David 1813-1873 Livingstone

LIVINGSTONE, DAVID (1813-1873), Scottish mission ary and explorer in Africa, was born on March 19, 1813, at the village of Blantyre Works, in Lanarkshire, Scotland. David was the second child of his parents, Neil Livingston (for so he spelled his name, as did his son for many years) and Agnes Hunter.

At the age of ten David entered the neighbouring cotton-mill, and by strenuous efforts qualified himself at the age of twenty three to undertake a college curriculum. He attended for two sessions the medical and the Greek classes in Anderson's College, Glasgow, and also a theological class. In September 1838 he went up to London, and was accepted by the London Missionary Society as a candidate. He took his medical degree in the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow in November 1840. Liv ingstone had set his heart on China, and it was a great disappoint ment to him that the society finally decided to send him to Africa.

The Exploring Missionary.-Livingstone

sailed from Eng land on Dec. 8, 1840. From Algoa Bay he made direct for Kuruman, Bechuanaland, the mission station established by Robert Moffat twenty years before. The next two years Living stone spent in travelling about the country to the northwards, in search of a suitable outpost for settlement. During these two years he became convinced that the success of the white mission ary in a field like Africa was not to be reckoned by the tale of doubtful conversions he could send home each year-that the proper work for such men was that of pioneering, opening up and starting new ground, leaving native agents to work it out in detail. The whole of his subsequent career was a development of this idea. He selected the valley of Mabotsa, on one of the sources of the Limpopo river, Zoo m. north-east of Kuruman, as his first station. Shortly after his settlement here he was attacked by a lion which crushed his left arm. The arm was imperfectly set, and it was a source of trouble to him at times throughout his life.

To a house, mainly built by himself at Mabotsa, Livingstone in 1844 brought home his wife, Mary Moffat, the daughter of Moffat of Kuruman. Here he laboured till 1846, when he re moved to Chonuane, 4o m. farther north, the chief place of the,Bakwain or Bakwena tribe under Sechele. In 1847 he again removed to Kolobeng, about 4o m. westwards, the whole tribe following their missionary. With two English sportsmen, William C. Oswell and Mungo Murray, he undertook a journey to Lake Ngami, which had never yet been seen by a white man. Crossing

the Kalahari Desert, of which Livingstone gave the first detailed account, they reached the lake on Aug. 1, 1849. In April next year he made an attempt to reach Sebituane, who lived 200 m. beyond the lake, this time in company with his wife and children, but again got no farther than the lake, as the children were seized with fever. A year later, April 1851, Livingstone, again accom panied by his family and Oswell, set out, this time with the inten tion of settling among the Makololo for a period. At last he suc ceeded, and reached the Chobe (Kwando), a southern tributary of the Zambezi, and in the end of June reached the Zambezi itself at the town of Sesheke. Leaving the Chobe on Aug. 13, the party reached Cape Town in April 1852. Livingstone may now be said to have completed the first period of his career in Africa, the period in which the work of the missionary was predominant, but it must be remembered that he regarded himself to the last as a pioneer missionary, whose work was to open up the country to others.

Loanda and Victoria Falls.

Having seen his family off to England, Livingstone left Cape Town on June 8, 1852, and reached Linyante, the capital of the Makololo, on the Chobe on May 23, 1853, being cordially received by Sekeletu and his people. His first object was to find healthy high land for a station. Ascending the Zambezi, he found no place free from the tsetse fly, and there fore resolved to discover a route to the interior from either the west or east coast. He started, with 27 natives, from Linyante on Nov. 11, 1853, and, by ascending the Liba, Lake Dilolo was reached on Feb. 20, 1854. On May 31 the expedition reached Loanda, Livingstone, however, being all but dead from fever, semi-starvation and dysentery. From Loanda Livingstone sent his astronomical observations to Sir Thomas Maclear at the Cape, and an account of his journey to the Royal Geographical Society, which in May 1855 awarded him its patron's medal. Loanda was left on Sept. 20, 1854, but Livingstone lingered long about the Portuguese settlements. Making a slight detour to the north to Kabango, the party reached Lake Dilolo on June 13, 1855. Here Livingstone made a careful study of the hydrography of the coun try. He "now for the first time apprehended the true form of the river systems and the continent," and his conclusions have been essentially confirmed. The party returned to Linyante in the begin ning of September.