and gravy of the meat made a very good dinner next day. When about 150 miles from home we came to a large village. The chief had sore eyes; I doctored them, and he fed us pretty well with milk and beans, and sent a fine buck after me as a present. When we had got about ten or twelve miles on the way, a little girl about eleven or twelve years of age came up and sat down under my wagon, having run away for the purpose of coming with us to Kururaan. She had lived with a sister whom she had lately lost by death. Another family took possession of her for the purpose of selling her as soon as she was old enough for a wife. But not liking this, she determined to run away from them and come to some friends neai Kuruman. With this intention she came, and thought of walking all the way behind my wagon. I was pleased with the determination of the little creature, and gave her some food. But before we had remained long there, I heard her sobbing violently, as if her heart would break. On looking round, I observed the cause. A man with a gun had been Bent afler her, and he had just arrived. I did not know well what to do now, but I was not in perplexity long, for Pomare, a native convert who accompanied us, started up and defended her cause. He being the Bon of a chief, and possessed of some little authority, managed the FIBST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 61 matter nicely. She had beea loaded with beads to render her more attractive, and fetch a higher price. These she stripped off and gave to the man, and desired him to go away. I afterward took measures for hiding her, and though fifty men had come for her, they would not have got her." The story reads like an allegory or a prophecy. In the person of the little maid, oppressed and enslaved Africa comes to the good Doctor for protection ; instinctively she knows she may trust him; his heaft opens at once, his ingenuity contrives a way of protection and deliverance, and he will never give her up. It is a little picture of Livingstone's life. In fulfillment of a promise made to the natives in the in- terior that he would return to them, Livingstone set out on a second tour into the interior of the Bechuana country on 10th February, 1842. His objects were, first, to acquire the native language more perfectly, and second, by suspending his medical practice, which had become inconveniently large at Kuruman, to give his undivided attention to the subject of native agents. He took with him two native members of the Kuruman church, and two other natives for the management of the wagon. The first person that specially engaged his interest in this journey was a chief of th« name of Bubi, whose people were Bakwains. With him he stationed one of the native agents as a teacher, the chief himself collecting the children and supplying them with food. The honesty of the people was shown in their leaving untouched all the contents of his wagon, though crowds of them visited it. Livingstone was already acquiring a powerful influence, both with chiefs and people, the result of his considerate and conciliatory treatment of both. He had already observed the failure of some of his brethren to influence them, and his sagacity had discerned the cause. His success in inducing Bubi's people to dig a canal was contrasted in a characteristic passage of a private letter, with the experience of others ' 62 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. " The doctor and the rainmaker among these people are one and the same person. As I did not like to be behind my professional brethren, I declared I could make rain too, not, however, by enchantments like them, but by leading out their river for irrigation. The idea pleased mightily, and to work we went instanter. Even the chiefs own doctor is at it, and works like a good fellow, laughing heartily at the cunning of the 'foreigner' who can make rain so. We have only one spade, and this is without a handle; and yet by means of sticks sharpened to a * point we have performed all the digging of a pretty long canal. The earth was lifted out in 'gowpens' and carried to the huge dam we have built in karosses (skin cloaks), tortoise-shells, or wooden bowls. We intended nothing of the ornamental in it, but when we came to a huge stone, we were forced to search for a way round it. The consequence is, it has assumed a beautifully serpentine appearance. This is, I believe, the first instance in which Bechuanas have been got to work without wages. It was with the utmost difficulty the earlier mission- aries got them to do anything. The missionaries solicited their per- mission to do wnat they did, and this was the very way tq make them show off their airs, for they are so disobliging ; if they perceive any one in the least dependent upon them, they immediately begin to tyrannize. A more mean and selfish vice certainly does not exist in the world. I am trying a diff"erent plan with them. I make my presence with any of them a favor, and when they show any impudence, I threaten to leave them, and if they don't amend, I put my threat into execution. By a bold, free course among them I have had not the least difficulty in managing the most fierce. They are in one sense fierce, and in another the greatest cowards in the world. A kick would, I am persuaded, quell the courage of the bravest of them. Add to this the report which many of them verily believe, that I am a great wizard, and you will understand how I can with ease visit any of them. Those who do not love, fear me, and so truly in their eyes am I possessed of supernatural power, some have not hesitated to affirm I am capable of even raising the dead ! The people of a village visited by a French brother actually believed it. Their belief of my powers, I suppose, accounts, too, for the fact that I have not missed a single article either from the house. or wagon since I came among them, and this^ although all my things lay scattered about the room, while crammed with patients." It was unfortunate that the teacher whom Livingstone stationed with Buhi's people was seized with a violent fever, so that he was obliged to bring him away. As for Bubi himself, he was afterward burned to death by an explosion of gunpowder, which one of his sorcerers was trying, by means of burnt roots, to wn-bewitch. FIRST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 63 In advancing, Livingstone had occasion to pass through a part of the great Kalahari desert, and here he met with Sekomi, a chief of the Bamangwato, from whom also he received a most friendly reception. The ignorance of this tribe he found to be exceedingly great : " Their conceptions of the Deity are of the most vague and contra* dictory nature, and the name of God conveys no more to their under- standing than the idea of superiority. Hence they do not hesitate to apply the name to their chiefs. I was every day shocked by being addressed by that title, and though it as often furnished me with a text from which to tell them of the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent, yet it deeply pained me, and I never felt so fully convinced of the lamentable detonation of our species. It is indeed a mournful truth that man has become like the beasts that perish." The place was greatly infested by lions, and during Livingstone's visit an awful occurrence took place that made a great impression on him : " A woman was actually devoured in her garden during my visit, and that 80 near the town that I had frequently walked past it. It was most affecting to hear the cries of the orphan children of this woman. During the whole day after her death the surrounding rocks and valleys rang and re-echoed with their bitter cries. I frequently thought as I listened to the loud sobs, painfully indicative of the sorrows of those who have no hope, that if some of our churches could have heard their sad wailings, it would have awakened the firm resolution to do more for the heathen than they have done." Poor Sekomi advanced a new theory of regeneration "which Livingstone was unable to work out : " On one occasion Sekomi, having sat by me in the hut for some time In deep thought, at length addressing me by a pompous title said, 'I wish you would change my heart. Give me medicine to change it, for it is proud, proud and angry, angry always.* I lifted up the Testament and was about to tell him of the only way in which the heart can be changed, but he interrupted me by saying, ' Nay, I wish to have it changed by medicine, to drink and have it changed at once, for it is always very proud and very uneasy, and continually angry with some one.* He then rose and went away." 64 DAVID LIVINGSTONK A third tribe visited at this time was the Bakaa, and here, too, Livingstone was able to put in force his v/onder- ful powers of management. Shortly before, the Bakaa had murdered a trader and his company. When Livingstone appeared their consciences smote them, and, with the exception of the chief and two attendants, the whole of the people fled from his presence. Nothing could allay their terror, till, a dish of porridge having been prepared, they saw Livingstone partake of it along with themselves with- out distrust. Wlien they saw him lie down and fall asleep they were quite at their ease. Thereafter he began to speak to them : " I had more than ordinary pleasure in telling these murderers of the precious blood which cleanseth from all sin. I bless God that He has conferred on one so worthless the distinguished privilege and honor of being the first messenger of mercy that ever trod these regions. Its being also the first occasion on which I had ventured to address a number of Bechuanas in their own tongue without reading it, renders it to myself one of peculiar interest. I felt more freedom than I had anticipated, but I have an immense amount of labor still before me, ere I can call myself a master of Sichuana. This journey discloses to me that when I have acquired the Batlapi, there is another and perhaps more arduous task to be accomplished in the other dialects, but by the Divine assistance I hope I shall be enabled to conquer. When I left the Bakaa, the chief sent his son with a number of his people to see me safe part of the way to the Makalaka." On his way home, in passing through Bubi's country, he was visited by sixteen of the people of Sebehwe, a chief who had successfully withstood Mosilikatse, but whose cowardly neighbors, under the influence of jealousy, had banded together to deprive him of what they had not had the courage to defend. Consequently he had been driven into the sandy desert, and his object in sending to Living- stone was to solicit his advice and protection, as he wished to come out, in order that his people might grow corn, etc. Sebehwe, like many of the other people of the country, had the notion, that if he got a single white man to live witli FIBJST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA, 65 him, lie would be quite secure. It was no wonder that Livingstone early acquired the strong conviction that if missions could only be scattered over Africa, their imme- diate efifect in promoting the tranquillity of the continent could hardly be over-estimated. We have given these details somewhat fully, because they show that before he had been a year in the country Livingstone had learned how to rule the Africans. From the very first, his genial address, simple and fearless manner, and transparent kindliness formed a spell which rarely failed. He had great faith in the power of humor. He was never afraid of a man who had a hearty laugh. By a playful way of dealing with the people, he made them feel at ease with him, and afterward he could be solemn enough when the occasion required. His medical knowl- edge helped him greatly ; but for permanent influence all would have been in vain if he had not uniformly observed the rules of justice, good feeling, and good manners. Often he would say that the true road to influence was patient continuance in well-doing. It is remarkable that, from the very first, he should have seen the charm of that method which he employed so successfully to the end. In the course of this journey, Livingstone was within ten days of Lake 'Ngami, the lake of which he had heard at the Cape, and which he actually discovered in 1849 ; and he might have discovered it now, had discovery alone been his object. Part of his journey was performed on foot, in consequence of the draught oxen having become sick: "Some of my companions," he says in his first book, "who had recently joined ub, and did not know that I understood a little of their speech, were overheard by me discussing my appearance and powers : * He is not strong, he is quite slim, and only appears stout because he puts himself in those bags (trousers) ; he will soon knock up.' This caused my Highland blood to rise, and made me despise the fatigue of keeping them all at the top of their speed for days together, and until I heard them expressing proper opinions of my pedestrian powers." 66 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. We have seen how full Livingstone's heart was of the missionary spirit; how intent he was on making friends of the natives, and how he could already preach in one dialect, and was learning another. But the activity of his mind enabled him to give attention at the same time to other matters. He was already pondering the structure of the great African Continent, and carefully investigating the process of desiccation that had been going on for a long time, and had left much uncomfortable evidence of its activity in many parts. In the desert, he informs his friend Watt that no fewer than thirty-two edible roots and forty-three fruits grew without cultivation. He had the rare faculty of directing his mind at the full stretch of its power to one great object, and yet, apparently without effort, giving minute and most careful attention to many other matters, — all bearing, however^ on the same great end. A very interesting letter to Dr. Risdon Bennett, dated Kuruman, 18th December, 1841, gives an account of his first year's work from the medical and scientific point of view. First, he gives an amusing picture of the Bechuana chiefs, and then some details of his medical practice : The people are all under the feudal system of government, the chief- tainship is hereditary, and although the chief is usually the greatest ass, and the most insignificant of the tribe in appearance, the people pay a deference to him which is truly astonishing. ... I feel the benefit often of your instructions, and of those I got through your kindness. Here I have an immense practice. I have patients now under treatment who have walked 130 miles for my advice; and when these go home, others will come for the same purpose. This is the country for a medical man if he wants a large practice, but he must leave fees out of the quea tion I The Bechuanas have a great deal more disease than I expected to find among a savage nation ; but little else can be expected, for they are nearly naked, and endure the scorching heat of the day and the chills of the night in that condition. Add to this that they are abso- lutely omnivorous. Indigestion, rheumatism, opthalmia are the pre- vailing diseases. . . . Many very bad cases were brought to me, •nd sometimes^ whea traveling, my wagon was quite besieged by theil FIRST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 67 blind and halt and lame. What a mighty effect would be produced if one of the seventy disciples were among them to heal them all by a word I The Bechuanas resort to the Bushmen and the poor people that live in the desert for doctors. The fact of my dealing in that line a little is so strange, and now my fame has spread far and wide. But if one of Christ's apostles were here, I should think he would be very soon known all over the continent to Abyssinia. The great deal of work I have had to do in attending to the sick has proved beneficial to me, for they make me speak the language perpetually, and if I were inclined to be lazy in learning it, they would prevent me indulging the propensity. And they are excellent patients, too, besides. There is no wincing; everything prescribed is done instanter. Their only failing is that they become tired of a long course. But in any operation, even the women sit unmoved. I have been quite astonished again and again at their calm- ness. In cutting out a tumor, an inch in diameter, they sit and talk as if they felt nothing. ' A man like me never cries,' they say, ' they are children that cry.' And it is a fact that the men never cry. But when the Spirit of God works on their minds they cry most piteously. Some- times in church they endeavor to screen themselves from the eyes of the preacher by hiding under the forms or covering their heads with their karosses as a remedy against their convictions. And when they find that won't do, they rush out of the church and run with all their might, crying as if the hand of death were behind them. One would tkink, when they got away, there they would remain ; but no, there they are in their places at the very next meeting. It is not to be wondered at that they should exhibit agitations of body when the mind is affected, ae they are quite unaccustomed to restrain their feelings. But that the hardened beings should be moved mentally at all is wonderful iadeed. If you saw them in their savage state you would feel the force of tiis more. . . . N.B. — I have got for Professor Owen specimens of the incubated ostrich in abundance, and am waiting for an opportunity to transmit the box to the college. I tried to keep for you some of the fine birds of the interior, but the weather was so horribly hot they were putrid in a few hours. When he returned to Kuruman in June, 1842, he found that no instructions had as yet come from the Directors as to his permanent quarters. He was preparing for anotiier journey when news arrived that, contrary to his advice, Sebehwe had left the desert where he was encamped, had been treacherously attacked by the chief Mahura, and that many of his people, including women and children, had 68 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. been savagely murdered. What aggravated the case was that several native Christians from Kuruman had been at the time with Sebehwe, and that these were accused of having acted treacherously by him. But now no native would expose himself to the expected rage of Sebehwe, so that for want of attendants Livingstone could not go to him. He was obliged to remain for some months aboui Kuruman, itinerating to the neighboring tribes, and taking part in the routine work of the station: that is to say preach- ing, printing, building a chapel at an out-station, prescrib- ing for the sick, and many things else that would have been intolerable, he said, to a man of " clerical dignity." He was able to give his father a very encouraging report of the mission work (July 13, 1842) ; " The work of God goes on here notwithstanding all our infirmities. Souls are gathered in continually, and sometimes from among those you would never have expected to see turning to the Lord. Twenty-four were added to the Church last month, and there are several inquirers. At Motito, a French station about thirty-three miles northeast of this, there has been an awakening, and I hope much good will result. I have good news, too, from Rio de Janeiro. The Bibles that have been distributed are beginning to cause a stir." The state of the country continued so disturbed that it was not till February, 1843, that he was able to set out for the village where Sebehwe had taken up his residence with the remains of his tribe. This visit he undertook at great personal risk. Though looking at first very ill- pleased, Sebehwe treated him in a short time in a most friendly way, and on the Sunday after his arrival, sent a herald to proclaim that on that day nothing should be done but pray to God and listen to the words of the foreigner. He himself listened with great attention while Livingstone told him of Jesus and the resurrection, and the missionary was often interrupted by the questions of FIEST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 69 the chief. Here, then, was another chief pacified, and brought under the preacliing of tlie gospel. Livingstone then passed on to the country of the Ba- khatla, where he had purposed to erect his mission-station. The country was fertile, and the people industrious, and among other industries was an iron manufactory, to which as a bachelor he got admission, whereas married men were wont to be excluded, through fear that they would bewitch the iron I When he asked the chief if he would like him to come and be his missionary, he held up his hands and said, "Oh, I shall dance if you do; I shall collect all my people to hoe for you a garden, and you will get more sweet reed and corn than myself" The cautious Directors at home, however, had sent no instructions as to Living- stone's station, and he could only say to the chief that h« would tell them of his desire for a missionary. At a distance of five days' journey beyond the Bakhatla was situated the village of Sechele, chief of the Bakwains, afterward one of Livingstone's greatest friends. Sechele had been enraged at him for not visiting him the year before, and threatened him with mischief It happened that his only child was ill when the missionary arrived, and also the child of one of his principal men. Living- stone's treatment of both was successful, and Sechele had not an angry word. Some of his questions struck the heart of the missionary : *'* ' Since it is true that all who die unforgiven are lost forever, why did your nation not come to tell us of it before now? My ancestors are all gone, and none of them knew anything of what you tell me. How is this?' I thought immediately," says Livingstone, ''of the guilt o*" the Church, but did not confess. I told him multitudes in our own country were like himself, so much in love with their sins. My ances- tors had spent a great deal of time in trying to persuade them, and yet after all many of them by refusing were lost. We now wish to tell all the world about a Saviour, and if men did f ot believe, the guilt would be entirely theirs. Sechele has been driven from another part of his country from that in which he was located last jeare ai^d so has Babiy 70 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. so that the prospects I had of benefiting them by native teachers are for the present darkened." Among other things that Livingstone found time for in these wanderings among strange people, was translating hymns into the Sichuana language. Writing to his father (Bakwain Country, 21st March, 1843), he says ; "Janet may be pleased to learn that I am become a poet, or rather a poetaster, in Sichuana. Half a dozen of my hymns were lately printed in a collection of the French brethren. One of them is a translation of " There is a fountain filled with blood ;' another, ' Jesus shall reign where'er the sun ;' others are on 'The earth being filled with the glory of the Lord/ 'Self-dedication,' 'Invitation to Sinners,' 'The soul that loves God finds him everywhere.' Janet may try to make English ones on these latter subjects if she can, and Agnes will doubtless set them to music on the same condition. I do not boast of having done this, but only mention it to let you know that I am getting a little better fitted for the great work of a missionary, that your hearts may be drawn out to more prayer for the success of the gospel proclaimed by my feeble lips." Livingstone was bent on advancing in the direction of the countrv of the Matebele and their chief Mosilikatse, but the dread of that terrible warrior prevented him from getting Bakwains to accompany him, and being thus unable to rig out a Wagon, he was obliged to travel on oxback. In a letter to Dr. Risdon Bennett (30th June, 1843), he gives a lively description of this mode of travel- ing: "It is rough traveling, as you can conceive. The skin is so loose there is no getting one's great-coat, which has to serve both as saddle and blanket, to stick on ; and then the long horns in front, with which he can give one a punch in the abdomen if he likes, make us sit as bolt upright as dragoons. In this manner I traveled more than 400 miles." Visits to some of the villages of the Bakalahari gave him much pleasure. He was listened to with great attention, and while sitting by their fires and listening to their traditionary tales, he intermingled the story of the Cross with their conversation, and it was by FIRST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 71 far the happiest portion of his journey. The people were a poor, degraded, enslaved race, who hunted for other tribes to procure them skins; they were far from wells, and had their gardens far from their houses, in order to have their produce safe from the chiefs who visited them. Coming on to his old friends the Bakaa, he found them out of humor with him, accusing him of having given poison to a native who had been seized with fever on occa- sion of his former visit. Consequently he could get little or nothing to eat, and had to content himself, as he wrote to his friends, with the sumptuous feasts of his imagina- tion. With his usual habit of discovering good in all his troubles, however, he found cause for thankfulness at their stinginess, for in coming down a steep pass, absorbed with the questions which the people were putting to him, he forgot where he was, lost his footing, and, striking his hand between a rock and his Bible which he was carry- ing, he suffered a compound fracture of his finger. His involuntary low diet saved him from taking fever, and the finger was healing favorably, when a sudden visit in the middle of the night from a lion, that threw them all into consternation, made him, without thinking, discharge his revolver at the visitor, and the recoil hurt him more than the shot did the lion. It rebroke his finger, and the second fracture was worse than the first. "The Bak- wains," he says, " who were most attentive to my wants during the whole journey of more than 400 miles, tried to comfort me when they saw the blood again flowing, by saying, 'You have hurt yourself, but you have redeemed us: henceforth we will only swear by you.' Poor crea- tures," he writes to Dr. Bennett, " I wished they had felt gratitude for the blood that was shed for their precious souls." Returning to Kuruman from this journey, in June, 1843,' Livingstone was delighted to find at length a letter from the Directors of the Society authorizing the formation of a 72 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. settlement in the regions beyond. He found another letter that greatly cheered him, from a Mrs. M'Robert, the wife of an Independent minister at Cambuslang (near Blan- tyre), who had collected and now sent him £12 for a native agent, and was willing, on the part of some young friends, to send presents of clothing for the converts. In acknowledging this letter, Livingstone poured out his very heart, so full was he of gratitude and delight. He entreated the givers to consider Mebalwe as their own agent, and to concentrate their prayers ui>on him, for prayer, he thought, was always more efficacious when it could be said, " One thing have I desired of the Lord." As to the present of clothing, he simply entreated his friends to send nothing of the kind ; such things demoral- ized the recipients, and bred endless jealousies. If he were allowed to charge something for the clothes, he would be pleased to have them, but on no other terms. Writing to the Secretary of the Society, Rev. A. Tidman (24th June, 1843), and referring to the past success of the Mission in the nearer localities, he says : " If you could realize this fact as fully as those on the spot can, you would be able to enter into the feelings of irrepressible delight with which I hail the decision of the Directors that We go forward to the dark interior. May the Lord enable me to consecrate my whole being to the glorious work !" In this communication to the Directors Livingstone modestly, but frankly and firmly, gives them his mind on some points touched on in their letter to him. In regard to his favorite measure — native agency — he is glad that a friend has remitted money for the employment of one agent, and that others have promised the means of employing other two. On another subject he had a com- munication to make to them which evidently cost him no ordinary effort. In his more private letters to his friends, from an early period after entering Africa, he had expressed himself very freely, almost contemptuously, on the distri- FIBST TWO YEAES IN AFRICA. 73 buticn of the laborers. There was far too much cluster- ing about the Cape Colony, and the district immediately beyond it, and a woeful slowness to strike out with the fearless chivalry that became missionaries of the Cross, and take possession of the vast continent beyond. Axl his letters reveal the chafing of his spirit with this confine- ment of evangelistic energy in the face of so vast a field— this huddling together of laborers in sparsely peopled dis- tricts, instead of sending them forth over the whole of Africa, India, and China, to preach the gospel to every creature. He felt deeply that both the Church at home, and many of the missionaries on the spot, had a poor conception of missionary duty, out of which came little faith, little effort, little expectation, with a miserable ten- dency to exaggerate their own evils and grievances, and fall into paltry squabbles which would not have been possible if they b^d been fired with the ambition to win the world for Christ. But what it was a positive relief for him to whisper in the ear of an intimate friend, it demanded the courage of a hero to proclaim to the Directors of a great Society. It was like impugning their whole policy and arraigning their wisdom. But Livingstone could not say one thing in private and another in public. Frankly and fearlessly he proclaimed his views : " The conviction to which I refer is that a vnach larger share of the benevolence of the Church and of missionary exertion is directed into this country than the amount of population, as compared with other countries, and the success attending those efforts, seem to call for. This conviction has been forced upon me, both by a personal inspectioQ, more extensive than that which has fallen to the lot of any other, either missionary or trader, and by the sentiments of other missionaries who have investigated the subject according to their opportunities. In reference to the population, I may mention that I was led in England to believe that the population of the interior was dense, and now since I have come to this country I have conversed with many, both of our Society and of the French, and none of them would reckon up the number of 30,000 Bechuanas." 