David 1813-1873 Livingstone

The Slavers in Lualaka.

By Sir Roderick Murchison and his other staunch friends Livingstone was as warmly welcomed as ever. When Murchison proposed to him that he go out again, although he seems to have had a desire to spend the re mainder of his days at home, the prospect was too tempting to be rejected. He was appointed British consul to Central Africa with out a salary, and government contributed only L5oo to the expedi tion. The chief help came from private friends. During the latter part of the expedition government granted him ii,000, but that, when he learned of it, was devoted to his great undertaking. The Geographical Society contributed £500. The two main objects of the expedition were the suppression of slavery by means of civilizing influences, and the ascertainment of the watershed in the region between Nyasa and Tanganyika. At first Livingstone thought the Nile problem had been all but solved by Speke, Baker and Burton, but the idea grew upon him that the Nile sources must be sought farther south, and his last journey became in the end a forlorn hope in search of the "fountains" of Herodotus.

Leaving England in the middle of August 1865, via Bombay, Livingstone arrived at Zanzibar on Jan. 20, 1866. He was landed at the mouth of the Rovuma on March 22, and started for the interior on April 4. His company consisted of thirteen sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine African boys from Nasik school, Bombay, and four boys from the Shire region, besides camels, buffaloes, mules and donkeys. This imposing outfit soon melted away to four or five boys. Rounding the south end of Lake Nyasa, Living stone struck in a north-northwest direction for the south end of Lake Tanganyika, over country much of which had not pre viously been explored. The Loangwa was crossed on Dec. 14, 1866. On Christmas day Livingstone lost his four goats, a loss which he felt very keenly, and the medicine chest was stolen in January 1867. Fever came upon him, and for a time was his almost con stant companion; this, and other serious ailments, which he had no medicine to counteract, told on even his iron frame. The Zambezi was crossed on Jan. 28, and the south end of Tangan yika reached on March 31. Here, much to his vexation, he got into the company of Arab slave dealers (among them being Tippoo Tib) by whom his movements were hampered; but he succeeded in reaching Lake Mweru (Nov. 1867). After visiting Lake Mofwa and the Lualaba, which he believed was the upper part of the Nile, he, on July 18, 1868, discovered Lake Bangweulu. Pro ceeding up the west coast of Tanganyika, he reached Ujiji on March 14, 1869, "a ruckle of bones." Livingstone recrossed Tanganyika in July, and passed through the country of the Manyema, but baffled partly by the natives, partly by the slave hunters, and partly by his long illnesses it was not till March 29, 1871 that he succeeded in reaching the Lualaba, at the town of Nyangwe, where he stayed four months, vainly trying to get a canoe to take him across. It was here that a party

of Arab slavers, without warning or provocation, assembled one day when the market was busiest and commenced shooting the women, hundreds being killed or drowned in trying to escape. Livingstone had "the impression that he was in hell," but was helpless, though his "first impulse was to pistol the murderers." The account of this scene which he sent home roused indignation in England to such a degree as to lead to determined and partially successful efforts to get the sultan of Zanzibar to suppress the trade. In sickened disgust the weary traveller made his way back to Ujiji, which he reached on Oct. 13.

Stanley.

Not long after his arrival in Ujiji he was inspired with new life by the timely arrival of H. M. Stanley, the richly laden almoner of Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald. With Stanley, Livingstone explored the north end of Tanganyika, and proved conclusively that the Rusizi runs into and not out of it In the end of the year the two started eastward for Unyamwezi, where Stanley provided Livingstone with an ample supply of goods, and bade him farewell. Stanley left on March 15, 1872, and after Livingstone had waited wearily in Unyamwezi for five months, a troop of fifty-seven men and boys arrived, good and faithful fellows on the whole, selected by Stanley himself. Thus attended, he started on Aug. 15 for Lake Bangweulu, proceeding along the east side of Tanganyika. His old enemy dysentery soon found him out. In January 1873 the party got among the endless spongy jungle on the east of Lake Bangweulu, Living stone's object being to go round by the south and away west to find the "fountains." The doctor got worse and worse, and in the middle of April he had to be carried in a rude litter. On April 29 Chitambo's village on the Lulimala, in Ilala, on the south shore of the lake, was reached.

The last entry in the journal is on April 27. "Knocked up quite, and remain—recover--sent to buy mulch goats. We are on the banks of the Molilamo." On April 3o he with difficulty wound up his watch, and early on the morning of May r the boys found "the great master," as they called him, kneeling by the side of his bed, dead. His faithful men preserved the body in the sun as well as they could, and, wrapping it carefully up, carried it and all his papers, instruments and other things across Africa to Zanzibar. It was borne to England with all honour, and on April 18, 1874, was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey. His faith fully kept journals during these seven years' wanderings were published under the title of the Last Journals of David Living stone in Central Africa, in 1874, edited by his old friend Horace Waller. In Old Chitambo's the time and place of his death are commemorated by a permanent monument, which replaced in 1902 the tree on which his native followers had recorded the event.