7 74 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. He then proceeds to details in a most characteristic way, giving the number of huts in every village, and being careful in every case, as his argument proceeded on there being a small population, rather to overstate than under- state the number : " In view of these facts and the confirmation of them I have received from both French and English brethren, computing the population much below what I have stated, I confess I feel grieved to hear of the arrival of new missionaries. Nor am I the only one who deplores their appointment to this country. Again and again have I been pained at heart to hear the question put, Where will these new brethren find fields of labor in this country? Because I know that in India or China there are fields large enough for all their energies. I am very far from undervaluing the success which has attended the labors of missionaries in this land. No 1 I gratefully acknowledge the wonders God hath wrought, and I feel that the salvation of one soul is of more value than all the effort that has been expended; but we are to seek the field where there is a possibility that most souls will be converted, and it is this consideration which makes me earnestly call the attention of the Direc- tors to the subject of statistics. If these were actually returned — and there would be very little difficulty in doing so — it might, perhaps, be found that there is not a country better supplied with missionaries in the world, and that in proportion to the number of agents compared to the amount of population, the success may be inferior to most other countries where efforts have been made." Finding that a brother missionary was willing to accom- pany him to the station he had fixed on among the Ba- khatlas, and enable him to set to work with the necessary arrangements, Livingstone set out with him in the begin- ning of August, 1843, and arrived at his destination after a fortnight's journey. Writing to his family, " in sight of the hills of Bakhatla," August 21st, 1843, he says: "We are in company with a party of three hunters: one of them from the West Indies, and two from India — Mr. Pringle from Tinnevelly, and Captain Steel of the Cold- stream Guards, aide-de-camp to the Governor of Madras. . . . The Captain is the politest of the whole, well versed in the classics, and possessed of much general FIBST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 75 knowledge." Captain Steele, now General Sir Thomas Steele, proved one of Livingstone's best and most constant friends. In one respect the society of gentlemen who came to hunt would not have been sought by Livingstone, their aims and pursuits being so different from his; but he got on with them wonderfully. In some instances these strangers were thoroughly sympathetic, but not in alL "When they were not sympathetic on religion, he had a strong conviction that his first duty as a servant of Christ was to commend his religion by his life and spirit — by integrity, civility, kindness, and constant readiness to deny himself in obliging others; having thus secured their esteem and confidence, he would take such quiet opportunities as presented themselves to get near their consciences on his Master's behalf. He took care that there should be no moving about on the day of rest, and that the outward demeanor of all should be befitting a Christian company. For himself, while he abhorred the indiscriminate slaughter of animals for mere slaughter's sake, he thought well of the chase as a means of develop- ing courage, promptness of action in time of danger, pro- tracted endurance of hunger and thirst, determination in the pursuit of an object, and other qualities befitting brave and powerful men. The respect and affection with which he inspired the gentlemen who were thus associated with him was very remarkable. Doubtless, with his quick apprehension, he learned a good deal from their society of the ways and feelings of a class with whom hitherto he had hardly ever been in contact. The large resources with which they were furnished, in contrast to his own, excited no feeling of envy, nor even a desire to possess their ample means, unless he could have used them to extend missionary operations; and the gentlemen them- selves would sometimes remark that the missionaries were more comfortable than they. Though they might at times spend thousands of pounds where Livingstone 76 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. did not spend as many pence, and would be provided with horses, servants, tents, and stores, enough to secure com- fort under almost any conditions, they had not that key to the native heart and that power to command the willing services of native attendants which belonged so'remarkably to the missionary. " When we arrive at a spot where we intend to spend the night," writes Livingstone to his family, " all hands immediately unyoke the oxen. Then one or two of the company collect wood ; one of us strikes up a fire, another gets out the water-bucket and fills the kettle; a piece of meat is thrown on the fire, and if we have biscuits, we are at our coffee in less than half an hour after arriving. Our friends, perhaps, sit or stand shivering at their fire for two or three hours before they get their things ready, and are glad occasionally of a cup of coffee from us." The first act of the missionaries on arriving at their destination was to have an interview with the chief, and ask whether he desired a missionary. Having an eye to the beads, guns, and other things, of which white men seemed always to have an ample store, the chief and his men gave them a cordial welcome, and Livingstone next proceeded to make a purchase of land. This, like Abra- ham with the sons of Heth, he insisted should be done in legal form, and for this purpose he drew up a written con- tract to which, after it was fully explained to them, both parties attached their signatures or marks. They then proceeded to the erection of a hut fifty feet by eighteen, not getting much help from the Bakhatlas, who devolved such labors on the women, but being greatly helped by the native deacon, Mebalwe. All this Livingstone and his companion had done on their own responsibility, and in the hope that the Directors would approve of it. But if they did not, he told them that he was at their disposal " to go anywhere — provided it be forward." The progress of medical and scientific work during this FIRST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 77 period is noted in a letter to Dr. Risdon Bennett, dated 30th June, 1843. In addition to full details of "the mis- sionary work, this letter enters largely into the state of disease in South Africa, and records some interesting cases, medical and surgical. Still more interesting, perhaps, is the evidence it affords of the place in Livingstone's atten- tion which began to be occupied by three great subjects of which we shall hear much anon — Fever, Tsetse, and " the Lake." Fever he considered the greatest barrier to the " evangelization of Africa. Tsetse, an insect like a common fly, destroyed horses and oxen, so that many traders lost literally every ox in their team. As for the Lake, it lay '■' somewhat beyond the outskirts of his new district, and was reported terrible for fever. He heard that Mr. Moffat intended to visit it, but he was somewhat alarmed lest his friend should suffer. It was not Moffat, but Livingstone, however, that first braved the risks of that fever swamp. A subject of special scientific interest to the missionary during this period was — the desiccation of Africa. On this topic he addressed a long letter to Dr. Buckland in 1843, of which, considerably to his regret, no public notice appears to have been taken, and perhaps the letter never reached him. The substance of this paper may, however, be gathered from a communication subsequently made to the Royal Geographical Society^ after his first impression had been confirmed by enlarged observation and discovery. Around, and north of Kuruman, he had found many indi- cations of a much larger supply of water in a former age. He ascribed the desiccation to the gradual elevation of the western part of the country. He found traces of a very large ancient river which flowed nearly north and south to a large lake, including the bed of the present Orange River; in fact, he believed that the whole country south of Lake 'Ngami presented in ancient times very much the same appearance as the basin north of that lake does now, ^ See Journal, vol. xxvii. p. 366. 78 ■" DAVID LIVINGSTONE. and that the southern lake disappeared when a fissure was made in the ridge through which the Orange River now proceeds to the sea. He could even indicate the spot where the river and the lake met, for some hills there had caused an eddy in which was found a mound of calcareous tufa and travertine, full of fossil bones. These fossils he was most eager to examine, in order to determine the time of the change ; but on his first visit he had no time, and when he returned, he was suddenly called away to visit a missionary's child, a hundred miles off. It happened that he was never in the same locality again, and had therefore no opportunity to complete his investigation. Dr. Livingstone's mind had that wonderful power which belongs to some men of the highest gifts, of passing with the utmost rapidity, not only from subject to subject, but from one mood or key to another entirely different. In a letter to his family, written about this time, we have a characteristic instance. On one side of the sheet is a pro- longed outburst of tender Christian love and lamentation over a young attendant who had died of fever suddenly ; on the other side, he gives a map of the Bakhatla country with its rivers and mountains, and is quite at home in the geographical details, crowning his description with some sentimental and half-ludicrous lines of poetry. No reason- able man will fancy that in the wailings of his heart there was any levity or want of sincerity. What we are about to copy merits careful consideration : first, as evincing the depth and tenderness of his love for these black savages ; next, as showing that it was pre-eminently Christian love, intensified by his vivid view of the eternal world, and belief in Christ as the only Saviour ; and, lastly, as reveal- ing the secret of the afiection which these poor fellows bore to him in return. The intensity of the scrutiny which he directs on his heart, and the severity of the judgment which he seems to pass on himself, as if he had not done all he might have done for the spiritual good of FIBST TWO YEARS IN AFRICA. 79 this young man, show with what intense conscientiousness he tried to discharge his missionary duty : "Poor Sehamy, where art thou now? Where lodges thy eoul to-night? Didst thou think of what I told thee as thou turnedst from side to side in distress? I could now do anything for thee. I could weep for thy soul. But now nothing can be done. Thy fate is fixed. Oh, am I guilty of the blood of thy soul, my poor dear Sehamy ? If so, how shall I look upon thee in the judgment? But T told thee of a Saviour; didst thou think of Him, and did He lead thee through the dark valley ? Did He comfort as He only can ? Help me, Lord Jesus, to be faithful to every one. Remember me, and let me not be guilty of the blood of souls. This poor young man was the leader of the party. He governed the others, and most attentive ke was to me. He anticipated my every want. He kept the water-calabash at his head at night, and if I awoke, he was ready to give me a draught immediately. When the meat was boiled he secured the best portion for me, the best place for sleeping, the best of everything. Oh, where is he now? He became ill after leaving a certam tribe, and believed he had been poisoned. Another of the party and he ate of a certain dish given them by a woman whom they had displeased, and having met this man yesterday he said, 'Sehamy is gone to heaven, and I am almost dead by the poison given us by that woman.' I don't believe they took any poison, but they do, and their imaginations are dreadfuUy excited when they entertain that belief." The same letter intimates that in case his family should have arranged to emigrate to America, as he had formerly advised them to do, he had sent home a bill of which £10 was to aid the emigration, and £10 to be spent on clothes for himself. In regard to the latter sum, he now wished them to add it to the other, so that his help might be more substantial ; and for himself he would make his old clothes serve for another year. The emigration scheme, which he thought would have added to the comfort of his parents and sisters, was not, however, carried into effect. The advice to his family to emigrate proceeded from deep con- victions. In a subsequent letter (4th December, 1850) he writes: "If I could only be with you for a week, you would soon be pushing on in the world. The world is ours. Our 80 DAVIB LIVINGSTONE. Father made it to be inhabited, and many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. It will be increased more by emigration than by missionaries." He held it to be God's wish that the unoccupied parts of the earth should be possessed, and he believed in Christian colonization as a great means of spreading the gospel. We shall see afterward that to plant English and Scotch colonies in Africa became one of Jais master ideas and favorite schemes. FIEST TWO STA1I0N3. 81 CHAPTER IV. FIRST TWO STATIONS — MABOTSA AND CHONUANB. A.D. 1843-1847. description of Mabotsa — A favorite hymn — Genera^ reading — Mabotsa infested with lions — Livingstone's encounter — The native deacon who saved him— His Sunday-school — Marriage to Mary Moffat — Work at Mabotsa — Proposed institution for training native agents — Letter to his mother — Trouble at Mabotsa — Noble sacrifice of Livingstone — Goes to Sech^le and the Bakwains • — New station at Chonuane — Interest shown by Sechele — ^Journeys eastward ' — The Boers and the Transvaal — Their occupation of the country, and treat- ment of the natives — Work among the Bakwains — Livingstone's desire to move on — Theological conflict at home — His view of it — His scientific labors and miscellaneous employments. Describing what was to be his new home to his friend "Watt from Kuruman, 27th September, 1843, Livingstone says: " The Bakhatla have cheerfully offered to remove to a more favorable position than they at present occupy. We have fixed upon a most delightful valley, which we hope to make the centre of our sphere of operations in the interior. It is situated in what poetical gents like you would call almost an amphitheatre of mountains. The mountain range immediately in the rear of the spot where we have fixed our residence is called Mabotsa, or a mar- riage-feast. May the Lord lift upon us the light of his countenance, so that by our feeble instrumentality many may thence be admitted to the marriage-feast of the Lamb. ' The people are as raw as may well be imagined; they have not the least desire but for the things of the earth, and it must be a long time ere we can gain their attention to the things which are above." Something led him in his letter to Mr. Watt to talk 82 DAVID LIVINOSrONE. of the old monks, and the spots they selected for their establishments. He goes on to write lovingly of what was good in some of the old fathers of the mediaeval Church, despite the strong feeling of many to the contrary ; indi- cating thus early the working of that catholic spirit which was constantly expanding in later years, which could separate the good in any man from all its evil surround- ings, and think of it thankfully and admiringly. In the following extract we get a glimpse of a range of reading much wider than most would probably have supposed likely : " Who can read the sermons of St. Bernard, the meditationa of St, Augustine, etc., without saying, whatever other faults they had : They thirsted, and now they are filled. That hymn of St. Bernard, on the name of Christ, although in what might be termed dog- Latin, pleases xne so ; it rings in my ears as I wander across the wide, wide wilderness, and makes me wish I was more like them — " Jesu, dulcis memoria, Jesu, spes poenitentibus, Dans cordi vera gaudia ; Quam plus es petentibus I Sed super mel et omnia, Quam bonus es qujerentibusl Ejus dulcis prsesentia. Sed quid invenientibus ! Nil canitur suavius, Jesu, dulcedo cordium. Nil auditur jucundius, Fons, rivus, lumen mentium, Nil cogitatur dulcius, Excedens omne gaudium, Quam Jesus Dei filius. Et omne desiderium." Livingstone was in the habit of fastening inside the boards of his journals, or writing on the fly-leaf, verses that interested him specially. In one of these volumes this hymn is copied at full length. In another we find a very yellow newspaper clipping of the " Song of the Shirt." In the same volume a clipping containing " The Bridge of Sighs," beginning " One more unfortunate, Weary of breath, Rashly importunate, Gone to her death," FIRST TWO STATIONS 93 In another we have Coleridge's lines : " He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small ; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all." In another, hardly legible on the marble paper, we find: " So runs my dream : but what am I ? An infant crying in the night : An infant crying for the light: And with no language but a cry." All Livingstone's personal friends testiiy tnat, con- sidering the state of banishment in which he lived, his acquaintance with English literature was quite remark- able. When a controversy arose in America as to the genuineness of his letters to the New Yo7'k Herald, the familiarity of the writer with the poems of Whittier wa3 made an argument against him. But Livingstone knew a great part of the poetry of Longfellow, Whittier, and others by heart. There was one drawback to the new locality: it was infested with lions. All the world knows the story of the encounter at Mabotsa, which was so near ending Living- stone's career, when the lion seized him by the shoulder, tore his flesh, and crushed his bone. Nothing in all Liv- ingstone's history took more hold of the popular imagina- tion, or was more frequently inquired about when he came home.* By a kind of miracle his life was saved, but the encounter left him lame for life of the arm which the lion * He did not speak of it spontaneously, and sometimes he gave unexpected answers to questions put to him about it. To one person who asked very earnestly what were his thoughts when the lion was above him, he answered, •• I was thinking what part of me he would eat first" — a grotesque thought, which some persons considered strange in so good a man, but which was quite in accordance with human experience in similar circumstances. 84 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. crunched.* But the world generally does not know that Mebalwe, the native who was with him, and who saved his life by diverting the lion when his paw was on his head, was the teacher whom Mrs. M'Robert's twelve pounds had enabled him to employ. Little did the good woman think that this offering would indirectly be the means of pre- serving the life of Livingstone for the wonderful work of the next thirty years! When, on being attacked by Mebalwe, the lion left Livingstone, and sprang upon him, he bit his thigh, then dashed toward another man, and caught him by the shoulder, when in a moment, the pre- vious shots taking effect, he fell down dead. Sir Bartle Frere, in his obituary notice of Livingstone read to the Royal Geographical Society, remarked : " For thirty years afterward all his labors 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." In his Missionary Travels Livingstone saye that but for the importunities of his friends, he meant to have kept this story in store to tell his children in his dotage. How little he made of it at the time will be seen from the fol- lowing allusion to it in a letter to his father, dated 27th July, 1844. After telling how the attacks of the lions drew the people of Mabotsa away from the irrigating operations he was engaged in, he says : "At last, one of the lions destroyed nine sheep in broad daylight on a hill just opposite our house. All the people immediately ran over to it, and, contrary to my custom, I imprudently went with them, in order to Bee how they acted, and encourage them to destroy him. They sur« rounded him several times, but he managed to break through the circle. I then got tired. In coming home I had to come near to the end of the hill. They were then close upon the lion and had wounded him. He *The false joint in the crushed arm was the mark by which the body ol I^vingstone was identified when brought home by his followers in 1874* FIRST TWO STATIONS. 85 rusnea out from the bushes which concealed him from view, and bit me on the arm so as to break the bone. It is now nearly well, however, feeling weak only from having been confined in one position so long; and I ought to praise Him who delivered me from so great a danger. I hope I shall never forget his mercy. You need not be sorry for me, for long before this reaches you it will be quite as strong as ever it was. Gratitude is the only feeling we ought to have in remembering the event. Do not mention this to any one. I do not like to be talked about." In a letter to the Directors, Livingstone briefly adverts to Mebalwe's service on this occasion, but makes it a peg on which to hang some strong remarks on that favorite topic — the employment of native agency : *' Our native assistant Mebalwe has been of considerable value to the Mission. In endeavoring to save my life he nearly lost his own, for he was caught and wounded severely, but both before being laid aside, and since his recovery, he has shown great willingness to be useful. The cheerful manner in which he engages with us in manual labor in the station, and his affectionate addresses to his countrymen, are truly grati. fying. Mr. E. took him to some of the neighboring villages lately, in order to introduce him to his work ; and I intend to depart to-morrow for the same purpose to several of the villages situated northeast of this. In all there may be a dozen considerable villages situated at con« venient distances around us, and we each purpose to visit them statedly. It would be an immense advantage to the cause had we many such agents." Another proof that his pleas for native agency, published in some of the Missionary Magazines, were telling at home, was the receipt of a contribution for the employment of a native helper, amounting to £15, from a Sunday-school in Southampton. Touched with this proof of youthful sym- pathy, Livingstone addressed a long letter of thanks to the Southampton teachers and children, desiring to deepen their interest in the work, and concluding with an account of his Sunday-school : " I yesterday commenced school for the first time at Mabotsa, and the poor little naked things came with fear and trembling. A native teacher assisted, and the chief collected as many of them as be could, or I believe we should have had none. The reason is, the women make tts the hobgoblins of their children, telling them * these white ineo bit« 8 86 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. chiWren, feed them with dead men's brains, and all manner of noi> sense. We are just commencing our mission among them." A new star now appeared in Livingstone's horizon, destined to give a brighter complexion to his life, and a new illustration to the name Mabotsa. Till this year (1844) he had steadily repudiated all thoughts of marriage, thinking it better to be independent. Nor indeed had he met with any one to induce him to change his mind. Writing in the end of 1843 to his friend Watt, he had said : " There's no outlet for me when I begin to think of getting married but that of sending home an advertisement to the Evangelical Magazine, and if I get very old, it must be for some decent sort of widow. In the meantime 1 am too busy to think of any thing of the kind." But soon after the Moffats came back from England to Kuruman, their eldest daughter Mary rapidly effected a revolution in Livingstone's ideas of matrimony. They became engaged. In announcing his approaching marriage to the Directors, he makes it plain that he had carefully considered the bearing which this step might have on his usefulness as a missionary. No doubt if he had foreseen the very extraor- dinary work to which he was afterwards to be called, he might have come to a different conclusion. But now, apparently, he was fixed and settled. Mabotsa would be- ^ come a centre from which native missionary agents would radiate over a large circumference. His own life-work would resemble Mr. Moffat's. For influencing the women and children of such a place, a Christian lady was indis- pensable, and who so likely to do it well as one born in Africa, the daughter of an eminent and honored mission- ary, herself familiar with missionary life, and gifted with the winning manner and the ready helping hand that were so peculiarly adapted for this work ? The case was as clear as possible, and Livingstone was very happy. On his way home from Kuruman, after the engagement, he writes to her cheerily from Motito, on 1st August, 184^ FIEST TWO STATIONS. 87 chiefly about the household they were soon to get up ; ask- ing her to get her father to order some necessary articles, and to write to Colesberg about the marriage-license (and if he did not get it, they would license themselves 1), and concluding thus : "And now, my dearest, farewell. May God bless youl Let your affection be towards Him much more than towards me ; and, kept by his mighty power and grace, I hope I shall never give you cause to regret that you have given me a part. Whatever friendship we feel towards each other, let us always look to Jesus as our common friend and guide, and may He shield you with his everlasting arms from every evil I " Next month he writes from Mabotsa with full accounts of the progress of their house, of which he was both architect and builder : "Mabotsa, 12th September, 1844. — I must tell you of the progress I have made in architecture. The walls are nearly finished, although the dimensions are 52 feet by 20 outside, or almost the same size as the house in which you now reside. I began with stone, but when it was breast- high, I was obliged to desist from my purpose to build it entirely of that material by an accident, which, slight as it was, put a stop to my ope- rations in that line. A stone falling was stupidly, or rather instinctive- ly, caught by me in its fall by the left hand, and it nearly broke my arm over again. It swelled up again, and I fevered so much I was glad of a fire, although the weather was quite warm. I expected bursting and discharge, but Baba bound it up nicely, and a few days' rest put all to rights. I then commenced my architecture, and six days have brought the walls up a little more than six feet. " The walls will be finished long before you receive this, and I suppose the roof too, but I have still the wood of the roof to seek. It is not, however, far off; and as Mr. E. and I, with the Kurumanites, got on the roof of the school in a week, I hope this will not be more than a fortnight or three weeks. Baba has been most useful to me in making door and window frames ; indeed, if he had not turned out I should not have been advanced so far as I am. Mr. E.'s finger is the cause in part of my having no aid from him, but all will come right at last. It !» pretty hard work, and almost enough to drive love out of my head, but it is not situated there ; it is in my heart, and won't come out unless yo« behave so as to quench it! . . . 88 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. " You must try and get a maid of some sort to come with you, although it is only old Moyimang ; you can't go without some one, and a Makhatla can't be had for either love or money. . . . " You must excuse soiled paper, my hands won't wash clean after dabbling mud all day. And although the above does not contain evidence of it, you are as dear to me as ever, and will be as long as our lives are spared. — I am still your most affectionate " D. Livingston." A few weeks later he writes : " As I am favored with another opportunity to Kuruman, I gladly embrace it, and wish I could embrace you at the same time; but as I cannot, I must do the next best to it, and while I give you the good news that our work is making progress, and of course the time of our separation becoming beautifully less, I am happy in the hope that, by the messenger who now goes, I shall receive the good news that you are well and happy, and remembering me with some of that affection which we bear to each other. . . . All goes on pretty well here ; the school is sometimes well, sometimes ill attended. I begin to like it, and I once believed I could never have any pleasure in such employment. I had a great objection to school-keeping, but I find in that as in almost every, thing else I set myself to as a matter of duty, I soon became enamored of it. A boy came three times last week, and on the third time could act as monitor to the rest through a great portion of the alphabet. He is a real Mokhatla, but I have lost sight of him again. If I get them on a little, I shall translate some of your infant-school hymns into Sichu- ana rhyme, and you may yet, if you have time, teach them the tunes to them. I, poor mortal, am as mute as a fish in regard to singing, and Mr. Englis says I have not a bit of imagination. Mebalwe teaches them the alphabet in the ' auld lang syne ' tune sometimes, and I heard it Bung by some youths in the gardens yesterday — a great improvement over their old see-saw tunes indeed. Sometimes we have twenty, some- times two, sometimes none at all. " Give my love to A., and tell her to be sure to keep my lecture warm. She must not be vexed with herself, that she was not more frank to me. If she is now pleased, all is right. I have sisters, and know all of you have your failings, but I won't love you less for these. And to mother, too, give my kindest salutation. I suppose I shall get a lecture from her, too, about the largeness of the house. If there are too many win- dows, she can just let me know. I could build them all up in two days, and let the light come down the chimney, if that would please. I'll do anything for peace, except fighting for it. And now I must again, my dear, dear Mary, bid you good-bye. Accept my expressions as literally true when I eay, I am your most affectionate and still confiding lover, *' D. Livingston." FIRST TWO STATIONS. 89 In due time the marriage was solemnized, and Living- stone brought his wife to Mabotsa. Here they went vigorously to work, Mrs. Livingstone with her infant- school, and her husband with all the varied agencies, medical, educational, and pastoral, which his active spirit could bring to bear upon the people. They were a very superstitious race, and, among other things, had great faith in rain-making. Livingstone had a famous encounter with one of their rain-makers, the effect of which was that the pretender was wholly nonplused ; but instead of being convinced of the absurdity of their belief, the people were rather disposed to think that the missionaries did not want them to get rain. Some of them were workers in iron, who carried their superstitious notions into that depart- ment of life, too, believing that the iron could be smelted only by the power of medicines, and that those who had not the proper medicine need not attempt the work. In the hope of breaking down these absurdities, Livingstone planned a course of popular lectures on the works of God in creation and providence, to be carried out in. the follow- ing way : " I intend to commence with the goodness of God in giving f.ron ore, by giving, if I can, a general knowledge of the simplicity of the eub- etance, and endeavoring to disabuse their minds of the idea which prevents them, in general, from reaping the benefit of that mineral which abounds in their country. I intend, also, to pay more attention to the children of the few believers we have with us as a class, for whom, as baptized ones, we are bound especially to care. May the Lord enable me to fulfill my resolutions ! I have now the happy prospect before me of real missionary work. 4^11 that has preceded has been preparatory." All this time Livingstone had been cherishing his plan of a training seminary for native agents. He had written a paper and brought the matter before the missionaries, but without success. Some opposed the scheme fairly, as being premature, while some insinuated that his object was to stand well with the Directors, and get himself made 90 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. Professor. This last objection induced him to withdraw his proposal. He saw that in his mode of prosecuting the matter he had not been very knowing ; it would have been better to get some of the older brethren to adopt it. He feared that his zeal had injured the cause he desired to benefit, and in writing to his friend Watt, he said that for months he felt bitter grief, and could never think of the subject without a pang.^ A second time he brought forward his proposal, but again without success. Was he then to be beaten ? Far from it. He would change his tactics, however. He would first set himself to show what could be done by native efforts ; he would travel about, wherever he found a road, and after inquiries, settle native agents far and wide. The plan had only to be tried, under God's blessing, to succeed. Here again we trace the Providence that shaped his career. Had his wishes been carried into effect, he might have spent his life training native agents, and doing undoubted- ly a noble work : but he would not have traversed Africa ; » he would not have given its death-blow to African slavery ; he would not have closed the open sore of the world, nor rolled away the great obstacle to the evangelization of the Continent. Some glimpses of his Mabotsa life may be got from a letter to his mother (14th May, 1845). Usually his letters for home were meant for the whole family and addressed accordingly ; but with a delicacy of feeling, which many will appreciate, he wrote separately to his mother after a little experience of married life : " I often think of you, and perhaps more frequently since I got married than before. Only yesterday I said to my wife, when I thought of the nice clean bed I enjoy now, 'You put me in mind of my mother; she ' Dr. Moffat favored the scheme of a training seminary, and when he came home afterward, helped to raise a large sum of money for the purpose. He was strongly of opinion tliat the institution should be built at Sech6le's; but, contrary to his view, and that of Livingstone, it has been placed at Kuruman. FIRST TWO STATIONS. 91 was always particular about our beds and linen. I had had rough times of it before.' ... " I cannot perceive that the attentions paid to my father-in-law at home have spoiled him. He is, of course, not the same man he formerly must have been, for he now knows the standing he has among the friends of Christ at home. But the plaudits he received have had a bad effect, and tho' not on his mind, yet on that of his fellow-laborers. You, perhaps, cannot understand this, but so it is. If one man is praised, others think this is more than is deserved, and that they, too {'others,' they say, while they mean themselves), ought to have a share. Perhaps you were gratified to see my letters quoted in the Chronicle. In some minds they produced bitter envy, and if it were in my power, I should prevent the publication of any in future. But all is in the Lord's hands ; on Him I cast my care. His testimony I receive as it stands — He careth for us. Yes, He does ; for He says it, who is every way worthy of credit. He will give what is good for me. He will see to it that all things work together for good. Do thou for me, O Lord God Almighty ! May his blessing rest on you, my dear mother. . . . " I received the box from Mr. D. The clothes are all too wide by four inches at least. Does he think that aldermen grow in Africa? Mr. N., too, fell into the same fault, but he will be pleased to know his boots will be worn by a much better man — Mr. Moffat. I am not an atom thicker than when you saw me. ... '* Eespecting the mission here, we can say nothing. The people have not the smallest love to the gospel of Jesus. They hate and fear it, as a revolutionary spirit is disliked by the old Tories. It appears to them as that which, if not carefully guarded against, will seduce them, and destroy their much-loved domestic institutions. No pro-slavery man in the Southern States dreads more the abolition principles than do the Bakhatla the innovations of the Word of God. Nothing but power Divine can work the mighty change." Unhappily Mr. and Mrs. Livingstone's residence at Mabotsa was embittered by a painful collision with the missionary who had taken part in rearing the station. Livingstone was accused of acting unfairly by him, of assuming to himself more than his due, and attempts were made to discredit him, both among the missionaries and the Directors. It was a very painful ordeal, and Living- stone felt it keenly. He held the accusation to be unjust, as most people will hold it to have been who know that one of the charges against him was that he was a " non- 92 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. entity " 1 A tone of indignation pervades his letters : — that after having borne the heat and burden of the day, he should be accused of claiming for himself the credit due to one who had done so little in comparison. But the noble spirit of Livingstone rose to the occasion. Rather than have any scandal before the heathen, he would give up his house and garden at Mabotsa, with all the toil and money they had cost him, go with his young bride to some other place, and begin anew the toil of house and school building, and gathering the people around him. His colleague was so struck with his generosity that he said had he known his intention he never would have spoken a word against him. Livingstone had spent all his money, and out of a salary of a hundred pounds it was not easy to build a house every other year. But he stuck to his resolution. Parting with his garden evidently cost him a pang, especially when he thought of the tasteless hands into which it was to fall, " I like a garden," he wrote, " but paradise will make amends for all our privations and sorrows here." Self-denial was a firmly established habit with him ; and the passion of " moving on " was warm in his blood. Mabotsa did not thrive after Livingstone left it, but the brother with whom he had the difference lived to manifest a very different spirit. In some of his journeys, Livingstone had come into close contact with the tribe of the Bakwains, which, on the murder of their chief, some time before, had been divided into two, one part under Bubi, already referred to, and the other under Sechele, son of the murdered chief, also already introduced. Both of these chiefs had shown much regard for Livingstone, and on the death of Bubi, Sechele and his people indicated a strong wish that a missionary should reside among them. On leaving Mabotsa, Livingstone trauisferred his services to this tribe. The name of the new station was Chonuane ; it was situated some forty riiles from Mabotsa, and in 1846 it became the centre of FIRST ^WO STATIONS. 93 Livingstone's operations among the Bakwains and their chief Sechele. Livingstone had been disappointed with the result of his work among the Bakhatlas. No doubt much good had been done ; he had prevented several wars ; but where were the conversions?^ On leaving he found that he had made more impressions on them than he had supposed. They were most unwilling to lose him, offered to do anything in their power for his comfort, and even when his oxen were "inspanned" and he was on the point of moving, they of- fered to build a new house without expense to him in some other place, if only he would not leave them. In a finan- cial point of view, the removal to Chonuane was a serious undertaking. He had to apply to the Directors at home for a building-grant — only thirty pounds, but there were not wanting objectors even to that small sum. It was only in self- vindication that he was constrained to tell of the hard- " ships which his family had borne: — "We endured for a long while, using a wretched infusion of native corn for coffee, but when our corn was done, we were fairly obliged to go to Kuruman for supplies. I can bear what other Europeans would consider hunger and thirst without any inconvenience, but when we arrived, to hear the old woman who had seen my wife depart about two years before, exclaiming before the door, 'Bless mel how lean she is f Has he starved her? Is there no food in the country to which she has been?' was more than I could well bear." * When some of Livingstone's "new light" friends heard that there were so few conversions, they seem to have thought that he was too much of an old Calvinist, and wrote to him to preach that the remedy was as extensive as the disease — Christ loved yeu, and gave himself for you. " You may think me heretical," replied he, "but we don't need to make the extent of the atonement the main topic of our preaching. We preach to men who don't know but they are beasts, who have no idea of God as a personal agent, or of sin as evil, otherwise than as an offense against each other, which may or may not be pun- ished by the party offended. . . . Their consciences are seared, and moral perceptions blunted. Their memories retain scarcely anything we teach them, and so low have they sunk that the plainest text in the whole Bible cannot be understood by them." 94 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. From the first, Secliele showed an intelligent interest in Livingstone's preaching. He became a great reader espe- cially of the Bible, and lamented very bitterly that he had got involved in heathen customs, and iiow did not know what to do with his wives. At one time he expressed him- sself quite willing to convert all his people to Christianity by the litupa, i. e. whips of rhinoceros hide ; but when he came to understand better, he lamented that while he could make his people do anything else he liked, he could not get one of them to believe. He began family worship, and Livingstone was surprised to hear how well he conducted prayer in his own simple and beautiful style. When he was baptized, after a profession of three years, he sent away his superfluous wives in a kindly and generous way; but all their connections became active and bitter enemies of the gospel, and the conversion of Sechele, instead of in- creasing the congregation, reduced it so much that some- times the chief and his family were almost the only persons present. A bell-man of a somewhat peculiar order was once employed to collect the people for service — a tall gaunt fellow. " Up he jumped on a sort of platform, and shouted at the top of his voice, 'Knock that woman down over there. Strike her, she is putting on her pot! Do you see that one hiding herself? Give her a good blow. There she is — see, see, knock her down ! ' All the women ran to the place of meeting in no time, for each thought herself meant. But, though a most efficient bell-man, we did not like to employ him." "While residing at Chonuane, Livingstone performed two Ijourneys eastward, in order to attempt the removal of cer-| 'tain obstacles to the establishment of at least one of his native teachers in that direction. This brought him into connection with the Dutch Boers of the Cashan mountains, c!;herwise called Magaliesberg. The Boers were emigrants from the Cape, who had been dissatisfied with the British rule, ' and especially with the emancipation of their Hottentot^ FIRST TWO STATIONS. 96 slaves, and had created for themselves a republic in the north (the Transvaal), in order that they might pursue, unmolested, the proper treatment of the blacks. "It is almost needless to add," says Livingstone, "that proper treatment has always contained in it the essential element of slavery, viz., compulsory unpaid labor." The Boers had effected the expulsion of Mosilikatse, a savage Zulu warrior, and in return for this service they considered themselves sole masters of the soil. While still engaged in the erection of his dwelling-house at Chonuane, Livingstone received notes from the Commandant and Council of the emigrants, requesting an explanation of his intentions, and an in- timation that they had resolved to come and deprive Sechele of his fire-arms. About the same time he received several very friendly messages and presents from Mokhatla, chief of a large section of the Bakhatla, who lived about four days eastward of his station, and had once, while Livingstone was absent, paid a visit to Chonuane, and ex- pressed satisfaction with the idea of obtaining Paul, a native convert, as his teacher. As soon as his house was habitable, Livingstone proceeded to the eastward, to visit Mokhatla, and to confer with the Boers. On his way to Mokhatla he was surprised at the unusual density of the population, giving him the opportunity of preaching the gospel at least once every day. The chief, Mokhatla, whose people were quiet and industrious, was eager to get a missionary, but said that an arrangement must be made with the Dutch commandant. This involved some delay. ' Livingstone then returned to Chonuane, finished the erection of a school there, and setting systematic instruction fairly in operation under Paul and his son, Isaac, again went eastward, accompanied this time by Mrs. Livingstone * and their infant son, Robert Moffat^ — all the three being ^ He wrote to his father that he would have called him Neil, if it had not been such an ugly name» and all the people would have called him Ra-Neeleyl 96 DAVID LIVmaSTONE. in indifferent health. Mebalwe, the catechist, was also with them. Taking a different route, they came on another Ba- khatla tribe, whose country abounded in metallic ores, and who, besides cultivating their fields, span cotton, smelted iron, copper, and tin, made an alloy of tin and copper, and manufactured ornaments. Livingstone had constantly an eye to the industries and commercial capabilities of the countries he passed through. Social reform was certainly much needed here; for the chief, though not twenty years of age, had already forty-eight wives and twenty children- They heard of another tribe, said to excel all others in. manufacturing skill, and having the honorable distinction, "they had never been known to kill any one." This lily among thorns they were unable to visit. Three tribes of Bakhalaka whom they did visit were at continual war. Deriving his information from the Boers themselves, Livingstone learned that they had taken possession of nearly all the fountains, so that the natives lived in the country only by sufferance. The chiefs were compelled to furnish the emigrants with as much free labor as they required. This was in return for the privilege of living in the country of the Boers I The absence of law left the natives open to innumerable wrongs which the better-disposed of the emi- grants lamented, but could not prevent. Livingstone found that the forcible seizure of cattle was a common occurrence, but another custom was even worse. When at war, the Dutch forced natives to assist them, and sent them before them into battle, to encounter the battle-axes of their oppo- nents, while the Dutch fired in safety at their enemies over the heads of their native allies. Of course all the disasters of the war fell on the natives ; the Dutch had only the glory and the spoil. Such treatment of the natives burned into the very soul of Livingstone, He was specially dis- tressed at the purpose expressed to pick a quarrel with Sechele, for whatever the emigrants might say of other tribes, they could not but admit that the Bechuanas had been always an honest and peaceable people. FmJST TWO STATIONS. 91 When Livingstone met the Dutch commandant he received favorably his proposal of a native missionary, but another obstacle arose. Near the proposed station lived a Dutch emigrant who had shown himself the inveterate enemy of missions. He had not scrupled to say that the proper way to treat any native missionary was to kill him. Livingstone was unwilling to plant Mebalwe beside so bloodthirsty a neighbor, and as he had not time to go to him, and try to bring him to a better mind, and there was plenty of work to be done at the station, they all returned to Chonuane. " We have now," says Livingstone (March, 1847), " been a little more than a year with the Bakwains. No conversions have taken place, but real progress has been made." He adverts to the way in which the Sabbath was observed, no work being done by the natives in the gardens that day, and hunting being suspended. Their superstitious belief in rain-maiking had got a blow. There was a real desire for knowledge, though hindered by the prevailing famine caused by the want of rain. There was also a general im- pression among the people that the missionaries were their friends. But civilization apart from conversion would be but a poor recompense for their labor. But, whatever success might attend their work among the Bakwains, Livingstone's soul was soaring beyond them : " I am more and more convinced," he writes to the Directors, " that in order to the permanent settlement of the gospel in any part, the natives must be taught to relinquish their reliance on Europe. An on- ward movement ought to be made whether men will hear or whether they will forbear. I tell my Bakwains that if spared ten years, I shall move ©n to regions beyond them. If our missions would move onward now to those regions I have lately visited, they would in all probability pre- vent the natives settling into that state of determined hatred to all Europeans which I fear now characterizes most of the Caffrea near the Colony. If natives are not elevated by contact with Europeans, they are sure to be deteriorated. It is with pain I have observed that all the tribes I have lately seen are undergoing the latter proceea. The 9 99 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. country is fine. It abounds in streams, und has many consmeraoie ^rivers. The Boers hate missionaries, but by a kind and prudent course of conduct one can easily manage them. Medicines are eagerly re- ceived, and I intend to procure a supply of Dutch tracts for distribution among them. The natives who have been in subjection to Mosiiikatse place unbounded confidence in missionaries." In his letters to friends at home, whatever topic Living- stone may touch, we see evidence of one over-master- ing idea — the vastness of Africa, and the duty of beginning a new area of enterprise to reach its people. Among his friends the Scotch Congregationalists, there had been a keen controversy on some points of Calvinism. Livingstone did not like it ; he was not a high Calvinist theoretically, yet he could not accept the new views, " from a secret feeling of being absolutely at the divine disposal as a sinner ; " but these were theoretical questions, and with dark Africa around him, he did not see why the brethren at home should split on them. Missionary influence in South Africa was directed in a wrong channel. There were three times too many missionaries in the colony, and vast regions beyond lay untouched. He wrote to Mr. Watt : " If you meet me down in the colony before eight years are expired, you may shoot me." Of his employments and studies he gives the following account : " I get the Evangelical, Scottish Congregational, Eclectic, Lancet, British and Foreign Medical Review. I can read in journeying, but little at home. Building, garden- ing, cobbling, doctoring, tinkering, carpentering, gun- mending, farriering, wagon-mendiifg, preaching, schooling, lecturing on physics according to my means, beside a chair in divinity to a class of three, fill up my time." With all his other work, he was still enthusiastic in science. " I have written Professor Buckland," he says to Mr. Watt (May, 1845), "and send him specimens too, but have not received any answer. I have a great lot by me now. I don't know whether ho received my letter or not. FIEST TWO STATIONS. 99 Could you ascertain? I am trying to procure specimens of the entire geology of this region, and will try and make a sort of chart. I am taking double specimens now, so that if one part is lost, I can send another. The great difficulty is transmission. I sent a dissertation on the decrease of water in Africa. Call on Professor Owen and ask if he wants anything in the four jars I still possess, of either rhinoceros, camelopard, etc., etc. If he wants these, or any- thing else these jars will hold, he must send me more jars and spirits of wine." He afterward heard of the fate of one of the boxes of specimens he had sent home — that which contained the fossils of Bootchap. It was lost on the railway after reaching England, in custody of a friend. "The thief thought the box contained bullion, no doubt. You may think of one of the faces in Punch as that of the scoundrel, when he found in the box a lot of * chuckystanes.' " He had got many nocturnal-feeding animals, but the heat made it very diffi- cult to preserve them. Many valuable seeds he had sent to Calcutta, with the nuts of the desert, but had heard nothing of them. He had lately got knowledge of a root to which the same virtues were attached as to ergot of rye. He tells his friend about the tsetse, the fever, the north wind, and other African notabilia. These and many other interesting points of information are followed up by the significant question — "Who will penetrate through Africa?" :00 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. * CHAPTER V. THIRD STATION — KOLOBENG. A.D. 1847-1852. Want of rain at Chonuane — Removal to Kolobeng — House-building and public works — Hopeful prospects — Letters to Mr. Watt, his sister, and Dr. Bennett • — The church at Kolobeng — Pure communion — Conversion of Sech61e — Letter from his brother Charles — His history — Livingstone's relations with the Boers — He cannot get native teachers planted in the East — Resolves to explore northwards — Extracts from Journal — Scarcity of water — Wild ani- mals and other risks — Custom-house robberies and annoyances — Visit from Secretary of London Missionary Society — Manifold employments of Living- stone — Studies in Sichuana — His reflection on this period of his life while detained at Manyuema in 1870. The residence of the Livingstones at Chonuane was of short continuance. The want of rain was fatal to agricul- ture, and about equally fatal to the mission. It was neces- sary to remove to a neighborhood where water could be obtained. The new locality chosen was on the banks of the river Kolobeng, about forty miles distant from Chonuane. In a letter to the Royal Geographical Society, his early and warm friend and fellow-traveler, Mr. Oswell, thus describes Kolobeng: "The town stands in naked deformity on the side of and under a ridge of red ironstone; the mission- house on a little rocky eminence over the river Kolobeng." Livingstone had pointed out to the chief that the only feasible way of watering the gardens was to select some good never-failing river, make a canal, and irrigate the adjacent lands. The wonderful influence which he had acquired was apparent from the fact that the very morning after he told them of his intention to move to the Kolo- beng, the whole tribe was in motion for the "flitting." Livingstone had to set to work at his old business — building a house — the third which he had reared with his own THIRD STATION. 101 hands. It was a mere hut — for a permanent house he had to wait a year. The natives, of course, had their huts to rear and their gardens to prepare ; but, besides this, Living- stone set them to public works. For irrigating their gar- dens, a dam had to be dug and a water-course scooped out; sixty-five of the younger men dug the dam, and forty of the older made the water-course. The erection of the school was undertaken by the chief Sechele: "I desire," he said, "to build a house for God, the defender of my town, and that you be at no expense for it whatever." Two hundred of his people were employed in this work. Livingstone had hardly had time to forget his building troubles at Mabotsa and Chonuane, when he began this new enterprise. But he was in much better spirits, much more hopeful than he had been. Writing to Mr. Watt on 13th February, 1848, he says : — "All our meetings are good compared to those we had at Mabotsa, and some of them admit of no comparison whatever. Ever since we moved, we Jhave been incessantly engaged in manual labor. We have endeavored, as far as possible, to carry on systematic instruction at the same time, but have felt it very hard pressure on our energies. . . . Our daily labors are in the following sort of order : "We get up as soon as we can, generally with the sun in summer, then have family worship, breakfast, and school; and as soon as these are over we begin the manual operations needed, sowing, ploughing, smithy work, and every other sort of work by turns as required. My better-half is employed all the morning in culinary or other work ; and feeling pretty well tired by dinner-time, we take about two hours' rest then ; but more frequently, without the respite I try to secure for myself, she goes off to hold infant-school, and this, I am happy to say, is very popular with the youngsters. She sometimes has eighty, but the average may be sixty. My manual labors are continued till about five o'clock. I then go into the town to give lessons and talk to any one who may be disposed for it. As soon as the cows are milked we have a meeting, and this is followed by a prayer-meeting in Sech^les house, which brings me home about half-past eight, and generally tired enough, too fatigued to think of any mental exertion. I do not enumerate these duties by way of telling how much we do, but to let you know a cause of sorrow I have that so little of my time is devoted to real missionary work." 102 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. First there was a temporary house to be built, then a per- manent one, and Livingstone was not exempted from the casualties of mechanics. Once he found himself dangling from a beam by his weak arm. Another time he had a fall from the roof. A third time he cut himself severely with an axe. Working on the roof in the sun, his lips got all scabbed and broken. If he mentions such things to Dr. Bennett or other friend, it is either in the way of illus- » trating some medical point or to explain how he had never found time to take the latitude of his station till he was stopped working by one of these accidents. At best it was weary work. " Two days ago," he writes to his sister Janet (5th July, 1848), " we entered our new house. What a mercy to be in a house again ! 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 con- tinually 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 to erecting cottages on the ground." He could not quite forget that it was unfair treatment that had driven him from Mabotsa, and involved him in these labors. "I often think," he writes to Dr. Bennett, "I have forgiven, as I hope to be forgiven ; but the remembrance of slander often comes boiling up, although I hate to think of it. You must remember me in your prayers, that more of the spirit of Christ may be imparted to me. All my plans of " mental culture have been broken through by manual labor. I shall soon, however, be obliged to give my son and daughter a jog along the path to learning. . . . Your family increases very fast, and I fear we follow in youFj w^ake. I cannot realize the idea of your sitting with four around you, and I can scarcely believe myself to be so far advanced as to be the father of two." Livingstone never expected the work of real Christianity to advance rapidly among the Bakwains. They were a THIRD STATION. 103 slow people and took long to move. But it was not his desire to have a large church of nominal adherents. " Nothing," he writes, " will induce me to form an impure church. Fifty added to the church sounds fine at home, but if only five of these are genuine, what will it profit in the Great Day ? I have felt more than ever lately that the great object of our exertions ought to be conversion." There was no subject on which Livingstone had stronger feelings than on purity of communion. For two whole years he allowed no dispensation of the Lord's Supper, be- cause he did not deem the professing Christians to be living consistently. Here was a crowning proof of his hatred of all sham and false pretense, and his intense love of solid, thorough, finished work. Hardly were things begun to be settled at Kolobeng, when, by way of relaxation, Livingstone (January, 1848) . again moved eastward. He would have gone sooner, but " a mad sort of Scotchman," ^ having wandered past them shooting elephants, and lost all his cattle by the bite of the tsetse-fly, Livingstone had to go to his help ; and moreover the dam, having burst, required to be repaired. Sechele set out to accompany him, and intended to go with him the whole way ; but some friends having come to visit his tribe, he had to return, or at least did return, leaving Livingstone four gallons of porridge, and two servants to act in his stead. " He is about the only individual," says Livingstone, " who possesses distinct, consistent views on the subject of our mission. He is bound by his wives : has a curious idea — would like to go to another country for three or four years in order to study, with the hope that probably his wives would have married others in the meantime. He would then return, and be admitted to the Lord's Supper, and teach his people the knowledge he has acquired. He seems incapable of putting them away. He feels so * Mr. Gordon Gumming. 104 DA VID LIVINGSTONE. attached to them, and indeed we, too, feel much attached to most of them. They are our best scholars, our constant friends. We earnestly pray that they, too, may be en- lightened by the Spirit of God." The prayer regarding Sechele was answered soon. Re- viewing the year 1844 in a letter to the Directors, Living- stone says : " An event that excited more open enmity than any other was the profession of faith and subsequent re- ception of the chief into the church." During thie first years at Kolobeng he received a long letter from his younger brother Charles, then in the United States, requesting him to use his influence with the London Missionary Society that he might be sent as a missionary to China. In writing to the Directors about his brother, in reply to this request, Livingstone disclaimed all idea of influencing them except in so far as he might be able to tell them facts. His brother's history was very interesting. In 1839, when David Livingstone was in England, Charles became earnest about religion, influ- enced partly by the thought that as his brother, to whom he was most warmly attached, was going abroad, he might never see him again in this world, and therefore he would prepare to meet him in the next. A strong desire sprang up in his mind to obtain a liberal education. Not having the means to get this at home, he was advised by David to go to America, and endeavor to obtain admission to one of the colleges there where the students support them- selves by manual labor. To help him in this, David sent him five pounds, which he had just received from the Society, being the whole of his quarter's allowance in London. On landing at New York, after selling his box and bed, Charles found his whole stock of cash to amount to £2, 13s. 6d. Purchasing a loaf and a piece of cheese as viaticuTYi, he started for a college at Oberlin, seven hun- dred miles off, where Dr. Finney was President. He contrived to get to the college without having ever begged. THIRD STATION. 105 In the third year he entered on a theological course, with the view of becoming a missionary. He did not wish, and could never agree, as a missionary, to hold an appointment from an American Society, on account of the relation of the American Churches to slavery ; therefore he applied to the London Missionary Society. David had suggested to his father that if Charles was to be a missionary, he ought to direct his attention to China. Livingstone's first mis- sionary love had not become cold, and much though he might have wished to have his brother in Africa, he acted consistently on his old conviction that there were enough of English missionaries there, and that China had much more need. The Directors declined to appoint Charles Livingstone ' without a personal visit, which he could not afford to make. This circumstance led him to accept a pastorate in New England, where he remained until 1857, when he came to this country and joined his brother in the Zam- • besi Expedition. Afterward he was appointed H. M. Consul at Fernando Po, but being always delicate, he succumbed to the climate of the country, and died a few months after his brother, on his way home, in October, 1873. Sir Bartle Frere, as President of the Royal Geo- graphical Society, paid a deserved tribute to his affec- tionate and earnest nature, his consistent Christian life, and his valuable help to Christian missions and the Afri- can cause generally,^ Livingstone's relations with the Boers did not improve. ' He has gone so fully into this subject in his Missionary Travels that a very slight reference to it is all that is needed here. It was at first very difiicult for him to com- prehend how the most flagrant injustice and inhumanity to the black race could be combined, as he found it to be, with kindness and general respectability, and even with ' * JdorDAl of the Rojral Geographical Society, 1874, p. oaviiL 106 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. the profession of piety. He only came to comprehend this when, after more experience, he understood the demorali- zation which the slave-system produces. It was necessary for the Boers to possess themselves of children for servants, and believing or fancying that in some tribe an insurrec- tion was plotting, they would fall on that tribe and bring off a number of the children. The most foul massacres were justified on the ground that they were necessary to subdue the troublesome tendencies of the people, and therefore essential to permanent peace. Livingstone felt keenly that the Boers who came to live among the Bak- wains made no distinction between them and the Caffres, although the Bechuanas were noted for honesty, and never wttacked cithers Boers or English. On the principle of elevating vague rumors into alarming facts, the Boers of the Cashan Mountains, having heard that Sechele was possessed of fire-arms (the number of his muskets was five !) multiplied the number by a hundred, and threat- ened him with an invasion. Livingstone, who was accused of supplying these arms, went to the commandant Krieger, and prevailed upon him to defer the expedition, but refused point-blank to comply with Krieger's wish that he should act as a spy on the Bakwains. Threaten- ing messages continued to be sent to Sechele, ordering him to surrender himself, and to prevent English traders from passing through his country, or selling fire-arms to his people. On one occasion Livingstone was told by Mr. Pot- geiter, a leading Dutchman, that he would attack any tribe that might receive a native teacher. Livingstone was so thoroughly identified with the natives that it became the desire of the colonists to get rid of him and all his belong- ings, and complaints were made of him to the Colonial Government as a dangerous person that ought not to be let alone. All this made it very clear to Livingstone that his favorite plan of planting native teachess to the eastward could not THIRD STATION 107 be carried into efifect, at least for the present. His dis- appointment in this was only another link in the chain of causes that gave to the latter part of his life so unlooked- for but glorious a destination. It set him to inquire whether in some other direction he might not find a sphere for planting native teachers which the jealousy of the Boers prevented in the east. Before we set out with him on the northward journeys, to which he was led partly by the hostility of the Boers in the east, and partly by the very distressing failure of rain at Kolobeng, a few extracts may be given from a record of the period entitled "A portion of a Journal lost in the destruction of Kolobeng (September, 1853) by the Boers of f*retorius." Livingstone appears to have kept journals from an early period of his life with characteristic care and neatness ; but that ruthless and most atrocious raid of the Boers, which we shall have to notice hereafter, deprived him of all them up to that date. The treatment of his books on that occasion was one of the most exasperating of his trials. Had they been burned or carried off he would have minded it less ; but it was unspeakably provoking to hear of them lying about with handfuls of leaves torn out of them, or otherwise mutilated and destroyed. From the wreck of his journals the only part saved was a few pages containing notes of some occurrences in 1848-49 : ^^ May 20, 1848. — Spoke to Secliele of the evil of trusting in medicines instead of God. He felt afraid to dispute on the subject, and said he would give up all medicine if I only told him to do so. I was gratified to see symptoms of tender conscience. May God enlighten him I " July \Oth. — Entered new house on 4th curt. A great mercy. Hope it may be more a house of prayer than any we have yet inhabited. ^^ Sunday, August 6. — Sechele remained as a spectator at the cele- bration of the Lord's Supper, and when we retired he asked me how he ought to act with reference to his superfluous wives, as he greatly desired to conform to the will of Christ, be baptized, and observe his ordinances. Advised him to do according to what he saw written in God's Book, but to treat them gently, for they had sinned in ignorance, and if driven away hastily might be lost eternally. 108 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. " SepL 1. — ^Much opposition, but none manifested to us as individuals. Some, however, say it was a pity the lion did not kill me at Mabotsa. They curse the chief (Secli6le) wjth very bitter curses, and these come from the mouths of those whom Sechele would formerly have destroyed for a single disrespectful word. The truth will, by the aid of the Spirit of God, ultimately prevail. " Oct. 1. — SechSls baptized ; also Setefano. ''Nov. — Long for rains. Everything languishes during the intense heat ; and successive droughts having only occurred since the Gospel came to the Bakwains, I fear the effect will be detrimental. There is abundance of rain all around us. And yet we, who have our chief at our head in attachment to the Gospel, receive not a drop. Has Satan power over the course of the winds and clouds? Feel afraid he will obtain an advantage over us, but must be resigned entirely to the Bivine will. " Nov. 27. — Devil ! Prince of the power of the air, art thou hinder- ing us? Greater is He who is for us than all who can be against us. I intend to proceed with Paul to Mokhatla's. He feels much pleased with the prospect of forming a new station. May God Almighty bless the poor unworthy effort I Mebalwe's house finished. Preparing wood- work for Paul's house. " Dec. 16. — Passed by invitation to Hendrick Potgeiter. Opposed to building a school. . . . Told him if he hindered the Gospel the blood of these people would be required at his hand. He became much excited at this. " Dec. 17. — Met Dr. Robertson, of Swellendam. Very friendly. Boers very violently opposed. . . . "Went to Pilanies. Had large atten- tive audiences at two villages when on the way home. Paul and I looked for a ford in a dry river. Found we had got a she black rhino- ceros between us and the wagon, which was only twenty yards off. She had calved during the night — a little red beast like a dog. She charged the wagon, split a spoke and a felloe with her horn, and then left. Paul and I jumped into a rut, as the guns were in the wagon." The black rhinoceros is one of the most dangerous of the wild beasts of Africa, and travelers stand in great awe of it. The courage of Dr. Livingstone in exposing himself to the risk of such animals on this missionary tour was none the less that he himself says not a word regarding it; but such courage was constantly shown by him. The following instances are given on the authority of Dr. MoiBfat as samples of what was habitual to Pr, Livingstone ip the performaJice of his duW' THIRD STATION. 109 In going through a wood, a party of hunters were startled by the appearance of a black rhinoceros. The furious beast dashed at the wagon, and drove his horn into the bowels of the driver, inflicting a frightful wound. A messenger was despatched in the greatest haste for Dr. Livingstone, whose house was eight or ten miles distant. The messenger in his eagerness ran the whole way. Livingstone's friends were horror-struck at the idea of his riding through the wood at night, exposed to the rhino- ceros and other deadly beasts. " No, no ; you must not think of it, Livingstone; it is certain death." Livingstone believed it was a Christian duty to try to save the poor fellow's life, and he resolved to go, happen what might. Mounting his horse, he rode to the scene of the accident. The man had died, and the wagon had left, so that there was nothing for Livingstone but to return and run the risk of the forest anew, without even the hope that he might be useful in saving life. Another time, when he and a brother missionary were on a tour a long way from home, a messenger came to tell his companion that one of his children was alarmingly ill. It was but natural for him to desire Livingstone to go back with him. The way lay over a road infested by lions. Livingstone's life would be in danger; moreover, as we have seen, he was intensely desirous to examine the fossil bones at the place. But when his friend expressed the desire for him to go, he went without hesitation. His firm belief in Providence sustained him in these as in so many other dangers. Medical practice was certainly not made easier by what happened to some of his packages from England. Writ- ing to his father-in-law, Mr. Moffat (18th January, 1849), he says : " Most of our boxes which come to us from England are opened, and usually lightened of their contents. You will perhaps remember one in which Sech^le's cloak was. It contained, on leaving Glasgow, besides 10 110 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. the articles wnicn came here, a parcel of surgical instruments which I ordered, and of course paid for. One of these was a valuable cupping apparatus. The value at which the instruments were purchased for me was £4, 12s., their real value much more. " The box which you kindly packed for us and despatched to Glasgow has, we hear, been gutted by the Custom-House thieves, and only a very few plain karosses left in it. When we see a box which has been opened ve have not half the pleasure which we otherwise should in unpacking it. . . . Can you give me any information how these annoyances may be prevented ? Or must we submit to it as one of the crooked things of this life, which Solomon says cannot be made straight?" Not only in these scenes of active missionary labor, but everywhere else, Livingstone was in the habit of preaching • to the natives, and conversing seriously with them on religion, his favorite topics being the love of Christ, the Fatherhood of God, the resurrection, and the last judg- ment. His preaching to them, in Dr. Moffat's judgment, was highly effective. It was simple, scriptural, conver- sational, went straight to the point, was well fitted to arrest the attention, and remarkably adapted to the capacity of the people. To his father he writes (5th July, 1848) : " For a long time I felt much depressed after preaching the un- searchable riches of Christ to apparently insensible hearts; but now I like to dwell on the love of the great Mediator, for it always warms my own heart, and I know that the gospel is the power of God — the great means which He employs for the regeneration of our ruined world." In the beginning of 1849 Livingstone made the first of a series of journeys to the north, in the hope of planting native missionaries among the people. Not to interrupt the continuous account of these journeys, we may advert here to a visit paid to him at Kolobeng, on his return from ^ the first of them, in the end of the year, by Mr. Freeman of the London Missionary Society, who was at that time visiting the African stations. Mr. Freeman, to Living- stone's regret, was in favor of keeping up all Colonial stations, because the London Society alone paid attentioa THIRD STATION. Ill to the black population. He was no* much in sympathy with Livingstone. "Mr. Freeman," he writes confidentially to Mr. Watt, "gave us no hope to expect any new field to be taken up. * Expenditure to be reduced in Africa' was the word, when I proposed the new region beyond us, and there is nobody willing to go except Mr. Moffat and myself. Six hundred miles additional land-carriage, mosquitoes in myriads, sparrows by the million, an epidemic frequently fatal, don't look well in a picture. I am 270 miles from Kuruman ; land-carriage for all that we use makes a fearful inroad into the £100 of salary, and then 600 miles beyond this makes one think unutterable things, for nobody likes to call for more salary. I think the Indian salary ought to be given to those who go into the tropics. I have a very strong desire to go and reduce the new language to writing, but I cannot perform impossibilities. I don't think it quite fair for the Churches to expect their messenger to live, as if he were the Prodigal Son, on the husks that the swine do eat, but I should be ashamed to say so to any one but yourself." " I cannot perform impossibilities," said Livingstone ; but few men could come so near doing it. His activity of mind and body at this outskirt of civilization was wonderful. A Jack-of-all-trades, he is building houses and schools, cultivating gardens, scheming in every manner of way how to get water, which in the remarkable drought of the season becomes scarcer and scarcer ; as a missionary he is holding meetings every other night, preaching on Sundays, and taking such other opportunities as he can find to gain the people to Christ ; as a medical man he is dealing with the more difficult cases of disease, those which baffle the native doctors; as a man of science he is taking observations, collecting specimens, thinking out geographical, geological, J meteorological, and other problems bearing on the structure 'and condition of the continent; as a missionary statesman he is planning how the actual force might be disposed of to most advantage, and is looking round in this direction and in that, over hundreds of miles, for openings for native agents; and to promote these objects he is writing long letters to the Directors, to the Missionary Chronicle, to the 112 DAVID LIVINGSTONS'/ Briiish Banner, to private friends, to any one likely to take an interest in his plans. But this does not exhaust his labors. He is deeply inter- ested in philological studies, and is writing on the Sichuana language : " I have been hatching a grammar of the Sichuana language," he writes to Mr. Watt. " It is different in structure from any other lan- guage, except the ancient Egyptian. Most of the changes are effected by means of prefixes or affixes, the radical remaining unchanged. Attempts have been made to form grammars, but all have gone on the principle of establishing a resemblance between Sichuana, Latin, and Greek; mine is on the principle of analysing the language without reference to any others. Grammatical terms are only used when I can- not express my meaning in any other way. The analysis renders the whole language very simple, and I believe the principle elicited extends to most of the languages between this and Egypt. I wish to know whether I could get 20 or 30 copies printed for private distribution at an expense not beyond my means. It would be a mere tract, and about the aize of this letter when folded, 40 or 50 pages perhaps.^ Will you ascer- tain the cost, and tell me whether, in the event of my continuing hot on the subject half a year hence, you would be the corrector of the press? » . . Will you examine catalogues to find whether there is any dictionary of ancient Egyptian within my means, so that I might pur- chase and compare ? I should not grudge two or three pounds for it. Professor Vater has written on it, but I do not know what dictionary he consulted. One Tattam has written a Coptic grammar; perhaps that has a vocabulary, and might serve my purpose. I see Tattam advertised by John Russell Smith, 4 Old Compton Street, Soho, London, — * Tattam (H.), Lexicon Egyptiaco-Latinum e veteribus linguae Egyptiacae monumentis ; thick 8vo, bds., lOe., Oxf , 1835.' Will you purchase the above for me? '' At Mabotsa and Chonuane the Livingstones had spent but a little time ; Kolobeng may be said to have been the only permanent home they ever had. During these years several of their children were born, and it was the only considerable period of their lives when both had their children about them. Looking back afterward on this period, and its manifold occupations, whilst detained in * This gives a correct idea of the length of many of his letters. TBIRD STATION. US Manyuema, in the year 1870, Dr. Livingstone wrote the following striking words : " I often ponder over my missionary career among the Bakwains or Bakwaina, and though conscious of many imperfections, not a single pang of regret arises in the view of my conduct, except that I did not feel it to be my duty, while spending all my energy in teaching the heathen, to devote a special portion of my time to play with my children. But generally I was so much exhausted with the mental and manual labor of the day, that in the evening there was no fun left in me. I did not play with my little ones while I had them, and they soon sprung up in my absences, and left me conscious that I had none to play with." The heart that felt this one regret in looking back to this busy time must have been true indeed to the instincts of * a parent. But Livingstone's case was no exception to that mysterious law of our life in this world, by which, in so many things, we learn how to correct our errors only after the opportunity is gone. Of all the crooks in his lot, that which gave him so short an opportunity of securing the affections and moulding the character of his children seems to have been the hardest to bear. His long detention at » Manyuema appears, as we shall see hereafter, to have been spent by him in learning more completely the lesson of submission to the will of God; and the hard trial of separation from his family, entailing on them what seemed * irreparable loss, was among the last of his sorrows over which he was able to write the words with which he closes the account of his wife's death in the Zarabesi and its Trib- uianes,T-"FiAT, Domiije, voluntus tuaI" 114 DAVIV LIVINGSTONE. CHAPTER VI. JKOLOBENG continued — lake 'ngami. A.D. 1849-1852. Kolobeng failing through drought— Sebituane's country and the Lake 'Ngami — Livingstone sets out with Messrs. Oswell and Murray — Rivers Zouga and Tamanak'le — Old ideas of the interior revolutionized — Enthusiasm of Living- stone — Discovers Lake 'Ngami — Obliged to return — Prize from Royal Geo- graphical Society — Second expedition to the lake, with wife and children — Children attacked by fever — Again obliged to return — Conviction as to healthier spot beyond — Idea of finding passage to sea either west or east- Birth and death of a child — Family visits Kuruman — Third expedition, again with family — He hopes to find a new locality — Perils of the journey — He readies Sebituane — The chief's illness and death — Distress of Livingstone — • Mr. Oswell and he go on the Linyanti — Discovery of the Upper Zambesi — No locality found for settlement — More extended journey necessary— ^He returns ' — Birth of Oswald Livingstone — Crisis in Livingstone's life — His guiding principles — New plans — The Makololo begin to practice slave-trade — New thoughts about commerce — Letters to Directors — The Bakwains — Pros and cons of his new plan — His unabated missionary zeal — He goes with his family to the Cape — His literary activity. When Sechele turned back after going so far with Living- stone eastward, it appeared that his courage had failed him. " Will you go with me northward ? " Livingstone once asked him, and it turned out that he was desirous to do so. He wished to see Sebituane, a great chief living to the north of Lake 'Ngami, who had saved his life in his infancy, and otherwise done him much service. Sebituane was a man of great ability, who had brought a vast number of tribes into subjection, and now ruled over a very exten- sive territory, being one of the greatest magnates of Africa. Livingstone, too, had naturally a strong desire to become acquainted with so influential a man. The fact of his living KOLOBENQ—LAKE 'NOAML 115 near the lake revived the project that had slumbered for years in his mind — to be the first of the missionaries who should look on its waters. At Kolobeng, too, the settlement was in such straits, owing to the excessive drought which dried up the very river, that the people would be compelled to leave it and settle elsewhere. The want of water, and consequently of food, in the gardens, obliged the men to be absent collecting locusts, so that there was hardly any one to come either to church or school. Even the observance of the Sabbath broke down. If Kolobeng should have to be abandoned, where would Livingstone go next ? It was cer- tainly worth his while to look if a suitable locality could not be found in Sebituane's territory. He had resolved that he would not stay with the Bakwains always. If the new region were not suitable for himself, he might find openings for native teachers ; at all events, he would go northward and see. Just before he started, messengers came ""^ him from Lechulatebe, chief of the people of the lake, asking him to visit his country, and giving such an account of the quantity of ivory that the cupidity of the Bakwain guides was roused, and they became quite egar to be there. On 1st June, 1849, Livingstone accordingly set out from Kolobeng. Sechele was not of the party, but two English hunting friends accompanied him, Mr. Oswell and Mr. Murray — Mr. Oswell generously defraying the cost of the guides. Sekomi, a neighboring chief who secretly wished the expedition to fail, lest his monopoly of the ivory should be broken up, remonstrated with them for rushing on to certain death — they must be killed by the sun and thirst, and if he did not stop them, people would blame him for the issue. " No fear," said Livingstone, " people will only blame our own stupidity." The great Kalahari desert, of which Livingstone has given so fall an account, lay between them and the lake. They passed along its northeast border, and had traversed 116 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. about half of the distance, when one day it seemed most unexpectedly that they had got to their journey's end. Mr. Oswell was a little in advance, and having cleared an intervening thick belt of trees, beheld in the soft light of the setting sun what seemed a magnificent lake twenty miles in circumference; and at the sight threw his hat in the air, and raised a shout which made the Bakwains think him mad. He fancied it was 'Ngami, and, indeed, it was a wonderful deception, caused by a large salt-pan gleaming in the light of the sun ; in fact, the old, but ever new phenomenon of the mirage. The real 'Ngami was yet 300 miles farther on. Livingstone has given ample details of his progress in the Missionary Travels, dwelling especially on his joy when he reached the beautiful river Zouga, whose waters flowed from 'Ngami. Providence frustrated an attempt to rouse ill-feeling against him on the part of two men who had been sent by Sekomi, apparently to help him, but who now went before him and circulated a report that the object of the travelers was to plunder all the tribes living on the river and the lake. Half-way up, the principal man was attacked by fever, and died; the natives thought it a judgment, and seeing through Sekomi's reason for wishing the expedition not to succeed, they by and by became quite friendly, under Livingstone's fair and kind treatment. A matter of great significance in his future history occurred at the junction of the rivers Tamanak'le and Zouga : ** I inquired," he says, " whence the Tamanak'le came. ' Oh ! from a country full of rivers, — so many, no one can tell their number, and full of large trees.' This was the first confirmation of statements I had heard from the Bakwains who had been with Sebituane, that the country beyond was not the 'large sandy plateau' of the philosophers. The prospect of a highway, capable of being traversed by boats to an entirely unexplored and very populous region, grew from that time for- ward stronger and stronger in my mind ; so much so, that when we actually came to the lake, this idea occupied such a large portion of KOLOBENG—LAKE 'NGAMI. 117 my mental vision, that the actual discovery seemed of but little im- portance. I find I wrote, when the emotions caused by the magnificent prospects of the new country were first awakened in my breast, that they * might subject me to the charge of enthusiasm, a charge which I deserved, as nothing good or great had ever been accomplished in the world without it.* »» Twelve days after, the travelers came to the northeast end of Lake 'Ngami, and it was on 1st August, 1849, that this fine sheet of water was beheld for the first time by Europeans. It was of such magnitude that they could not see the farther shore, and they could only guess its size from the reports of the natives that it took three days to go round it. Lechulatebe, the chief who had sent him the invitation, was quite a young man, and his reception by no means corresponded to what the invitation implied. He had no idea of Livingstone going on to Sebituane, who lived two hundred miles farther north, and perhaps supplying him with fire-arms which would make him a more dangerous neighbor. He therefore refused Livingstone guides to Sebituane, and sent men to prevent him from crossing the river. Livingstone was not to be baulked, and worked many hours in the river trying to make a raft out of some rotten wood, — at the imminent risk of his life, as he after- ward found, for the Zouga abounds with alligators. The season was now far advanced, and as Mr. Oswell volun- teered to go down to the Cape and bring up a boat next year, the expedition was abandoned for the time. Returning home by the Zouga, they had better oppor- tunity to mark the extraordinary richness of the country, and the abundance and luxuriance of its products, both animal and vegetable. Elephants existed in crowds, and ivory was so abundant that a trader was purchasing it at the rate of ten tusks for a musket worth fifteen shillings* * Missionary Travels, p. 65. 118 DA VID LIVINGSTONE. Two years later, after effect had been given to Livingstone's discovery, the price had risen very greatly. "Writing to his friend Watt, he dwells with delight on the river Zouga : "It is a glorious river; you never saw anything so grand. The banks are extremely beautiful, lined with gigantic trees, many quite new. One bore a fruit a foot in length and three inches in diameter. Another measured seventy feet in circumference. Apart from the branches it looked like a mass of granite; and then the Bakoba in their canoes- did I not enjoy sailing in them ? Remember how long I have been in a parched-up land, and answer. The Bakoba are a fine frank race of men, and seem to understand the message better than any people to whom I have spoken on Divine subjects for the first time. What think you of a navigable highway into a large section of the interior? yet that tTie Tamanak'le is. . . . "Who will go into that goodly land? Who? Is it not the Niger of this part of Africa? ... I greatly enjoyed Bailing in their canoes, rude enough things, hollowed out of the trunks of single trees, and visiting the villages along the Zouga. I felt but little when I looked on the lake ; but the Zouga and Tamanak'le awakened emotions not to be described. I hope to go up the latter next year." The discovery of the lake and the river was communi- cated to the Royal Geographical Society in extracts from Livingstone's letters to the London Missionary Society, and to his friend and former fellow-traveler, Captain Steele. In 1849 the Society voted him a sum of twenty-five guineas " for his successful journey, in company with Messrs. Os- well and Murray, across the South African desert, for the discovery of an interesting country, a fine river, and an extensive inland lake." In addressing Dr. Tidman and Alderman Challis, who represented the London Missionary Society, the President (the late Captain, afterward Rear- Admiral, W. Smyth, R.N., who distinguished himself in early life by his journey across the Andes to Lima, and thence to the Atlantic) adverted to the value of the dis- coveries in themselves, and in the influence they would have on the regions beyond. He spoke also of the help which Livingstone had derived as an explorer from his KOLOBENQ—LAKE 'NGAMI. 119 influence as a missionary. The journey he had performed successfully had hitherto baffled the best-furnished trav- elers. In 1834, an expedition under Dr. Andrew Smith, the largest and best-appointed that ever left Cape Town, had gone as far as 23° south latitude ; but that proved to be the utmost distance they could reach, and they were compelled to return. Captain Sir James E. Alexander, the only scientific traveler subsequently sent out from England by the Geographical Society, in despair of the lake, and of discovery by the oft-tried eastern route, ex- plored the neighborhood of the western coast instead.' The President frankly ascribed Livingstone's success to the influence he had acquired as a missionary among the natives, and Livingstone thoroughly believed this. " The lake," he wrote to his friend Watt, " belongs to missionary enterprise." " Only last year," he subsequently wrote to the Geographical Society, " a party of engineers, in about thirty wagons, made many and persevering efibrts to cross the desert at different points, but though inured to the climate, and stimulated by the prospect of gain from the ivory they expected to procure, they were compelled, for want of water, to give up the undertaking." The year after Livingstone's first visit, Mr. Francis Galton tried, but failed, to reach the lake, though he was so successful ia other directions as to obtain the Society's gold medal in 1852. Livingstone was evidently gratified at the honor paid him, and the reception of the twenty-five guineas from the Queen. But the gift had also a comical side. It carried him back to the days of his Radical youth, when he and his friends used to criticise pretty sharply the destination of the nation's money. " The Royal Geographical Society," he writes to his parents (4th December, 1850), "have awarded twenty-five guineas for the discovery of the lake, * Journal of the Royal Geograpliical Society, vol, xx. p. xxviii. 120 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. It is from the Queen. You must be very loyal, all of you. Next time she comes your way, shout till you are hoarse. Oh, you Radicals, don't be thinking it came out of your pockets 1 Long live Victoria I" ^ Defeated in his endeavor to reach Sebituane in 1849, Livingstone, the following season, put in practice his favorite maxim, " Try again." He left Kolobeng in April, 1850, and this time he was accompanied by Sechele, Me- balwe, twenty Bakwains, Mrs. Livingstone, and their whole troop of infantry, which now amounted to three. Travel- ing in the charming climate of South Africa in the roomy wagon, at the pace of two miles and a half an hour, is not like traveling at home ; but it was a proof of Livingstone's great unwillingness to be separated from his family, that he took them with him, notwithstanding the risk of mos- quitoes, fever, and want of water. The people of Kolobeng were so engrossed at the time with their employments, that till harvest was over, little missionary work could be done. The journey was difficult, and on the northern branch of the Zouga many trees had to be cut down io allow the wagons to pass. The presence of a formidable enemy was reported on the banks of the Tamanak'le, — the tsetsefly, whose bite is so fatal to oxen. To avoid it, another route had to be chosen. When they got near the lake, it was found that fever had recently attacked a party of English* men, one of whom had died, while the rest recovered under the care of Dr. and Mrs, Livingstone. Livingstone took his family to have a peep at the lake ; " the children," he wrote, " took to playing in it as ducklings do. Paidling in it was great fun." Great fun to them, who had seen little * Ib a more serious vein he wrote in a previous letter: " I wonder you do Dot go to see the Queen. I was as disloyal as others when in England, for though I might have seen her in London, I never went. Do you ever pray for her?" This letter is dated 5th Februaiy, 1850»and must have beea writteo before he heard of the prise* KOLOBENO—LAKE 'NGAML 121 enough water for a while; and in a quiet way, great fun to their father too, — his own children " paidling" in his own lake! He was beginning to find that in a missionary- point of view, the presence of his wife and children was a considerable advantage ; it inspired the natives with con- fidence, and promoted tender feelings and kind relations. The chief, Lechulatebe, was at last propitiated at a con- siderable sacrifice, having taken a fancy to a valuable rifle of Livingstone's, the gift of a friend, which could not be replaced. The chief vowed that if he got it he would give Livingstone everything he wished, and protect and feed his wife and children into the bargain, while he went on to Sebituane. Livingstone at once handed him the gun, "It is of great consequence," he said, "to gain the con- fidence of these fellows at the beginning." It was his intention that Mrs. Livingstone and the children should remain at Lechulatebe's until he should have returned. But the scheme was upset by an outburst of fever. Among others, two of the children were attacked. There was no help but to go home. The gun was left behind in the hope that ere long Livingstone would get back to claim the fulfillment of the chiefs promise. It was plain that the neighborhood of the lake was not habitable by Euro- peans. Hence a fresh confirmation of his views as to the need of native agency, if intertropical Africa was ever to be Christianized. But Livingstone was convinced that there must be a healthier spot to the north. Writing to Mr. Watt (18th August, 1850), he not only expresses this conviction, but gives the ground on which it rested. The extract which we subjoin gives a glimpse of the sagacity that from apparently little things drew great conclusions ; but more than that, it indicates the birth of the great idea that dominated the next period of Livingstone's life — the desire and determination to find a passage to the sea, either on the east or the west coast : 11 7 122 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. "A more salubrious climate must exist farther up to the north, and that the country is higher, seems evident from the fact mentioned by the Bakoba, that the water of the Teoge, the river that falls into the 'Ngami at the northwest point of it, flows with great rapidity. Canoes ascending, punt all the way, and the men must hold on by reeds in order to prevent their being carried down by the current. Large trees, spring-bucks and other antelopes are sometimes brought down by it. Do you wonder at my pressing on in the way we have done? The Bechuana mission has been carried on in a cul-de-sac. I tried to break through by going among the Eastern tribes, but the Boers shut up that field. A French missionary, Mr. Fredoux, of Motito, tried to follow on my trail to the Bamangwato, but was turned back by a party of armed Boers. When we burst through the barrier on the north, it appeared very plain that no mission could be successful there, unless • we could get a well-watered country leaving a passage to the sea on either the east or west coast. This project I am almost afraid to meet, but nothing else will do. I intend (d. v.) to go in next year and remain a twelvemonth. My wife, poor soul — I pity her! — proposed to let me go for that time while she remained at Kolobeng. You will pray for us both during that period." A week later (August 24, 1850) he writes to the Directors that no convenient access to the region can be obtained from the south, the lake being 870 miles from Kuruman : "We must have a passage to the sea on either the eastern or western coast. I have hitherto been afraid to broach the subject on which my perhaps dreamy imagination dwells. You at home are accustomed to look on a project as half finished when you have received the co-opera- tion of the ladies. My better half has promised me a twelvemonth's leave of absence for mine. Without promising anything, I mean to follow a useful motto in many circumstances, and Try again." On returning to Kolobeng, Mrs. Livingstone was de- livered of a daughter — her fourth child. An epidemic was raging at the time, and the child was seized and cut off, at the age of six weeks. The loss, or rather the removal, of the child affected Livingstone greatly. " It was the first death in our family," he says in his Journal, " but was just as likely to have happened had we remained at home, and we have now one of our number in heaven." KOLOBENG—LAKE 'NQAML 123 To his parents he writes (4th December, 1850) : "Our last child, a sweet little girl with blue eyes, waa taken from ue to join the company of the redeemed, through the merits of Him of whom she never heard. It is wonderful how soon the affections twine round a little stranger. We felt her loss keenly. She was attacked by the prevailing sickness, which attacked many native children, and bore up under it for a fortnight. "We could not apply remedies to one so young, except the simplest. She uttered a piercing cry previous to expiring, and then went away to see the King in his beauty, and the land — the glorious land, and its inhabitants. Hers is the first grave in all that country marked as the resting-place of one of whom it is believed and confessed that she shall live again." Mrs. Livingstone had an attack of serious illness, accom- panied by paralysis of the right side of the face, and rest being essential for her, the family went, for a time, to Kuruman. Dr. Livingstone had a strong desire to go to the Cape for the excision of his uvula, which had long been troublesome. But, with characteristic self-denial, he put his own case out of view, staying with his wife, that she might have the rest and attention she needed. He tried to persuade his father- in-law to perform the operation, and, under his direction. Dr. Moffat went so far as to make a pair of scissors for the purpose; but his courage, so well tried in other fields, was not equal to the performance of such a surgical operation. Some glimpses of Livingstone's musings at this time, showing, among other things, how much more he thought of his spiritual than his Highland ancestry, occur in a letter to his parents, written immediately after his return from his second visit to the lake (28th July, 1850). If they should carry out their project of emigration to America, they would have an interesting family gathering; " One, however, will be ' over the hills and far away' from your happy meeting. The meeting which we hope will take place in Heaven will be unlike a happy one, in so far as earthly relationships are concerned. One will be so much taken up in looking at Jesus, I don't know wneii we ehall be disposed to sit down aad talk about the days of lang eyne. / 124 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. And then there will be so many notables whom we should like to notice and shake hands with — Luke, for instance, the beloved physician, and Jeremiah, and old Job, and Noah, and Enoch, that if you are wise, you will make the most of your union while you are together, and not fail to write me fully, while you have the opportunity here. . . . "Charles thinks we are not the descendants of the Puritans. I don't know what you are, but I am. And if you dispute it, I shall stick to the answer of a poor little boy before a magistrate. M. — 'Who were your parents?' Boy (rubbing his eyes with his jacket-sleeve) — "Nevei had none, sir.' Dr. Wardlaw says that the Scotch Independents are thi» descendants of the Puritans, and I suppose the pedigree is through Rowland Hill.and Whitefield. But I was a member of the very churcls in which John Howe, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, preached, an(f exercised the pastorate. I was ordained, too, by English Independents,, Moreover, I am a Doctor too. Agnes and Janet, get up this moment and curtsy to his Reverence I John and Charles, remember the dream of the sheaves I / descended from kilts and Donald Dhus? Na, na, I won't believe it. "We have a difficult, difficult field to cultivate here. All I can say is, that I think knowledge is increasing. But for the belief that the Holy Spirit works, and will work for us, I should give up in despair. Remember us in your prayers, that we grow not weary in well-doing. It is hard to work for years with pure motives, and all the time be looked on by most of those to whom our lives are devoted, as having Bome sinister object in view. Disinterested labor — benevolence — is so out of their line of thought, that many look upon us as having some ulterior object in view. But He who died for us, and whom we ought to copy, did more for us than we can do for any one else. He endured the contradiction of sinners. May we have grace to follow in his steps 1' The third, and at last successful, effort to reach Sebituane was made in April, 1851. Livingstone was again accom- panied by his family, and by Mr. Oswell. He left Kolobeng with the intention not to return, at least not immediately, but to settle with his family in such a spot as might be found advantageous, in the hilly region, of whose existence he was assured. They found the desert drier than ever, no rain having fallen throughout an immense extent of territory. To the kindness of Mr. Oswell the party was indebted for most valuable assistance in procuring water, wells having been dug or cleared by his people beforehand 1^ KOLOBENG—LAKE 'NGAML 125 at various places, and at one place at the hazard of Mr. Oswell's life, under an attack from an infuriated lioness. In his private Journal, and in his letters to home, Living- stone again and again acknowledges with deepest gratitude the numberless acts of kindness done by Mr. Oswell to him and his family, and often adds the prayer that God : would reward him, and of His grace give him the highest of all blessings. " Though I cannot repay, I may record with gratitude his kindness, so that, if spared to look upon these, my private memoranda, in future years, proper emo- tions may ascend to Him who inclined his heart to show so much friendship." The party followed the old route, around the bed of the Zouga, then crossed a piece of the driest desert they had ever seen, with not an insect or a bird to break the still- ness. On the third day a bird chirped in a bush, when the dog began to bark ! Shobo, their guide, a Bushman, lost his way, and for four days they were absolutely with- out water. In his Missionary Travels, Livingstone records quietly, as was his wont, his terrible anxiety about his children • " The supply of water in the wagons had been wasted by one of our Bervants, and by the afternoon only a small portion remained for the children. This was a bitterly anxious night; and 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." " No one," he remarks in his Journal, " knows the value of water till he is deprived of it. We never need any spirits to qualify it, or pre- vent an immense draught of it from doing us harm. I have drunk water swarming with insects, thick with mud, putrid from other mixtures, and no stinted draughts of it either, yet never felt any inconvenience from it," 126 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. "My opinion is," he eaid on another occasion, "that the most severe labors and privations may be undergone without alcoholic etimulua, because those who have endured the most had nothing else but water, and not always enough of that." One of the great, charms of Livingstone's character, and one of the secrets of his power — his personal interest in , each individual, however humble — appeared in connection with Shobo, the Bushman guide, who misled them and took the blunder so coolly. " What a wonderful people," he says in his Journal, " the Bushmen are ! always merry and laughing, and never telling lies wantonly like the Bechuana. They have more of the appearance of worship than any of the Bechuana. When will these dwellers in the wilderness bow down before their Lord? No man seems to care for the Bushman's soul. I often wished I knew their language, but never more than when we trav- eled with our Bushman guide, Shobo." Livingstone had given a fair trial to the experiment of traveling along with his family. In one of his letters at this time he speaks of the extraordinary pain caused by the mosquitoes of those parts, and of his children being so covered with their bites, that not a square inch of whole skin was to be found on their bodies. It is no wonder that he gave up the idea of carrying them with him in the more extended journey he was now contemplating. He could not leave them at Kolobeng, exposed to the raids of the Boers ; to Kuruman there were also invincible objec- tions ; the only possible plan was to send them to England, though he hoped that when he got settled in some suitable part of Sebituane's dominions, with a free road to the sea, they would return to him, and help him to bring the people to Christ. •^ In the Missionary Travels Livingstone has given a full account of Sebituane, chief of the Makololo, " unquestion- ably the greatest man in all that country" — his remarkable career, his wonderful warlike exploits (for which he could KOLOBENO—LAKE 'NO AMI. 127 always bring forward justifying reasons), liis interesting and attractive character, and wide and powerful influence. In one thing Sebituane was very like Livingstone himself; he had the art of gaining the affections both of his own people and of strangers. When a party of poor men came to his town to sell hoes or skins, he would sit down among them, talk freely and pleasantly to them, and probably cause some lordly dish to be brought, and give them a feast on it, perhaps the first they had ever shared. De- lighted beyond measure with his affability and liberality, thev felt their hearts warm toward him ; and as he never allowed a party of strangers to go away without giving every one of them — servants and all — a present, his praises were sounded far and wide. "He has a heart! he is wise!" were the usual expressions Livingstone heard before l?e saw him. Sebituane received Livingstone with great kindness, for it had been one of the dreams of his life to have intercourse with the white man. He placed full confidence in him from the beginning, and was ready to give him everything he might need. On the first Sunday when the usual service was held he was present, and Livingstone was very thankful that he was there, for it turned out to be the only proclamation of the gospel he ever heard. For just after realizing what he had so long and ardently desired, he was seized with severe inflammation of the lungs, and died after a fortnight's illness, Livingstone, being a stranger, feared to prescribe, lest, in the event of his death, he should be accused of having caused it. On visiting him, and seeing that he was dying, he spoke a few words respecting hope after death. But being checked by the attendants for in- troducing the subject, he could only commend his soul to God. The last words of Sebituane were words of kind- ness to Livingstone's son : " Take him to Maunku (one of his wives) and tell her to give him some milk." Living- stone was deeply affected by his death. A deeper sense of 128 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. brotherhood, a warmer glow of affection had been kindled in his heart toward Sebituane than had seemed possible. With his very tender conscience and deep sense of spiritual realities, Livingstone was afraid, as in the case of Sehamy eight years before, that he had not spoken to him so pointedly as he might have done. It is awfully affecting to follow him into the unseen world, of which he had heard for the first time just before he was called away. In his Journal, Livingstone gives way to his feelings as he very seldom allowed himself to do. His words bring to mind David's lament for Jonathan or for Absalom, although he had known Sebituane less than a month, and he was one of the race whom many Boers and slave-stealers re- garded as having no souls : " Poor Sebituane, my heart bleeds for thee ; and what would I not do for thee now ? I will weep for thee till the day of my death. Little didst thou think when, in the visit of the white man, thou sawest the long cherished desires of years accomplished, that the sentence of death Lad gone forth ! Thou thoughtest that thou shouldest procure a weapon from the white man which would be a shield from the attacks of the fierce Matebele ; but a more deadly dart than theirs was aimed at thee ; and though thou couldest well ward off a dart — none ever better — thou didst not see that of the king of terrors. I will weep for thee, my brother, and I will cast forth my sorrows in despair for thy condition ! But I know that thou wilt receive no injustice whither thou art gone ; * Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? ' I leave thee to Him. Alas ! alas ! Sebituane. I might have said more to him. God forgive me. Free me from blood-guiltiness. If I had said more of death I might have been suspected as having foreseen the event, and as guilty of bewitching him. I might have recommended Jesus and his great atonement more. It is, however, very difficult to break through the thick crust of ignorance which envelops their minds." The death of Sebituane was a great blow in another sense. The region over which his influence extended was immense, and he had promised K> show it to Livingstone and to select a suitable locality for^ his residence. This heathen chief would have given to Christ's servant what the Boers refused him ! Livingstone would have h-^d his KOLOBENG—LAKE 'NGAMl 129 wish — an entirely new countr}'' to work upon, where the name of Christ had never yet been spoken. So at least he thought. Sebituane's successor in the chiefdom was his daughter, Ma-mochisane. From her he received liberty to visit any part of the country he chosa While waiting for a reply (she was residing at a distance), he one day fell into a great danger from an elephant which bad come on him unexpectedly. " We were startled by his coming a little way in the direction in which we were standing, but he did not give us chase. I have had many escapes. We seem immortal till our work is done." Mr. Oswell and he then proceeded in a northeasterly direction, passing through the town of Linyanti, and on the 3d of August they came on the beautiful river at Sesheke : "We thanked God for permitting us to see this glorious river. All we said to each other was ' How glorious 1 how magnificent 1 how beau- tiful 1' ... In crossing, the waves lifted up the canoe and made it roll beautifully. The scenery of the Firths of Forth and Clyde was brought vividly to my view, and had I been fond of indulging in sen- timental effusions, my lachrymal apparatus seemed fully charged. But then the old man who was conducting us across might have said, 'What on earth are you blubbering for? Afraid of these crocodiles, eh?' The little sentimentality which exceeded was forced to take its course down the inside of the nose. We have other work in this world than indulging in sentimentality of the 'Sonnet to the Moon' variety." The river, which went here by the name of Sesheke, was found to be the Zambesi, which had not previously been known to exist in that region. In writing about it to his brother Charles, he says, " It was the first river I ever saw." Its discovery in this locality constituted one of the great geographical feats with which the name of Livingstone is connected. He heard of rapids above, and of great water- falls below ; but it was reserved for him on a future visit to behold the great Victoria Falls, which in the popular imagination have filled a higher place than many of his more useful discoveries. 130 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. The travelers were still a good many days' distance from Ma-mochisane, without whose presence nothing could be settled; but besides, the reedy banks of the rivers were found to be unsuitable for a settlement, and the higher regions were too much exposed to the attacks of Mosilikatse. Livingstone saw no prospect of obtaining a suitable station, and with great reluctance he made up his mind to retrace the weary road, and return to Kolobeng. The people were very anxious for him to stay, and offered to make a garden for him, and to fulfill Sebituane's promise to give him oxen in return for those killed by the tsetse. Setting out with the wagons on 13th August, 1851, the loarty proceeded slowly homeward. On 15th September, i851, Livingstone's Journal has this unexpected and simple entry: "A son, William Oswell Livingstone,^ born at a place we always call Bellevue." On the 18th: "Thomas attacked by fever ; removed to a high part on his account. Thomas was seized with fever three times at about an in- terval of a fortnight." Not a word about Mrs. Livingstone, but three pages of observations about medical treatment of fever, thunderstorms, constitutions of Indian and African people, leanness of the game, letter received from Directors approving generally of his course, a gold watch sent by Captain Steele, and Gordon Cumming's book, "a miserably poor thing." Amazed, we ask. Had Livingstone any heart? But ere long we come upon a copy of a letter, and some ' remarks connected with it, that give us an impression of the depth and strength of his nature, unsurpassed by any- thing that has yet occurred. "The following extracts," he says, "show in what light our efforts are regarded by those who, as much as we do, desire that the 'gospel may be preached to all nations.'" Then follows a copy of a letter which had been addressed • He had intended to call him Charles, and announced this to his father ; but, finding that Mr. Oswell, to whom he was so much indebted, would be pleased with the compliment, he changed his purpose and the name accordingly. "^OLOBEKG—IjAKE I^GaMI. 131 to him before they set out by Mrs. Moffat, his mother-in- law, remonstrating in the strongest terms against his plan of taking his wife with him ; reminding him of the death of the child, and other sad occurrences of last year ; and in the name of everything that was just, kind, and even decent, beseeching him to abandon an arrangement which all the world would condemn. Another letter from the same writer informed him that much prayer had been offered that, if the arrangements were not in accordance with Christian propriety, he might in great mercy be pre- vented by some dispensation of Providence from carrying them out. Mrs. Moffat was a woman of the highest gifts and character, and full of admiration for Livingstone. The insertion of these letters in his Journal shows that, in carrying out his plan, the objections to which it was liable were before his mind in the strongest conceivable form. No man who knows what Livingstone was will imagine for a moment that he had not the most tender regard for the health, the comfort, and the feelings of his wife; in matters of delicacy he had the most scrupulous regard to propriety ; his resolution to take her with him must, there- fore, have sprung from something far stronger than even his affection for her. What was this stronger force ? It was his inviolable sense of duty, and his indefeasible conviction that his Father in heaven would not forsake him whilst pursuing a course in obedience to his will, and designed to advance the welfare of his children. As this furnishes the key to Livingstone's future life, and the answer to one of the most serious objections ever brought against it, it is right to spend a little time in elucidating the principles by which he was guided. There was a saying of the late Sir Herbert Edwardes which he highly valued : " He who has to act on his own responsibility is a slave if he does not act on his own judg- ment." Acting on this maxim, he must set aside the views of others as to his duty, provided his own judgment was 132 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. clear regarding it. He must even set aside 'the feelings and apparent interest of those dearest to him, because duty was above everything else. His faith in God convinced him that, in the long run, it could never be the worse for him and his that he had firmly done his duty. All true faith has in it an element of venture, and in Livingstone's faith this element was strong. Trusting God, he could expose to venture even the health, comfort, and welfare of his wife and children. He was convinced that it was his duty to go forth with them and seek a new station for the Gospel in Sebituane's country. If this was true, God would take care of them, and it was " better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man." People thoughtlessly accused him of making light of the interests of his family. No man suffered keener pangs from the course he had to follow concerning them, and no man pondered more deeply what duty to them required. But to do all this, Livingstone must have had a very t clear perception of the course of duty. This is true. But how did he get this? First, his singleness of heart, so to speak, attracted the light: "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Then, he was very clear and very minute in his prayers. Further, he was most careful to scan all the providential indications that might throw light on the Divine will. And when he had been carried so far on in the line of duty, he had a strong presumption that the line would be continued, and that he would not be called to turn back. It was in front, not in rear, that he expected to find the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. In course of time, this hardened into a strong instinctive habit, which almost dispensed with the process of reasoning. In Dean Stanley's Sinai and Palestine allusion is made to a kindred experience, — that which bore Abraham from Chaldea, Moses from Egypt, and the greater part of the tribes from the comfortable pastures of Gilead and Bashan to the KOLOBENG—LAKE 'NGAMJ. 133 rugged hill -country of Judah and Ephraim. Notwith- standing all the attractions of the richer countries, they were borne onward and forward, not knowing whither they went, instinctively feeling that they were fulfilling the high purposes to which they were called. In the later part of Livingstone's life, the necessity of going forward to the close of the career that had opened for him seemed to settle the whole question of duty. But at this earlier stage, he had been conscientiously scrutinizing all that had any bearing on that question ; and now that he finds himself close to his home, and can thank God for the safe confinement of his wife, and the health of the new-born child, he gathers together all the providences that sliowed that in this journey, which excited such horror even among his best friends, he had after all been following the guidance of his Father. First, in the matter of guides, he had been wonderfully helped, notwithstanding a deep plot to deprive him of any. Then there was the sickness of Sekomi, whose interest had been secured through his going to see him, and prescribing for him; this had pro- pitiated one of the tribes. The services of Shobo, too, and the selection of the northern route, proposed by Kamati, had been of great use. Their going to Sesheke, and their detention for two months, thus allowing them time to collect information respecting the whole country; the river Chobe not rising at its usual time; the saving of Livingstone's oxen from the tsetse, notwithstanding their detention on the Zouga ; his not going with Mr. Oswell to a place w^here the tsetse destroyed many of the oxen ; the better health of Mrs. Livingstone during her confinement than in any previous one; a very opportune present they had got, just before her confinement, of two bottles of wane;^ the appro- bation of the Directors, the presentation of a gold watch ^ In writing to his father, Livingstone mentions that the wine was a gift from Mrs. Bysshe Shelley, in ackoowledgment of his aid in repairing a wheel of hei wagon. 12 lU DAVID LIVINGSTONE. by Captain Steele, the kind attentions of Mr. Oswell, and the cookery of one ot their native servants named George ; the recovery of Thomas, whereas at Kuruman a child had been cut off; the commencement of the rains, just as they were leaving the river, and the request of Mr. Oswell that they should draw upon him for as much money as they should need, were all among the indications that a faithful and protecting Father in heaven had been ordering their path, and would order it in like manner in all time to come. Writing at this time to his father-in-law, Mr. Moffat, he said, after announcing the birth of Oswell : " What you say about difference of opinion is true. In my past life, I have always managed to think for myself, and act accordingly. I have occasionally met with people who took it on themselves to act for me, and they have offered their thoughts with an emphatic ' I think ' ; but I have excused them on the score of being a little soft-headed in believing they could think both for me and themselves." While Kolobeng was Livingstone's headquarters, a new trouble rose upon the mission horizon. The Makololo (as Sebituane's people were called) began to practice the slave- ^ trade. It arose simply from their desire to possess guns. For eight old muskets they had given to a neighboring tribe eight boys, that had been taken from their enemies in war, being the only article for which the guns could be got. Soon after, in a fray against another tribe, two hundred captives were taken, and, on returning, the Mako- lolo met some Arab traders from Zanzibar, who for three muskets received about thirty of their captives. Another of the master ideas of his life now began to take hold upon Livingstone. Africa was exposed to a terrible evil through the desire of the natives to possess articles of European manufacture, and their readiness for this purpose to engage in the slave-trade. Though no African had ever been known to sell his own children into captivity, the tribes were ready enough to sell other chil- KOLOBENG—LAKE 'NGAMI. 135 dren that had fallen into their hands by war or otherwise. But if a legitimate traffic were established through which they might obtain whatever European goods they desired in exchange for ivory and other articles of native produce, would not this frightful slave-trade be brought to an end ? The idea was destined to receive many a confirmation be- fore Livingstone drew his last breath of African air. It naturally gave a great impulse to the purpose which had already struck its roots into his soul — to find a road to the sea either on the eastern or western coast. Interests wider and grander than even the planting of mission stations on the territories of Sebituane now rose to his view. The welfare of the whole continent, both spiritual and temporal, was concerned in the success of this plan of opening new channels to the enterprise of British and other merchants, always eager to hear of new markets for their goods. By driving away the slave-trade, much would be done to prepare the way for Christian missions which could not thrive in an atmosphere of war and commotion. An idea involving issues so vast was fitted to take a right powerful hold on Livingstone's heart, and make him feel that no sacrifice could be too great to be encountered, cheerfully and patiently, for such an end. Writing to the Directors (October, 1851), he says: " You will Bee by the accompanying sketch-map what an immense region God in his grace has opened up. If we can enter in and form a settlement, we shall be able in the course of a very few years to put a stop to the slave-trade in that quarter. It is probable that the mere supply of English manufacturers on Sebituane's part will effect this, for they did not like the slave-trade, and promised to abstain. I think it will be impossible to make a fair commencement unless I can secure two years devoid of family cares. I shall be obliged to go southward, perhaps to the Cape, to have my uvula excised and my arm mended (the latter, if it can be done, only). It has occurred to me that, as we must send our children to England, it would be no great additional expense to send them now along with their mother. This arrangement would enable me to proceed, and devote about two or perhaps three years to this new region ; but I must beg your sanction, and if you 136 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. please let it be given or withheld as soon as you can conveniently, so that it might meet me at the Cape. To orphanize my children will be like tearing out my bowels, but when I can find time to write you fully you will perceive it is the only way, except giving up that region altogether. " Kuruman will not answer as a residence, nor yet the Colony. If I were to follow my own inclinations, they would lead me to settle down quietly with the Bakwains, or some other small tribe, and devote some of my time to ray children ; but Providence seems to call me to the regions beyond, and if I leave them anywhere in this country, it will be to let them become heathens. If you think it right to support them, I believe my parents in Scotland would attend to them otherwise." Continuing the subject in a mo'.e leisurely way a few weeks later, he refers to the very great increase of traffic that had taken place since the discovery of Lake 'Ngami two years before ; the fondness of the people for European articles; the numerous kinds of native produce besides ivory, such as beeswax, ostrich feathers, etc., of which the natives made little or no use, but which they would take care of if regular trade were established among them. He thought that if traders were to come up the Zambesi and make purchases from the producers they would both benefit themselves and drive the slave-dealer from the market. It might be useful to establish a sanatorium, to which missionaries might come from less healthy districts to recruit. This would diminish the reluctance of mis- sionaries to settle in the interior. For himself, though he had reared three stations with much bodily labor and fatigue, he would cheerfully undergo much more if a new station would answer such objects. In referring to the countries drained by the Zambesi, he believed he was speaking of a large section of the slave-producing region of Africa. He then went on to say that to a certain extent their hopes had been disappointed; Mr. Oswell had not been able to find a passage to the sea, and he had not been able to find a station for missionary work. They had therefore returned together. " He assisted me," adds KOLOBENG—LAKE 'NGAMI. ISf Livingstone, "in every possible way. May God reward him !" In regard to mission work for the future an important question arose. What should be done for the Bakwains? They could not remain at Kolobeng — hunger and the Boers decided that point. Was it not, then, his duty to find and found a new station for them ? Dr. Livingstone thought not. He had always told them that he would remain with them only for a few years. One of hib great ideas on missions in Africa was that a fair trial should be given to as many places as possible, and if the trial did not succeed the missionaries should pass on to other tribes. He had a great aversion to the common impression that the less success one had the stronger was one's duty to remain. Missionaries were only too ready to settle down and make themselves as comfortable as possible, whereas the great need was for men to move on, to strike out into the regions beyond, to go into all the world. He had far more sympathy for tribes that had never heard the gospel than for those who had had it for years. He used to refer to certain tribes near Griqualand that had got a little instruction, but had no stated missionaries ; they used to send some of their people to the Griquas to learn what they could, and afterward some others ; and these persons, returning, communicated what they knew, till a wonderful measure of knowledge was acquired, and a numerous church was formed. If the seed had once been sown in any place it would not remain dormant, but would excite the desire for further knowledge; and on the whole it would De better for the people to be thrown somewhat on their own resources than to have everything done for them by missionaries from Europe. In regard to the Bakwains, though they had promised well at first, they had not been a very teachable people. He was not inclined to blame them ; they had been so pinched by hunger and badgered by the Boers that they could not attend to instruction ; or 138 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. rather, they had too good an excuse for not doing so. " 1 have much aflection for them," he says in his Journal, " and though I pass from them I do not relinquish the hope that they will jet turn to Him to whose mercy and love they have often been invited. The seed of the living Word will not perish." The finger of Providence clearly pointed to a region farther north in the country of the Barotse or beyond it. He admitted that there were pros and coiis in the case. Against his plan, — some of his brethren did not hesitate to * charge him with being actuated by worldly ambition. This was the more trying, for sometimes he suspected his own motives. Others dwelt on what was due to his family. Moreover, his own predilections were all for a quiet life. And there was also the consideration, that as the Directors could not well realize the distances he would have to travel before he reached the field, he might appear more as an explorer than a missionary. On the other hand : "I am conscious," he says, "that though there is much impurity In my motives, they are in the main for the glory of Him to whom I have devoted myself. I never anticipated fame from the discovery of the Lake. I cared very little about it, but the sight of the Tamanak'le, and the report of other large rivers beyond, all densely populated, awakened "■^ many and enthusiastic feelings. . . . Then, again, consider the multitude that in the Providence of God have been brought to light in the country of Sebituane; the probability that in our efforts to evangelize we shall put a stop to the slave-trade in a large region, and by means of the highway into the Xorth which we have discovered bring unknown nations into the sympathies of the Christian world. If I were to choose my work, it would be to reduce this new language, translate the Bible into it, and be the means of forming a small church. Let this be ac- complished, I think I could then lie down and die contented. Two years' absence will be necessary. . . . Nothing but a strong con- \ viction that the step will lead to the glory of Christ would make me orphanize my children. Even now my bowels yearn over them. They will forget me ; but I hope when the day of trial comes, I shall not be found a more sorry soldier than those who serve an earthly sovereign. Should you not feel yourselves justified in incurring the expense of their support in England, I shall feel called upon to renounce the hope of KOLOBENG—LAKE 'JSIGAMI. 139 carrying the gospel into that country, and labor among those who live in a more healthy country, viz., the Bakwains. But, stay, I am not sure; so powerfully convinced am I that it is the will of the Lord I should, / will go, no matter who opposes ; but from you I expect nothing but encouragement. I know you wish as ardently as I can that all the world may be filled with the glory of the Lord. I feel relieved when I lay the whole case before you." He proposed that a brother missioDary, Mr. Ashton, should be placed among the Bamangwato, a people who were in the habit of spreading themselves through the Bakalahari, and should thus form a link between himself and the brethren in the south. In a postscript, dated Bamangwato, 14th November, he gratefully acknowledges a letter from the Directors, in which his plans are approved of generally. They had recommended him to complete a dictionary of the Sichuana language. This he would have been delighted to do when his mind was full of the subject, but with the new projects now before him, and the probability of having to deal with a new language for the Zambesi district, he could not undertake such a work at present. In a subsequent letter to the Directors (Cape Town, 17th March, 1852), Livingstone finds it necessary to go into full details with regard to his finances. Though he writes with perfect calmness, it is evident that his exchequer was sadly embarrassed. In fact, he had already not only spent all the salary (£100) of 1852, but fifty-seven pounds of 1853, and the balance would be absorbed by expenses in Cape Town. He had been as economical as possible ; in personal expenditure most careful — he had been a teetotaler for twenty years. He did not hesitate to express his conviction that the salary was inadequate, and to urge the Directors to defray the extra expenditure which was now inevitable; but with characteristic generosity he urged Mr. Moffat's claims much more warmly than his own. From expressions in Livingstone's letter to the Directors, 140 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. it is evident that he was fully aware of the risk he ran, in his new line of work, of appearing to sink the missionary in the explorer. There is no doubt that next to the charge of forgetting the claims of his family, to which we have already adverted, this was the most plausible of the objec- tions taken to his susequent career. But any one who has candidly followed his course of thought and feeling from the moment when the sense of unseen realities burst on him at Blantyre, to the time at which we have now arrived, must see that this view is althogether destitute of support. The impulse of divine love that had urged him first to become a missionary had now become with him the settled habit of his life. No new ambition had flitted across his path, for though he had become known as a geographical discoverer, he says he thought very little of the fact, and his life shows this to have been true. Twelve years of mission- ary life had given birth to no sense of weariness, no abate- ment of interest in these poor black savages, no reluctance to make common cause with them in the affairs of life, no de- spair of being able to do them good. On the contrary, he was confirmed in his opinion of the efiicacy of his favorite plan of native agency, and if he could but get a suitable base of operations, he was eager to set it going, and on every side he was assured of native welcome. Shortly before (5th February, 1850), when writing to his father with reference to a proposal of his brother Charles that he should go and settle in America, he had said : " I am a missionary, heart and soul. God had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician. A poor, poor imitation of Him I am, or wish to be. In this service I hope to live, in it I wish to die." The spectre of the slave-trade had enlarged his hori- zon, and shown him the necessity of a commercial revolu- tion for the whole of Africa, before effectual and permanent good could be done in any part of it. The plan which he had now in view multiplied the risks he ran, and compelled him to think anew whether he was ready to sacrifice him- KOLOBENG—LAKE '^GAMI. 141 self, and if so, for what. All that Livingstone did was thus done with open eyes and well-considered resolution. Ad- verting to the prevalence of fever in some parts of tho country, while other parts were comparatively healthy, he says in his Journal : " I offer myself a-s a forlorn hope in order to ascertain whether there is a place fit to be a sana- torium for more unhealthy spots. May God accept my service, and use me for his glory. A great honor it is to be a fellow-worker with God." " It is a great venture," he writes to his sister (28th April, 1851). " Fever may cut us all off. I feel much when I think of the children dying. But who will go if we don't? Not ^ne. I would venture everything for Christ. Pity I have so little to give. But He will accept us, for He is a good master. Never one like Him. He can sympathize. May He forgive, and purify, and bless us." If in his spirit of high consecration he was thus un- changed, equally far was he from having a fanatical dis- regard of life, and the rules of provident living. "Jesus," he says, "came not to judge, — Kpivu, — condemn judicially, or execute vengeance on any one. His was a message of peace and love. He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall his voice be heard in the streets. Missionaries ought to follow his example. Neither insist on our rights, nor appear as if we could allow our goods to be destroyed without regret: for if we are righteous overmuch, or stand up for our rights with too much vehemence, we beget dislikes, and the people see no difference between ourselves and them. And if we appear to care nothing for the things of this world, they conclude we are rich, and when they beg, our refusal is ascribed to niggardliness, and our property, too, is wantonly destroyed. ' Ga ba tloke'=they are not in need, is the phrase employed when our goods are allowed to go to destruction by the neglect of servants. ... In coming among savage people, we ought to make them feel we are of them, * we seek not yours, but you' ; but while very careful not to make a gain of them, we ought to be as careful to appear thankful, and appreciate any effort they may make for our comfort or subsistence." On reaching Kolobeng from 'Ngami they found the station deserted. The Bakwains had removed to Limaiie. Sechele 142 DA VID LIVINGSTONE. came down the da}^ after, and presented them with an ox — a valuable gift in his circumstances. Sechele had much yet to bear from the Boers ; and after being, without provo- cation, attacked, pillaged, and wasted, and robbed of his children, he was bent on going to the Queen of England to state his wrongs. This, however, he could not accomplish, though he went as far as the Cape. Coming back after- ward to his own people, he gathered large numbers about him from other tribes, to whose improvement he devoted himself with much success. He still survives, with the one wife whom he retained ; and, though not without some drawbacks (which Livingstone ascribed to the bad example set him by some), he maintains his Christian profession. His people are settled at some miles' distance from Kolo- beng, and have a missionary station, supported by a Hano- verian Society. His regard for the memory of Livingstone is very great, and he reads with eagerness all that he can find about him. He has ever been a warm friend of missiona has a wonderful knowledge of the Bible, and can preacl\ well. The influence of Livingstone in his early days waa doubtless a real power in mission-work. Mebalwe, too, we are informed by Dr. Moffat, still survives; a useful man, an able preacher, and one who has done much to bring his people to Christ. It was painful to Livingstone to say good-bye to the Bakwains, and (as Mrs. Moffat afterward reminded him) his friends were not all in favor of his doing so; but he regarded his departure as inevitable. After a short stay at jKuruman, he and his family went on to Cape Town, where 'they arrived on the 16th of March, 1852, and had new proofs of Mr. Oswell's kindness. After eleven years' absence, Livingstone's dress-coat had fallen a little out of fashion, and the whole costume of the party was somewhat in the style of Robinson Crusoe. The generosity of "the best friend we have in Africa " made all comfortable, Mr. Oswell remarking that Livingstone had as good a right as he to KOLOBENG—LAKE 'NGAMI. 143 the money drawn from the " preserves on his estate " — the elephants. Mentally, Livingstone traces to its source the kindness of his friend, thinking of One to whom he owed all — " divine Love, I have not loved Thee strongly, deeply, warmly enough." The retrospect of his eleven years of African labor, unexampled though they had been, only awakened in him the sense of unprofitable service. Before closing the record of this period, we must take a glance at the remarkable literary activity which it wit- nessed. We have had occasion to refer to Livingstone's first letters to Captain Steele, for the Geographical Society ; additional letters were contributed from time to time. His philological researches have also been noticed. In addition to these, we find him writing two articles on African Mis- sions for the British Quarterly Review, only one of which was published. He likewise wrote two papers for the British Banner on the Boers. While crossing the desert, after leaving the Cape on his first great journey, he wrote a remarkable paper on " Missionary Sacrifices," and another «f great vigor on the Boers. Still another paper on Lake 'Ngami was written for a Missionary Journal contemplated, but never started, under the editorship of the late Mr. Isaac Taylor ; and he had one in his mind on the religion of the Bechuanas, presenting a view which differed some- what from that of Mr. Moff'at. Writing to Mr. Watt from Linyanti (3d October, 1853), on printing one of his papers, he says : "But the expense, my dear man. "What a mess I am in, writing papers which cannot pay their own way I Pauper papers, in fact, which must go to the workhouse for support. Ugh I Has the CafFre War paper shared the same fate? and the Language paper too? Here I Lave two by me, which I will keep in their native obscurity. One is on the South African Boers and slavery, in which I show that their church is, and always has been, the great bulwark of slavery, cattle-lifting, and Caffre-marauding ; and I correct the mistaken views of some writers who describe the Boers as all that is good, and of others who describe them as all that is bad, bj showing who are the good and who are th^ 144 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. bad. The other, which I rather admire, — what father doesn't hie own progeny ? — is on the missionary work, and designed to aid young men of piety to form a more correct idea of it than is to be had from much of the missionary biography of ' sacrifices.' I magnify the enterprise, exult in the future, etc., etc. It was written in coming across the desert, and if it never does aught else, it imparted comfort and encouragement to myself.' ... I feel almost inclined to send it. , . . If the Caffre War one is rejected, then farewell to spouting in Reviews." If he had met with more encouragement from editors he would have written more. But the editorial cold shoulder was beyond even his power of endurance. He laid aside his pen in a kind of disgust, and this doubtless was one of the reasons that made him unwilling to resume it on his return to England. Editors were wiser then; and the offer from one London Magazine of £400 for four articles, and from Good Words of £1000 for a number of papers to be fixed afterward, — offers which, however, were not accepted finally, — showed how the tide had turned. * For extracts from the paper on " Missionary Sacrifices," see Appendix No. I. For part of the paper on the Boers, see Catholic Presbyterian, December, 1879 (LondoQ, Nisbet and Co.). FBOM TEE CAFE TO LINYANTL . 146 CHAPTER VII. PROM THE CAPE TO LINYANTL A.D. 1852-1853. Unfavorable feeling at Cape Town — Departure of Mrs. Livingstone and children — Livingstone's detention and difficulties — Letter to his wife — To Agnes — Occupations at Cape Town — The Astronomer- Royal — Livingstone leaves the Cape and reaches Kuruman — Destruction of Kolobeng by the Boers — Letters to his wife and Rev. J. Moore — His resolution to open up Africa or perish — Arrival at Linyanti — Unhealthiness of the country — Thoughts on setting out for coast — Sekeletu's kindness — Livingstone's missionary activity — Death of Mpepe, and of his father — Meeting with Ma-mochisane — Barotse country — Determines to go to Loanda — Heathenism unadulterated — Taste for the beautiful — Letter to his children — to his father — Last Sunday at Linyanti— Prospect of his falling. When Livingstone arrived at the Cape, he found the authorities in a state of excitement over the Caffre War, and very far from friendly toward the London Missionary Society, some of whose missionaries — himself among the number — were regarded as " unpatriotic." He had a very poor opinion of the officials, and their treatment of the natives scandalized him. He describes the trial of an old soldier, Botha, as " the most horrid exhibition I ever wit- nessed." The noble conduct of Botha in prison was a beautiful contrast to the scene in court. This whole CafiPre War had exemplified the blundering of the British au- thorities, and was teaching the natives developments, the issue of which could not be foreseen. As for himself, he writes to Mr. Moffat, that he was cordially hated, and per- haps he might be pulled up ; but he knew that some of his letters had been read by the Duke of Wellington and Lord Brougham with pleasure, and, possibly, he might get 13 148 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. justice. He bids his father-in-law not to be surprised if he saw him abused in the newspapers. On the 23d April, 1852, Mrs. Livingstone and the four children sailed from Cape Town for England. The sending of his children to be brought up by others was a very great trial, and Dr. Livingstone seized the opportunity to impress on the Directors that those by whom missionaries were sent out had a great duty to the children whom their parents were compelled to send away. Referring to the filthy conversation and ways of the heathen, he says : "Missionaries expose their children to a contamination which they have had no hand in producing. We expose them and ourselves for a time in order to elevate those sad captives of sin and Satan, who are the victims of the degradation of ages. None of those who complain about missionaries sending their children home ever descend to this. And again, as Mr. James in his Young Man from Home forcibly shows, a greater misfortune cannot befall a youth than to be cast into the world without a home. In regard to even the vestige of a home, my children are absolutely vagabonds. When shall we return to Kolobeng? When to Kuruman ? Never. The mark of Cain is on your foreheads, your father is a missionary. Our children ought to have both the sym- pathies and prayers of those at whose bidding we become strangers for life." Was there ever a plea more powerful or more just? It is sad to think that the coldness of Christians at home should have led a man like Livingstone to fancy that, because his children were the children of a missionary, they would bear the mark of Cain, and be homeless vaga- bonds. Why are we at home so forgetful of the privilege of refreshing the bowels of those who take their lives in their hands for the love of Christ, by making a home for their offspring? In a higher state of Christianity there will be hundreds of the best families at home delighted, for the love of their Master, to welcome and bring up the missionary's children. And when the Great Day comes, none will more surely receive that best of all forms of re- payment, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto Me/' FROM THE CAPE TO LINYANTL 147 Livingstone, who had now got the troublesome uvula cut out, was detained at the Cape nearly two months after his family left. He was so distrusted by the authorities that they would hardly sell powder and shot to him, and he had to fight a battle that demanded all his courage and perseverance for a few boxes of percussion-caps. At the last moment, a troublesome country postmaster, to whom he had complained of an overcharge of postage, threatened an action against him for defamation of character, and, rather than be further detained, deep in debt though he was, Livingstone had to pay him a considerable sum. His family were much in his thoughts; he found some relief in writing by every mail. His letters to his wife are too sacred to be spread before the public ; we confine ourselves to a single extract, to show over what a host of suppressed emotions he had to march in this expedition : " Cape Town, bth May^ 1852. — My dearest Mart, — How I miss you now, and the children I My heart yearns incessantly over you. How many thoughts of the past crowd into my mind I I feel as if I would treat you all much more tenderly and lovingly than ever. You have been a great blessing to me. You attended to my comfort in many, many ways. May God bless you for all your kindnesses ! I see no face now to be compared with that sunburnt one which has so often greeted me with its kind looks. Let us do our duty to our Saviour, and we ehall meet again. I wish that time were now. You may read the letters over again which I wrote at Mabotsa, the sweet time you know. As I told you before, I tell you again, they are true, true ; there is not a bit of hypocrisy in them. I never show all my feelings; but I can say truly, my dearest, that I loved you when I married you, and the longer I lived with you, T loved you the better. . . . Let us do our duty to Christ, and He will bring us through the world with honor and useful- ness. He is our refuge and high tower; let us trust in Him at all times, and in all circumstances. Love Him more and more, and diffuse his love among the children. Take them all round you, and kiss them for me. Tell them I have left them for the love of Jesus, and they must love Him too, and avoid sin, for that displeases Jesus. I shall be delighted to hear of you all safe in England. . . ." A few days later, he writes to his eldest daughter, then in her fifth year : 148 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. " Cape Town, IStk May, 1852.— My dear Agnes,— This is your own little letter. Mamma will read it to you, and you will hear her just as if I were speaking to you, for the words which I write are those which she will read. I am still at Cape Town. You know you left me there when you all went into the big ship and sailed away. Well, I shall leave Cape Town soon. Malatsi has gone for the oxen, and then I shall go away back to Sebituane's country, and see Seipone and Meriye, who gave you the beads and fed you with milk and honey. I shall not see you again for a long time, and I am very sorry. I have no Nannie now. I have given you back to Jesus, your Friend — your Papa who is in heaven. He is above you, but He is always near you. When we ask things from Him, that is praying to Him ; and if you do or say a naughty thing ask Him to pardon you, and bless you, and make you one of his children. Love Jesus much, for He loves you, and He came and died for you. Oh, how good Jesus is ! I love Him, and I shall love Him as long as I live. You must love Him too, and you must love your brothers and mamma, and never tease them or be naughty, for Jesus does not like to see naughtiness. — Good-bye, my dear Nannie, D. Livingston." Among his other occupations at Cape Town, Livingstone put himself under the instructions of the Astronomer- Royal, Mr. (afterward Sir Thomas) Maclear, who became one of his best and most esteemed friends. His object was to qualify himself more thoroughly for taking observations that would give perfect accuracy to his geographical ex- plorations. He tried English preaching too, but his throat was still tender, and he felt very nervous, as he had done at Ongar. " What a little thing," he writes to Mr. Moffat, " is sufficient to bring down to old-wifeishness such a rough tyke as I consider myself I Poor, proud human nature is a great fool after all." A second effort was more successful. " I preached," he writes to his wife, " on the text, * Why will ye die ?' I had it written out and only referred to it twice, which is an improvement in English. I hope good was done. The people were very attentive indeed. I felt less at a loss than in Union Chapel." * He arranged with * The manuscript ol this sermon still exists. The sermon is very simply scriptural, and earnest, in the style of Bishop Ryle, or of Mr. Moody. FKOM THE CAPE TO LINYANTL 14$ a mercantile friend, Mr. Rutherfoord, to direct the opera- tions of a native trader, George Fleming, whom that gentle- man was to employ for the purpose of introducing lawful traffic in order to supplant the slave-trade. It was not till the 8th of June that he left the Cape. His wagon was loaded to double the usual weight from his good nature in taking everybody's packages. His oxen were lean, and he was too poor to provide better. He reached Griqua Town on the 15th August, and Kuruman a fortnight later. Many things had occasioned unexpected delay, and the last crowning detention was caused by the breaking down of a wheel. It turned out, howeyer, that these delays were probably the means of saving his life. Had they not occurred he would have reached Kolobeng in August. But this was the very time when the com- mando of the Boers, numbering 600 colonists and many natives besides, were busy with the work of death and destruction. Had he been at Kolobeng, Pretorius would probably have executed his threat of killing him ; at the least he would have deen deprived of all the property that he carried with him, and his projected enterprise would have been brought to an end. In a letter to his wife, Livingstone gives full details of the horrible outrage perpetrated shortly before by the Boers at Kolobeng ; " Kuruman, 20i^ September, 1852. — Along with this I send you a long letter; this I write in order to give you the latest news. The Boers gutted our house at Kolobeng; they brought four wagons down and took away sofa, table, bed, all the crockery, your desk (I hope it had nothing in it — Have you the letters?), smashed the wooden chairs, took away the iron ones, tore out the leaves of all the books, and scattered them in front of the house, smashed the bottles containing medicines, windows, oven-door, took away the smith-bellows, anvil, all the tools,^ in fact everything worth taking ; three corn-mills, a bag of coffee, for which I paid six pounds, and lots of coffee, tea, and sugar, which the gentlemen who went to the north left ; took all our cattle and Paul's and Mebalwe'B. They then went up (o LimaUe, went to church morning 150 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. and afternoon, and heard Mebalwe preach I After the second service they told Sech^le that they had come to fight, because he allowed Englishmen to proceed to the North, though they had repeatedly ordered him not to do so. He replied that he was a man of peace, that he could not molest ilnglishmen, because they had never done him any harm, and always treated him well. In the morning they commenced firing on the town with swivels, and set fire to it. The heat forced some of the women to flee, the men to huddle together on the small hill in the middle of the town ; the smoke prevented them seeing the Boers, and the cannon killed many, sixty (60) Bakwains. The Boers then came near to kill and destroy them all, but the Bakwains killed thirty-five (35), and many horses. They fought the whole day, but the Boers could not dislodge them. They stopped firing in the evening, and thea the Bakwains retired on account of having no water. The above sixty are not all men ; women and children are among the slain. The Boera were 600, and they had 700 natives with them. All the corn is burned. Parties went out and burned Bangwaketse town, and swept off all the cattle. Sebubi's cattle are all gone. All the Bakhatla cattle gone. Neither Bangwaketse nor Bakhatla fired a shot. All the corn burned of the whole three tribes. Everything edible is taken from them. How will they live ? They told Sechele that the Queen had given off the land to them, and henceforth they were the masters, — had abolished chieftainship. Sir Harry Smith tried the same, and England has paid two millions of money to catch one chief, and he is still as free as the winds of heaven. How will it end? I don't know, but I will tell you the beginning. There are two parties of Boers gone to the Lake. These will to a dead certainty be cut off. They amount to thirty-six men. Parties are sent now in pursuit of them. The Bakwains will plunder and murder the Boers without mercy, and by and by the Boers will ask the English Government to assist them to put down rebellion, and of this rebellion I shall have, of course, to bear the blame. They often expressed a wish to get hold of me. I wait here a little in order to get information when the path is clear. Kind Providence detained me from falling into the very thick of it. God will preserve me still. He has work for me or He would have allowed me to go in just when the Boers were there. We shall remove more easily now that we are lightened of our furniture. They have taken away our sofa. I never had a good rest on it. We had only got it ready when we left. Well, they can't have taken away all the stones. We shall have a seat ia spite of them, and that, too, with a merry heart which doeth good like a medicine. I wonder what the Peace Society would do with these worthies. They are Christians. The Dutch predicants baptize all theif children, and admit them to the Lord's Supper. . . ," FROM THE CAPE TO LINYANTI. 151 Dr. Livingstone was not disposed to restrain his indig- nation and grief over his losses. For one so patient and good, he had a very large vial of indignation, and on occa- sion poured it out right heartily over all injustice and cruelty. On no heads was it ever discharged more freely than on these Transvaal Boers. He made a formal represen- tation of his losses both to the Cape and Home authorities, but never received a farthing of compensation. The sub- sequent history of the Transvaal Republic will convince many that Livingstone was not far from the truth in his estimate of the character of the free and independent Boers. But while perfectly sincere in his indignation over the treatment of the natives and his own losses, his playful fancy could find a ludicrous side for what concerned him- self, and grim enjoyment in showing it to his friends. "Think," he writes to his friend Watt, "think of a big fat Boeress drinking coffee out of my kettle, and then throwing her tallowy corporeity on my sofa, or keeping her needles in my wife's writing-desk ! Ugh ! and then think of foolish John Bull paying so many thousands a year for the sup- pression of the slave-trade, and allowing Commissioner Aven to make treaties with Boers who carry on the slave- trade. . . . The Boers are mad with rage against me because my people fought bravely. It was I, they think, who taught them to shoot Boers, Fancy your reverend friend teaching the young idea how to shoot Boers, and praying for a blessing on the work of his hands !" In the same spirit he writes to his friend Moore : "I never knew I was so rich until I recounted up the different articles that were taken away. They cannot be replaced in this country under £300. Many things brought to our establishment by my better-half were of considerable value. Of all I am now lightened, and they want to ease me of my head. . . . The Boers kill the blacks without compunction, and without provocation, because they believe they have BO Bouls. . . . Viewing the dispensation apart from the extreme vickednees of the BoerS; it seemed a judgment on the blacks for their 152 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. rejection of the gospel. Tliey have verily done despite unto the Spirit of grace. . . . Their enmity was not manifested to us, but to the gospel. I am grieved for them^ and still hope that the good seed will yet vegetate."^ But while he could relax playfully at the thought of the desolation at Kolobeng, he knew how to make it the occa- sion likewise of high resolves. The Boers, as he wrote the Directors, were resolved to shut up the interior. He was determined, with God's help, to open the country. Time would show which would be most successful in resolution, — they or he. To his brother- in-law he wrote that he would open a path through the country, or perish. As for the contest with the Boers, we may smile at their impotent wrath. It is a singular fact, that while Sechele still retains the position of an independent chief, the re- public of the Boers has passed away. It is now part of the British Empire. The country was so unsettled that for a long time Dr. Livingstone could not get guides at Kuruman to go with him to Sebituane's. At length, however, he succeeded, and leaving Kuruman finally about the end of December, 1852, in company with George Fleming, Mr. Rutherfoord's trader, he set out in a new direction, to the west of the old, » ■■ - ■'■■ , . ■ - — ..-..I - - , ■ I ... - * This letter to Mr. Moore contains a trait of Livingstone, very trifling in the occasion out of which it arose, but showing vividly the nature of the man. He had promised to send Mr. Moore's little son some curiosities, but had forgotten when his family went to England. Being reminded of his promise in a post- script the little fellow had added to a letter from his father, Livingstone is "overwhelmed with shame and confusion of face." He feels he has disap- pointed the boy and forgotten his promise. Again and again Livingstone returns to the subject, and feels assured that his young friend would forgive him if he knew how much he suffered for his fault. That in the midst of his own over- whelming troubles he should feel so much for the disappointment of a little heart in England, shows how terrible a thing it was to him to cause needless pain, and how profoundly it distressed him to seem forgetful of a promise. Years afterward he wrote that he had brought an elephant's tail for Henry, but one of the men stole all the hairs and sold them. He had still a tusk of a hippopotamus for him, and a tooth for his brother, but he had broughj no cariosities, for he could scarcely get along himself. FROM THE CAPE TO LINYANTL 153 in i>Mer to give a wide berth to the Boers. Traveling rapidly he passed through Sebituane's country, and in June, 1858, arrived at Linyanti, the capital of the Makololo. He wrote to his wife that he had been very anxious to go to Kolobeng and see with his own eyes the destruction wrought by the savages. He had a great longing, too, to visit once more the grave of Elizabeth, their infant daughter, but he heard that the Boers were in the neighbor- hood, and were anxious to catch him, and he thought it best not to go. Two years before, he had been at Linyanti with Mr. Oswell. Many details of the new journey are given in the Missionary Travels, which it is unnecessary to repeat. It may be enough to state that he found the coun- try flooded, and that on the way it was no unusual thing for him to be wet all day, and to walk through swamps, and water three or four feet deep. Trees, thorns, and reeds offered tremendous resistance, and he and his people must have presented a pitiable sight when forcing their way through reeds with cutting edges. " With our own hands all raw and bloody, and knees through our trousers, we at length emerged." It was a happy thought to tear his pocket-handkerchief into two parts and tie them over his knees. " I remember," he says in his Journal, referring to last year's journey, " the toil which our friend Oswell endured on our account. He never spared himself." It is not to be supposed that his guides were happy in such a march ; it required his tact stretched to its very utmost to prevent them from turning back. " At the Malopo," he writes to his wife, "there were other dangers besides. When walking before the wagon in the morning twilight, I ob- served a lioness about fifty yards from me, in the squatting way they walk when going to spring. She was followed by a very large lion, but seeing the wagon, she turned back." Though he escaped fever at first, he had repeated attacks afterward, and had to be constantly using remedies against it. The unhealthiness of the region to Europeam 154 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. forced itself painfully on his attention, and made him wonder in what way God would bring the light of the gospel to the poor inhabitants. As a physician his mind was much occupied with the nature of the disease, and the way to cure it. If only he could discover a remedy for that scourge of Africa, what an invaluable boon would he confer on its much-afflicted people ! " I would like," he says in his Journal, " to devote a portion of my life to the discovery of a remedy for that terrible disease, the African fever.* I would go into the parts where it prevails most, and try to dis- cover if the natives have a remedy for it. I must make many inquiries of the river people in this quarter. What an unspeakable mercy it is to be permitted to engage in this most holy and honorable work I What „n infinity of lots in the world are poor, miserable, and degraded com- pared with mine 1 I might have been a common soldier, a day-laborer, a factory operative, a mechanic, instead of a missionary. If my faculties had been left to run riot or to waste as those of so many young men, I should now have been used up, a dotard, as many of my school-fellows are. I am respected by the natives, their kind expressions often make me ashamed, and they are sincere. So much deference and favor manifested without any effort on my part to secure it comes from the Author of every good gift. I acknowledge the mercies of the great God with devout and reverential gratitude." Dr. Livingstone had declined a coisiderate proposal that another missionary should accompany him, and deliber- ately resolved to go this great journey alone. He knew, in fact, that except Mr. Moffat, who was busy with his translation of the Bible, no other missionary would go with him.^ But in the absence of all to whom he could unburden his spirit, we find him more freely than usual pouring out his feelings in his Journal, and it is but an act of justice to himself that it should be made known how * Livingstone's Remedy for African fever. See Appendix No. II. • Dr. Moffat informs us that Livingstone's desire for his company was most intense, and that he pressed him in such a way as would have been irresistible, had his going been possible. But for his employment in translating, Dr. Mofiat would have gone with all his heart. FBOM THE CAPE TO LINYANTI. 155 his thoughts were running, with so bold and difficult an undertaking before him : "28th September, 1852. — Am I on my way to die in Sebituane's country? Have I seen the end of my wife and children ? The breaking up of all my connections with earth, leaving this fair and beautiful world, and knowing so little of it? I am only learning the alphabet of it yet, and entering on an untried state of existence. Following Him who has entered in before me into the cloud, the veil, the Hades, is a serious prospect. Do we begin again in our new existence to learn much by experience, or have we full powers? My soul, whither wilt thou emi- grate? Where wilt thou lodge the first night after leaving this body? Will an angel soothe thy flutterings, for sadly flurried wilt thou be in entering upon eternity? Oh ! if Jesus speak one word of peace, that will establish in thy breast an everlasting calm 1 O Jesue, fill me with /hy love now, and I beseech Thee, accept me, and use me a little for Thy glory, I have done nothing for Thee yet, and I would like to do something. do, do, I beseech Thee, accept me and my service, and take Thou all the glory. . . ." " 2M January, 1853. — I think much of my poor children. . . ." "4th February, 1853. — I am spared ia health, while all the company have been attacked by the fever. If God has accepted my service, then my life is charmed till my work is done. And though I pass through many dangers unscathed while working the work given me to do, when that is finished, some simple thing will give me my quietus. Death is a glorious event to one going to Jesus. Whither does the soul wing its way? What does it see first? There is something sublime in passing into the second stage of our immortal lives if washed from our sins. But, oh ! to be consigned to ponder over all our sins with memories excited, every scene of our lives held up as in a mirror before our eyes, and we looking at them and waiting for the day of judgment!" " nth February. — It is not the encountering of difliculties and dangers in obedience to the promptings of the inward spiritual life, which con* stitutes tempting of God and Providence; but the acting without faith, proceeding on our own errands with no previous convictions of duty, and no prayer for aid and direction." " 22c? May. — I will place no value on anything I have or may possess, except ia relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interests of that kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping of it I shall most promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity. May grace and strength suffi- cient to enable me to adhere faithfully to this resolution be imparted to me^ 80 that in truth, not in name only, all my interests and those of mj 156 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. children may be identified with his cause. ... I will try and re- member always to approach God in secret with as much reverence in speech, posture, and behavior as in public. Help me, Thou who knowest my frame and pitiest as a father his children." When Livingstone reached the Makololo, a change had taken place in the government of the tribe. Ma-mochisane, the daughter of Sebituane, had not been happy /-in her chiefdom, and had found it difficult to get along with the number of husbands whom her dignity as chief required her to maintain. She had given over the government to her brother Sekeletu, a youth of eighteen, who was gener- ally recognized, though not without some reluctance, by his brother, Mpepe. Livingstone could not have foreseen how Sekeletu would receive him, but to his great relief and satisfaction he found him actuated by the most kindly feelings. He found him, boy as he was, full of vague expectations of benefits, marvelous and miraculous, which the missionaries were to bring. It was Livingstone's first work to disabuse his mind of these exj^ectations, and let him understand that his supreme object was to teach them the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. To a certain extent Sekeletu was interested in this : " He asked many sensible questions about the system of Christianit/ in connection with the putting away of wives. They are always fur« nished with objections sooner than with the information. I commended him for asking me, and will begin a course of instruction to-morrow. He fears that learning to read will change his heart, and make him put away his wives. Much depends on his decision. May God influence his heart to decide aright!" o Two days after Livingstone says in his Journal : " 1st June. — The chief presented eight large and three small tusks this morning. I told him and his people I would rather see them trading than giving them to me. They replied that they would get trade with George Fleming, and that, too, as soon as he was well; but these they gave to their father, and they were just as any other present. They asked after the gun-medicine, believing that now my heart would be warm enough to tell them anything, but I could not tell them a lie. I FEOM THE CAFE TO LINYANTL ' 157 offered to show Sekeletu how to shoot, and that was all the medicine I knew. I felt as if I should have been more pleased had George been amassing ivory than I. Yet this may be an indispensable step in the progress toward opening the west. I must have funds; and here they come pouring in. It would be impossible to overlook his providence who has touehed their hearts. I have used no undue influence. Indeed I have used none directly for the purpose Kindness shown has been appreciated here, while much greater kindness shown to tribes in the south has resulted in a belief we missionaries must be fools. I do thank my God sincerely for his favor, and my hearty prayer is that He may continue it, and make whatever use He pleases of me, and may He have mercy on this people!" Dr. Livingstone was careful to guard against the sup- position that he allowed Sekeletu to enrich him without recompense, and in his Journal he sets down a list of the various articles presented by himself to the chief, including three goats, some fowls, powder, wire, flints, percussion-caps, an umbrella and a hat, the value of the whole being £31, 16s. When Sekeletu knew Dr. Livingstone's plans, he undertook that he should be provided with all requisites for his journey. But he was most anxious to retain him, and for some time would not let him go. Livingstone had fascinated him. Sekeletu said that he had found a new father. And Livingstone pondered the possibility of estab- lishing a station here. But the fever, the fever ! could he bring his family? He must pass on and look for a healthier spot. His desire was to proceed to the country of the Barotse. At length, on the 16th June, Sekeletu gives his answer : "The chief has acceded to my request to proceed to Barotse and see the country. I told him my heart was sore, because having left my family to explore his land, and, if possible, find a suitable location for a mission, I could not succeed, because detained by him here. He says he will take me with him. He does not like to part with me at all. He is obliged to consult with those who gave their opinion against my leaving. But it is certain I am permitted to go. Thanks be to God for influencing their hearts I" Before we set out with *4ie chief on this journey^ it will 14 158 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. be well to give a few extracts from Livingstone's Journal, showing how unwearied were his efforts to teach the people : ^' Banks of Chohe, Sunday, May 15ih. — Preached twice to about sixty people. Very attentive. It is only divine power which can enlighten dark minds as these. . . . The people seem to receive ideas on divine subjects slowly. They listen, but never suppose that the truths \ must become embodied in actual life. They will wait until the chief becomes a Christian, and if he believes, then they refuse to follow, — as was the case among the Bakwains. Procrastinatioft seems as powerful an instrument of deception here as elsewhere." " Sunday, 12tk Jun&, — A good and very attentive audience. "We in- troduce entirely new motives, and were these not perfectly adapted for the human mind and heart by their divine Author, we should have no success." "Sunday, 19th June. — A good and attentive audience, but immediately after the service I went to see a sick man, and when I returned toward the Kotla, I found the chief had retired into a hut to drink beer; and, as the custom is, about forty men were standing singing to him, or, in ©ther words, begging beer by that means. A minister who had not aeen so much pioneer service as I have done would have been shocked to see so little effect produced by an earnest discourse concerning the future judgment, but time must be given to allow the truth to sink into the dark mind, and produce its effect. The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord — that is enough. We can afford to work in faith, for Omnipotence is pledged to fulfill the promise. The great mountains become a plain before the Almighty arm. The »oor Bushman, the most degraded of all Adam's family, shall see his g'ory, and the dwellers in the wilderness shall bow before Him. The ob- stacles to the coming of the Kingdom are mighty, but come it wiU for all that : " ' Then let us pray that come it may, As comQ it will for a' that, That man to man the world o'er Shall brothers be for a' that.' "The hard and cold unbelief which distinguished the last century, and which is still aped by would-be philosophers in the present, would sneer at our faith, and call it superstition, enthusiasm, etc. But were we believers in human progress and no more, there must be a glorious future for our world. Our dreams must come true, even though they Ve no more than dreams. The world is rolling on to the golden age. FEOM THE CAPE TO LiNYANTI. 159 , , . Discoveries and inventions are cumulative. Another century must present a totally diflferent aspect from the present. And when we view the state of the world and its advancing energies, in the light afforded by childlike, or call it childish, faith, we see the earth filling with the knowledge of the glory of God, — ay, all nations seeing his glory and bowing before Him whose right it is to reign. Our work and its fruits are cumulative. We work toward another state of things. Future missionaries will be rewarded by conversions for every sermon. We are their pioneers and helpers. Let them not forget the watchmen of the night — us, who worked when all was gloom, and no evidence of success in the way of conversion cheered our paths. They will doubt- less have more light than we, but we served our Master earnestly, and proclaimed the same gospel as they will do." Of the services which Livingstone held with the people, we have the following picture : " When I stand up, all the women and children draw near, and, having ordered silence, I explain the plan of salvation, the goodness of God in sending his Son to die, the confirmation of his mission by mira- cles, the last judgment or future state, the evil of sin, God's commands respecting it, etc. ; always choosing one subject only for an address, and taking care to make it short and plain, and applicable to them. This address is listened to with great attention by most of the audience. A short prayer concludes the service, all kneeling down, and remaining so till told to rise. At first we have to enjoin on the women who have children to remain sitting, for when they kneel, they squeeze their children, and a simultaneous skirl is set up by the whole troop of youngsters, who make the prayer inaudible." When Livingstone and Sekeletu had gone about sixty- miles on the way to the Barotse, they encountered Mpepe, Sekeletu's half-brother and secret rival. It turned out that Mpepe had a secret plan for killing Sekeletu, and that three times on the day of their meeting that plan was frus- trated by apparently accidental causes. On one of these occasions, Livingstone, by covering Sekeletu, prevented him from being speared. Mpepe's treachery becoming known, he was arrested by Sekeletu's people, and promptly put to death. The episode was not agreeable, but it illus- trated savage life. It turned out that Mpepe favored the 160 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. slave-trade, and was closely engaged with certain Portu- guese traders in intrigues for establishing and extending it. Had Sekeletu been killed, Livingstone's enterprise would certainly have been put an end to, and very probably like- wise Livingstone himself. The party, numbering about one hundred and sixty, proceeded up the beautiful river which on his former visit Livingstone had first known as the Sesheke, but which was called by the Barotse the Liambai or Leeambye, The term means "the large river," and Luambeji, Luambesi, Ambezi, Yimbezi, and Zambezi are names applied to it at different parts of its course. In the progress of their journey they came to the town of the father of Mpepe, where, most unexpectedly, Livingstone encountered a horrible scene. Mpepe's father and another headman were known to have favored the plan for the murder of Sekeletu, and were therefore objects of fear to the latter. When all were met, and Mpepe's father was questioned why he did not stop his son's proceedings, Sekeletu suddenly sprang to his feet and gave the two men into custody. All had been planned beforehand. Forthwith they were led away, surrounded by Sekeletu's warriors, all dream of opposition on their part being as useless as interference would have been on Livingstone's. Before his eyes he saw them hewn to pieces with axes, and cast into the river to be devoured by the alligators. Within two hours of their arrival the whole party had left the scene of this shocking tragedy, Living- stone being so horrified that he could not remain. He did his best to show the sin of blood-guiltiness, and bring before the people the scene of the Last Judgment, which was the only thing that seemed to make any impression. Farther on his way he had an interview with Ma-mochi- sane, the daughter of Sebituane who had resigned in favor of Sekeletu. He was the first white man she had ever seen. The interview was pleasing and not without touches of womanly character ; the poor woman had felt an embarras FEOM THE CAPE TO LINYANTI. 161 de richesses in the matter of husbands, and was very un- comfortable when married women complained of her taking their spouses from them. Her soul recoiled from the business ; she wished to have a husband of her own and to be like other women. So anxious was Livingstone to find a healthy locality, that, leaving Sekeletu, he proceeded to the farthest limit of the Barotse country, but no healthy place could be found. It is plain, however, that in spite of all risk, and much as he suffered from the fever, he was planning, if no better place could be found, to return himself to Linyanti and be the Makololo missionary. Not just immediately, however. Having failed in the first object of his journey — to find a healthy locality — he was resolved to follow out the second, and endeavor to discover a highway to the sea. First he would try the west coast, and the point for which he would make was St. Paul de Loanda. He might have found a nearer way, but a Portuguese trader whom he had met, and from whom he had received kindness, was going by that route to St. Philip de Benguela. The trader was im- plicated in the slave-trade, and Livingstone knew what a disadvantage it would be either to accompaxiy or to follow him. He therefore returned to Linyanti ; and there began preparations for the journey to Loanda on the coast. During the time thus spent in the ^Barotse country, Livingstone saw heathenism in its most unadulterated form. It was a painful, loathsome, and horrible spectacle. His views of the Fall and of the corruption of human nature were certainly not lightened by the sight. In his Journal he is constantly letting fall expressions of weari- ness at the noise, the excitement, the wild savage dancing, the heartless cruelty, the utter disregard of feelings, the destruction of children, the drudgery of the old people, the atrocious murders with which he was in contact. Occa- sionally he would think of other scenes of travel; if a friend, for example, were going to Palestine, he would say how 162 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. gladly he would kiss the dust that had been trod by the Man of Sorrows. One day a poor girl comes hungry and naked to the wagons, and is relieved from time to time ; then disappears to die in the woods of starvation or be torn in pieces by the hyenas. Another day, as he is preaching, a boy, walking along with his mother, is suddenly seized by a man, utters a shriek as if his heart had burst, and becomes, as Livingstone finds, a hopeless slave. Another time, the sickening sight is a line of slaves attached by a chain. That chain haunts and harrows him. Amid all his difficulties he patiently pursued his work as missionary. Twice every Sunday he preached, usually to good audiences, the number rising on occasions so high as a thousand. It was a great work to sow the good seed so widely, where no Christian man had ever been, pro- claiming every Lord's Day to fresh ears the message of Divine love. Sometimes he was in great hopes that a true impression had been made. But usually, whenever the service was over, the wild savage dance with all its demon noises succeeded, and the missionary could but look on and sigh. So ready was he for labor that when he could get any willing to learn, he commenced teaching them the alphabet. But he was continually met by the notion that his religion was a religion of medicines, and that all the good it could do was by charms. Intellectual culture seemed indispensable to dissipate this inveterate supersti- tion regarding Christian influence. A few extracts from his Journal in the Barotse country will more vividly exhibit his state of mind : " 27ih August, 1853. — The more Intimately I become acquainted with barbarians, the more disgusting does heathenism become. It is incon- ceivably vile. They are always boasting of their fierceness, yet dare not visit another tribe for fear of being killed. They never visit anywhere but for the purpose of plunder and oppression. They never go anywhere but with a club or spear in hand. It is lamentable to see those who might be children of God, dwelling in peace and love, so utterly the children of the devil, dwelling in fear and continual irritation. They FROM THE CAPE TO Lt^YANTL 163 bestow honors and flattering titles on me in confusing profusion. All from the least to the greatest call me Father, Lord, etc., and bestow food without recompense, out of pure kindness. They need a healer. May God enable me to be such to them. . . . " Z\st August. — The slave-trade seems pushed into the very centre of the continent from both sides. It must be profitable. . . . ^^ September 25, Sunday. — A quiet audience to-day. The seed being sown, the least of all seeds now, but it will grow a mighty tree. It is as it were a small stone cut out of a mountain, but it will fill the whole earth. He that believeth shall not make haste. Surely if God can bear with hardened impenitent sinners for thirty, forty, or fifty years, waiting to be gracious, we may take it for granted that his is the best way. He could destroy his enemies, but He waits to be gracious. To become irritated with their stubbornness and hardness of heart is ungodlike. . . . " \^th October. — Missionaries ought to cultivate a taste for the beau- tiful. We are necessarily compelled to contemplate much moral impurity and degradation. We are so often doomed to disappointment. We are apt to become either callous or melancholy, or, if preserved from these, the constant strain on the sensibilities is likely to injure the bodily health. On this account it seems necessary to cultivate that faculty for the gratification of which God has made such universal provision. See the green earth and blue sky, the lofty mountain and the verdant valley, the glorious orbs of day and night, and the starry canopy with all their celestial splendor, the graceful flowers so chaste in form and perfect in coloring. The various forms of animated life present to him whose heart is at peace with God through the blood of his Son an indescribable charm. He sees in the calm beauties of nature such abundant provis- ion for the welfare of humanity and animate existence. There appears on the quiet repose of earth's scenery the benignant smile of a Father's love. The sciences exhibit such wonderful intelligence and design in all their various ramifications, some time ought to be devoted to them before engaging in missionary work. The heart may often be cheered by observing the operation of an ever-present intelligence, and we may feel that we are leaning on his bosom while living in a world clothed in beauty, and robed with the glorious perfections of its maker and pre- server. We must feel that there is a Governor among the nations who will bring all his plans with respect to our human family to a glorious consummation. He who stays his mind on his ever-present, ever-ener- getic God, will not fret himself because of evil-doers. He that believeth shall not make haste." "26 Stee Lasf .7i>ur>ta/s,.V!ol. u..Bp. ©5, 66. MANYUEMA. 421 He is by no means unaware that death may be in the cup. But, fortified as he was by an unalterable conviction that he was in the line of duty, the thought of death had no influence to turn him either to the right hand or to the left. For the first three years he had a strong present- iment that he would fall. But it had passed away as he came near the end, and now he prayed God that when he retired it might be to his native home. Probably no human being was ever in circumstances parallel to those in which Livingstone now stood. Years had passed since he had heard from home. The sound of his mother-tongue came to him only in the broken sen- tences of Ghuma or Susi or his other attendants, or in the echoes of his own voice as he poured it out in prayer, or in some cry of home-sickness that could not be kept in. In long pain and sickness there had been neither wife nor child nor brother to cheer him with sympathy, or lighten his dull hut with a smile. He had been baffled and tantalized beyond description in his efforts to complete the little bit of exploration which was yet necessary to finish his task. His soul was vexed for the frightful exhibitions of wickedness around him, where "man to man," instead of brothers, were worse than wolves and tigers to each other. During all his past life he had been sowing his seed weeping, but so far was he from bringing back his sheaves rejoicing, that the longer he lived the more cause there seemed for his tears. He had not yet seen of the travail of his soul. In opening Africa he had seemed to open it for brutal slave-traders, and in the only instance in which he had yet brought to it the feet of men " beautiful upon the mountains, publishing peace," disaster had befallen, and an incom- petent leader had broken up the enterprise. Yet, apart from his sense of duty, there was no necessity for his re- maining there. He was offering himself a freewill-offering, a living sacrifice. What could have sustained his heart M 422 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. and kept him firm to his purpose in such a wilderness of desolation ? " I read the whole Bible through four times whilst I was in Manyuema." So he wrote in his Diary, not at the time, but the year after, on the 3d October, 1871.^ The Bible gathers wonderful interest from the circumstances in which it is read. In Livingstone's circumstances it was more the Bible to him than ever. All his loneliness and sorrow, the sickness of hope deferred, the yearnings for home that could neither be repressed nor gratified, threw a new light on the Word. How clearly it was intended for such as him, and how sweetly it came home to him ! How faithful, too, were its pictures of human sin and sorrow! How true its testimony Against man, who will not retain God in his knowledge, out, leaving Him, becomes vain in his imaginations and hard in his heart, till the bloom of Eden is gone, and a waste, howling wilderness spreads around ! How glorious the out-beaming of Divine Love, drawing near to this guilty race, winning and cherishing them with every endearing act, and at last dying on the cross to redeem them! And how bright the closing scene of Revelation — the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness — yes, he can appreciate that attribute — the curse gone, death abolished, and all tears wiped from the mourner's eye ! So the lonely man in his dull hut is riveted to the well-worn book ; ever finding it a greater treasure as he goes along ; and fain, when he has reached its last page, to turn back to the beginning, and gather up more of the riches which he has left upon the road. To Sir Thomas Maclear and Mr. Mann he writes during his detention (September, 1870) on a leaf of his cheque-book, his paper being done. He gives his theory ^ ■ — - I ■ I . — - - . — ■ ,1,1 - | - ^ ^ See Last jfouniais^ vol. ii. p. 154, MANYUEMA. i23 of the rivers, enlarges on the fertility of the country, bewails his difficulty in getting men, as the Manyuema never go beyond their own country, and the traders, who have only begun to come there, are too busy collecting ivory to be able to spare men. " The tusks were left in the terrible forests, where the animals were killed ; the people, if treated civilly, readily go and bring the precious teeth, some half rotten, or gnawed by the teeth of a rodent called dezi. I think that mad naturalists name it Aulocaudatus Swindermanus, or some equally wise agglu- tination of syllables. . . . My chronometers are all dead ; I hope my old watch was sent to Zanzibar ; but I have got no letters for years, save some, three years old, at Ujiji. I have an intense and sore longing to finish and retire, and trust that the Almighty may permit me to go home." In one of his letters to Agnes from Manyuema he quotes some words from a letter oi Iiers that he ever after cher- ished as a most refreshing cordial : " I commit myself to the Almighty Disposer of events, and if I fall, will do so doing my duty, like one of his stout-hearted servants. I am delighted to hear you say that, much as you wish me home, you would rather hear of my finishing my work to my own satisfaction than come merely to gratify you. That is a noble sentence, and I felt all along sure that all my friends would wish me to make a complete work of it, and in that wish, in spite of every difficulty, I cordially joined. I hope to present to my young countrymen an example of manly perseverance. I shall not hide from you that I am made by it very old and shaky, my cheeks fallen in, space round the eyes ditto; mouth almost toothless, — a few teeth that remain, out of their line, so that a smile is that of a he-hippopota- mus, — a dreadful old fogie, and you must tell Sir Roderick that it is an utter impossibility for me to appear in public till I get new teeth, and even then the less I am seen the better.'' 424 DAVTD LIVINGSTONE. Another letter to Agnes from Manyuema gives a curious account of the young soko or gorilla a chief had lately presented to him: *'She sits crouching eighteen inches high, and is the most intelligent and least mischievous of all the monkeys I have seen. She holds out her hand to be lifted and carried, and if refused makes her face as in a bitter human weeping, and wrings her hands quite humanly, some- times adding a loot or third hand to make the appeal more touching, . . . She knew me at once as a friend, and when plagued by any one always placed her back to me for safety, came and sat down on my mat, decently made a nest of grass and leaves, and covered herself with the mat to sleep. I cannot take her with me, though I fear that she will die before I return, from people plaguing her. Her fine long black hair was beautiful when tended by her mother, who was killed. I am mobbed enough alone ; two sokos — she and I — would not have got breath. " I have to submit to be a gazing-stock. I don't altogether relish it, here or elsewhere, but try to get over it good-naturedly, get into the most shady spot of the village, and leisurely look at all my admirers. When the first crowd begins to go away, I go into my lodgings to take what food may be prepared, as coff"ee, when I have it, or roasted maize infusion when 1 have none. The door is shut, all save a space to admit light. It is made of the inner bark of a gigantic tree, not a quarter of an inch thick, and slides in a groove behind a post on each side of the doorway. When partially open it is supported by only one of the posts. Eager heads sometimes crowd the open space, and crash goes the thin door, landing a Manyuema beauty on the floor. 'It was not I,' she gasps out, ' it was Bessie Bell and Jeanie Gray that shoved me in. and — ' as she scrambles out of the lion's den, * see they're laugh- ing'; and, fairly out, she joins in the merry giggle too. To avoid dark- ness or being half-smothered, I often eat in public, draw a line on the ground, then * toe the line,' and keep them out of the circle. To see me eating with knife, fork, and spoon is wonderful. ' See 1 — they don't touch their food ! — ^what oddities, to be sure.' . . . " Many of the Manyuema women are very pretty ; their hands, feet, limbs, and form are perfect. The men are handsome. Compared with them the Zanzibar slaves are like London door-knockers, which some atrocious iron-foundei thought were like lions' faces. The way in which these same Zanzibar Mohammedans murder the men and seize the women and children makes me sick at heart. It is not slave-trade. It is murdering free people to make slaves. It is perfectly indescrib- •ble. ^irk has beea working hard to get this murdersome system put MANYUEMA. 425 ft stop to. Heaven prosper his noble efforts I He says in one of his letters to me, 'It is monstrous injustice to compare the free people in the interior, living under their own chiefs and laws, with what slaves at Zanzibar afterward become by the abominable system which robs them of their manhood. I think it is like comparing the anthropolO" gists with their ancestral sokos.' . . » " I am grieved to hear of the departure of good Lady Murchison. Had I known that she kindly remembered me in her prayers, it would have been great encouragement. . . . " The men sent by Dr. Kirk are Mohammedans, tnat is, unmitigated liars. Musa and his companions are fair specimens of the lower class of Moslems. The two head-men remained at Ujiji, to feast on my goods, and get pay without work. Seven came to Bambarr6, and in true Moslem style swore that they were sent by Dr. Kirk to bring mo back, not to go with me, if the country were bad or dangerous. For- ward they would not go. I read Dr. Kirk's words to them to follow wheresoever I led. *No, by the old liar Mohamed, they were to force me back to Zanzibar.' After a superabundance of falsehood, it turned out that it all meant only an advance of pay, though they had double the Zanzibar wages. I gave it, but had to threaten on the word of an Englishman to shoot the ringleaders before I got them to go. They all speak of English as men who do not lie. ... I have traveled more than most people, and M'ilh all sorts of followers. The Christians of Kuruman and Kolobeng were out of sight the best I ever had. The Makololo, who were very partially Christianized, were next best — - honest, truthful, and brave. Heathen Africans are much superior to the Mohammedans, who are the most worthless one can have." Toward the end of 1870, before the date of this letter, he had so far recovered that, though feeling the want of medicine as much as of men, he thought of setting out, in order to reach and explore the Lualaba, having made a bargain with Mohamad, for £270, to bring him to his destination. But now he heard that Syde bin Habib, Dugumbe, and others were on the way from Ujiji, per- haps bringing letters and medicines for him. He cannot move till they arrive ; another weary time. " Sorely am I perplexed, and grieve and mourn." The New Year 1871 passes while he is at Bambarre, with its prayer that he might be permitted to finish his task. At last, on 4th February, ten of the men despatched 426 DAV.W LIVINGSTONE. to him from the coast arrive, but only to bring a fresh disappointment. They were slaves, the property of Ba- nians, who were British subjects ! and they brought only one letter ! Forty had been lost. There had been cholera at Zanzibar, and many of the porters sent by Dr. Kirk had died of it. The ten men came with a lie in their mouth ; they would not help him, swearing that the Con- sul told them not to go forward, but. to force Livingstone back. On the 10th they mutinied, and had to receive an advance of pay. It was apparent that they had been in- structed by their Banian masters to baffle him in every way, so that their slave-trading should not be injured by his disclosures. Their two head-men, Shereef and Awathe, had refused to come farther than Ujiji, and were reveling in his goods there. Dr. Livingstone never ceased to lament and deplore that the men who had been sent to him were so utterly unsuitable. One of them actually formed a plot for his destruction, which was only frustrated through his being overheard by one whom Livingstone could trust. Livingstone wrote to his friends that owing to the ineffi- ciency of the men, he lost two years of time, about a thou- sand pounds in money, had some 2000 miles of useless traveling, and was four several times subjected to the risk of a violent death. At length, having arranged with the men, he sets out on 16th February over a most beautiful country, but woe- fully difficult to pass through. Perhaps it was hardly a less bitter disappointment to be told, on the 25th, that the Lualaba flowed west-southwest, so that after all it might be the Congo. On the 29th March Livingstone arrived at Nyangwe, on the banks of the Lualaba. This was the farthest point westward that he reached in his last Expedition. The slave-trade here he finds to be as horrible as in any other part of Africa. He is heart-sore for human blood. He is threatened, bullied, and almost attacked. In some MANYUEMA. 427 places, however, the rumor spreads that he makes no slaves, and he is called " the good one." His men are a ceaseless trouble, and for ever mutinying, or otherwise harassing him. And jet he perseveres in his old kind way, hoping by kindness to gain influence with them. Mohamad's people, he finds, have passed him on the west, and thus he loses a number of serviceable articles he was to get from them, and all the notes made for him of the rivers they had passed. The difficulties and discouragements are so great that he wonders whether, after all, God is smiling on his work. His own men circulate such calumnious reports againsli him that he is unable to get canoes for the navigation of the Lualaba. This leads to weeks and months of wear;^ waiting, and yet all in vain; but afterward he finds some consolation on discovering that the navigation was perilous, that a canoe had been lost from the inexperience of her crew in the rapids, so that had he been there, he should very^ likely have perished, as his canoe would probably have been foremost. A change of plan was necessary. On 5th July he offered to Dugumbe £400, with all the goods he had at TJjiji besides, for men to replace the Banian slaves, and for the other means of going up the Lomame to Katanga, then returning and going up Tanganyika to Ujiji. Dugumbe took a little time to consult his friends before replying to the offer. Meanwhile an event occurred of unprecedented horror, that showed Livingstone that he could not go to Lomame in the company of Dugumbe. Between Dugumbe's people and another chief a frightful system of pillage, murder, and burning of villages was going on with horrible activity. One bright summer morning, 15th July, when fifteen hundred people, chiefly women, were engaged peace- fully in marketing in a village on the banks of the Lualaba, and ^hile Dr. Livingstone was sauntering aboutj 428 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. SL murderous fire was opened on the people, and a massacre ensued of such measureless atrocity that he could describe it only by saying that it gave him the impression of being in hell. The event was so superlatively horrible, and had such an overwhelming influence on Livingstone, that we copy at fall length the description of it given in the Last Journals : " Before I had got thirty yards out, the discharge of two guns in th» middle of the crowd told me that slaughter had begun s crowds dashed oflf from the place, and threw down their wares in confusion, and ran^ At the same time that the three opened fire on the mass of people near the upper end of the market-place, volleys were discharged from a party down near the creek on the panic-stricken women, who dashed at the canoes. These, some fifty or more, were jammed in the creek, and the men forgot their paddles in the terror that seized all. The canoes were not to be got out, for the creek was too small for so many ; men and women, wounded by the balls, poured into them, and leaped and scrambled into the water, shrieking A long line of heads in the river showed that great numbers struck out for an island a full mile off; in going toward it they had to put the left shoulder to a current of about two miles an hour; if they had struck away diagonally to the opposite bank, the current would have aided them, and, though nearly three miles off, some would have gained land ; as it was, the heads above water showed the long line of those that would inevitably perish. "Shot after shot continued to be fired on the helpless and perishing. Sorpe of the long line of heads disappeared quietly; whilst other poor creatures threw their arms high, as if appealing to the great Father above, and sank. One canoe took in as many as it could hold, and all paddled with hands and arms ; three canoes, got out in haste, picked up sinking friends, till all went down together, and disappeared. One man in a long canoe, which could have held forty or fifty, had clearly lost his head ; he had been out in the stream before the massacre began, and now paddled up the river nowhere, and never looked to the drown- ing. By and by all the heads disappeared ; some had turned down stream toward the bank, and escaped. Dugumb^ put people into one of the deserted vessls to save those in the water, and saved twenty-one ; but one woman refused to be taken on board, from thinking that she was to be made a slave of; she preferred the chance of life by swim* ming, to the lot of a slave. The Bagenya women are expert in the water, aa they are accustomed to dive for oysters, and those who went down stream may have escaped, but the Arabs themselves estimated MANYUEMJL 429 the loss of life at between 330 and 400 souls. The ebooting-party near the canoes were so reckless, they killed two of their own people; and a Banyamwezi follower, who got into a deserted canoe to plunder, fell into the water, went down, then came up again, and down to rise no more. " After the terrible affair in the water, the party of Tagamoio, who was the chief perpetrator, continued to fire on the people there, and fire their villages. As I write I hear the loud wails on the left bank over those who are there slain, ignorant of their many friends now in the depths of Lualaba. Oh, let Thy kingdom come I No one will ever know the exact loss on this bright sultry summer morning; it gave me the impression of being in Hell. All the slaves in the camp rushed at the fugitives on land, and plundered them ; women were for hours collecting and carrying loads of what had been thrown down in terror." The remembrance of this awful scene was never effaced from Livingstone's heart. The accounts of it published in the newspapers at home sent a thrill of horror through the country. It was recorded at great length in a despatch to the Foreign Secretary, and indeed, it became one of the chief causes of the appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the subject of the African slave-trade, and of the mission of Sir Bartle Frere to Africa to concert measures for bringing it to an end. Dugumbe had not been the active perpetrator of the massacre, but he was mixed up with the atrocities that had been committed, and Livingstone could have nothing to do with him. It was a great trial, for, as the Banian men were impracticable, there was nothing for it now but to go back to Ujiji, and try to get other men there with whom he would repeat the attempt to explore the river. For twenty-one months, counting from the period of their engagement, he had fed and clothed these men, all in vain, and now he had to trudge back forty-five days, a journey equal, with all its turnings and windings, to six hundred miles. Livingstone was ill, and after such an exciting time he would probably have had an attack of fever, but for another ailment to which he had become more es- pecially subject. The intestinal canal had given way, and 439 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. he was subject to attacks of severe internal hsemorrhage, one of which came on him now.^ It appeared afterward that had he gone with Dugumbe, he would have been exposed to an assault in force by the Bakuss, as they made an attack on the party and routed them, killing two hun- dred. If Livingstone had been among them, he might have fallen in this engagement. So again, he saw how present disappointments work for good. The journey back to Ujiji, begun 20th July, 1871, was a very wretched one. Amid the universal desolation caused by the very wantonness of the marauders, it was impossible for Livingstone to persuade the natives that he did not belong to the same set Ambushes were set for him and his company in the forest. On the 8th August they came to an ambushment all prepared, but it had been aban- doned for some unknown reason. By and by, on the same day, a large spear flew past Livingstone, grazing his neck ; the native who flung it was but ten yards of!"; the hand of God alone saved his life.^ Farther on, another spear was thrown, which missed him by a foot. On the same day a large tree, to which fire had been applied to fell it, came down within a yard of him. Thus on one day he was delivered three times from impending death. He went on through the forest, expecting every minute to be attacked, having no fear, but perfectly indifferent whether he should be killed or not. He lost all his remaining calico that day, a telescope, umbrella, and five spears. By and by he was prostrated with grievous illness. As soon as he could move he went onward, but he felt as if dying on his feet. And he was ill-rigged for the road, for the light French shoes to which he was reduced, and which had been cut to ease his feet till they would hardly hang together, failed * His friends say that for a considerable time before he had been subject t« the most grievous pain from haemorrhoids. His sufferings were often excru- ciating. ^ The head of this spear is among the Liviixgstone relics at Newstead Abbey. MANYUEMA. 481 to protect him from the sharp fragments of quartz with which the road was strewed. He was getting near to Ujiji, however, where abundance of goods and comforts were no doubt safely stowed away for him, and the hope of relief sustained him under all his trials. At last, on the 23d October, reduced to a living skeleton, he reached Ujiji. What was his misery, instead of finding the abundance of goods he had expected, to learn that the wretch Shereef, to whom they had been consigned, had sold off the whole, not leaving one yard of calico out of 3000, or one string of beads out of 700 pounds 1 The scoundrel had divined on the Koran, found that Living- stone was dead, and would need the goods no more. Liv- ingstone had intended, if he could not get men at Ujiji to go with him to the Lualaba, to wait there till suitable men should be sent up from the coast ; but he had never thought of having to wait in beggary. If anything could have aggravated the annoyance, it was to see Shereef come, without shame, to salute him, and tell him on leaving, that he was going to pray; or to see his slaves passing from the market with all the good things his property had bought! Livingstone applied a term to him which he reserved for men — black or white — whose wickedness made them alike shameless and stupid — he was a " moral idiot." It was the old story of the traveler who fell among thieves that robbed him of all he had ; but where was the good Samaritan ? The Government and the Geographical Society appeared to have passed by on the other side. But the good Samaritan was not as far off as might have been thought. One morning Syed bin Majid, an Arab trader, came to him with a generous offer to sell some ivory and get goods for him ; but Livingstone had the old feeling of independence, and having still a few barter goods left, which he had deposited with Mohamad bin Saleh before going to Manyuema, he declined for the present Syed's 432 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. generous ofifer. But the kindness of Syed was not the only proof that he was not forsaken. Five days after he reached Ujiji the good Samaritan appeared from another quarter. As Livingstone had been approaching Ujiji from the southwest, another white man had been approaching it from the east. On 28th October, 1871, Henry Moreland Stanley, who had been sent to look for him by Mr. James Gordon Bennett, Jr., of the New York Herald newspaper, grasped the hand of David Livingstone. An angel from heaven could hardly have been more welcome. In a moment the sky brightened. Stanley was provided with ample stores, and was delighted to supply the wants of the traveler. The sense of sympathy, the feeling of brother- hood, the blessing of fellowship, acted like a charm. Four good meals a day, instead of the spare and tasteless food of the country, made a wonderful change on the outer man ; and in a few days Livingstone was himself again — hearty and happy and hopeful as before. Before closing this chapter and entering on the last two years of Livingstone's life, which have so lively an interest of their own, it will be convenient to glance at the contri- butions to natural science which he continued to make to the very end. In doing this, we avail ourselves of a very tender and Christian tribute to the memory of his early friend, which Professor Owen contributed to the Quarterly Review, April, 1875, after the publication of Livingstone's Last Journals. Mr. Owen appears to have been convinced by Living* stone's reasoning and observations, that the Nile sources were in the Bangweolo watershed — a supposition now ascertained to have been erroneous. But what chiefly attracted and delighted the great naturalist was the many interesting notices of plants and animals scattered over the Last Journals. These Journals contain important con- tributions both to economic and physiological botany. In the former department, Livingstone makes valuable obser- MANYUEMA. 433 vations on plants useful in the arts, such as gum-copal, papyrus, cotton, india-rubber, and the palm-oil tree; while in the latter, his notices of "carnivorous plants," which catch insects that probably yield nourishment to the plant, of silicified wood and the like, show how carefully he watched all that throws light on the life and changes of plants. In zoology he was never weary of observing, especially when he found a strange-looking animal with strange habits. Spiders, ants, and bees of unknown varie- ties were brought to light, but the strangest of his new acquaintances were among the fishy tribes. He found fish that made long excursions on land, thanks to the wet grass through which they would wander for miles, thus proving that " a fish out of water" is not always the best symbol for a man out of his element. There were fish, too, that burrowed in the earth ; but most remarkable at first sight were the fish that appeared to bring forth their young by ejecting them from their mouths. If Bruce or Du Chaillu had made such a statement, remarks Professor Owen, what ridicule would they not have encountered ! But Living- stone was not the man to make a statement of what he had not ascertained, or to be content until he had found a scientific explanation of it. He found that in the bran- chial openings of the fish, there occur bags or pouches, on the same principle as the pouch of the opossum, where the young may be lodged for a time for protection or nourish- ment, and that when the creatures are discharged through the mouth into the water, it is only from a temporary cradle where they were probably enjoying repose, beyond the reach of enemies. Perhaps the greatest of Livingstone's scientific discov- eries during this journey was that " of a physical condi- tion of the earth's surface in elevated tracts of the great continent^ unknown before." The bogs or earth-sponges, that from his first acquaintance with them gave him so much trouble, and at last proved the occasion of his death, d7 434 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. were not only remarkable in themselves, but interesting as probably explaining the annual inundations of most of the rivers. Wherever there was a plain sloping toward a narrow opening in hills or higher ground, there were the conditions for an African sponge. The vegetation falls down and rots, and forms a rich black loam, resting often, two or three feet thick, on a bed of pure river sand. Th' early rains turn the vegetation into slush, and fill th^ pools. The later rains, finding the pools already full, run off to the rivers, and form the inundation. The first rains occur south of the equator when the sun goes vertically over any spot, and the second or greater rains happen in his course north again. This, certainly, was the case as observed on the Zambesi and Shire, and taking the dififer- ent times for the sun's passage north of the equator, it explained the inundations of the Nile. Such notices show that in his love of nature, and in his careful observation of all her agencies and processes, Liv- ingstone, in his last journeys, was the same as ever. He looked reverently on all plants and animals, and on the solid earth in all its aspects and forms, as the creatures of that same God whose lOve in Christ it was his heart's delight to proclaim. His whole life, so varied in its out- ward employments, yet so simple and transparent in its one great object, was ruled by the conviction that the God of nature and the God of revelation were one. While thoroughly enjojdng his work as a naturalist, Professor Owen frankly admits that it was but a secondary object of his life. " Of his primary work the record is on high, and its imperishable fruits remain on earth. The seeds of the Word of Life implanted lovingly, with pains and labor, and above all with faith ; the out-door scenes of the simple Sabbath service; the testimony of Him to whom the worship was paid, given in terms of such simplicity as were fitted to the comprehension of the dark-skinned listeners, — these seeds will not have been scattered by him MANYUEMA. 435 in vain. Nor have they been sown in words alone, but in deeds, of which some part of the honor will redound to his successors. The teaching by forgiveness of injuries, — by trust, however unworthy the trusted, — by that confi- dence which imputed his own noble nature to those whom he would win, — by the practical enforcement of the fact that a man might promise and perform — might say the thing he meant, — of this teaching by good deeds, as well as by the words of truth and love, the successor who treads in the steps of Livingstone, and accomplishes the dis- covery he aimed at, and pointed the way to, will assuredly lf©ap the benefit." ^ ~ * QuarUriy M interest him. Five days after Stanley left him occurred his fifty-ninth birthday. How his soul was exercised appears from the renewal of his self-dedication recorded in his Journal : " \9th March, Birthday. — My Jesus, my King, my Life, my All ; I again dedicate my whole self to Thee. Accept me, and grant, gra- cious Father, that ere this year is gone I may finish my task. In Jesus' name I aak it. Amen. So let it be. David Livingstone." Frequent letters were written to his daughter from Un- yanyembe, and they dwelt a good deal upon his difficulties, the treacherous way in which he had been treated, and the indescribable toil and suffering which had been the result. He said that in complaining to Dr. Kirk of the men whom he had employed, and the disgraceful use they had made of his (Kirk's) name, he never meant to charge him with 464 DAVID LIVINGSTONE. being the author of their crimes, and it never occurred to him to say to Kirk, " I don't believe you to be the traitor they imply ;" but Kirk took his complaint in high dudgeon as a covert attack upon himself, and did not act toward him as he ought to have done, considering what he owed him. His cordial and uniform testimony of Stanley was, " altogether he has behaved right nobly." On the 1st May he finished a letter for the New York Herald, and asked God's blessing on it. It contained the memorable words afterward inscribed on the stone to his memory in Westminster Abbey : " All I can add in my loneliness is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one — American, English, or Turk — who will help to heal the open sore of the world." It happened that the words were written precisely a year before his death. Amid the universal darkness around him, the universal ignorance of God and of the grace and love of Jesus Christ, it was hard to believe that Africa should ever be won. He had to strengthen his faith amid this universal desolation. We read in his Journal : " 13th May. — He will keep his word — the gracious One, full of grace and truth ; no doubt of it. He said : " Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out ;' and ' Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, I will give it.' He will keep his word : then I can come and humbly present my petition, and it will be all right. Doubt is here inadmissible, surely. D. L." His mind ruminates on the river system of the country and the probability of his being in error : "21si May. — I wish I had some of the assurance possessed by others, but I am oppressed with the apprehension that, after all, it may turn out that I have been following the Congo; and who would risk beingi put into a cannibal pot, and converted into black man for itf^ " 31st May. — In reference to this Nile source, I have been kept in per- petual doubt and perplexity. I know too much to be positive. Great Lualaba, or Lualubba, as Manyuema saj', may turn out to be the Congo, and Nile a shorter river after all.^ The fountains flowing north and ^ From false punctuation, this passage is unintelligible in the Last Journals^ vol. ii. p. 193. FROM UNYANYEMBE TO BANGWEOLO. 455 Bouth seem in favor of its being the Nile. Great westing is in favor of the Congo." " 24-r\r.TiCN DEPAR^WiciMi TO— ;^. ^T ' -^in Libroii loanTeriod 1 HOME USE 4 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW WT,, :.■<.- rU. UNiyERSnyO^CALiroRNIA BERKELEY FORM no! DD6: 60m, 12/80 BERKELEY, CA 94720 ®S L,D 21A-60m-7,'66 (G4427sl0)476B General Library University of California Berkeley GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY BDDQ7abaaa UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA LIBRARY x,