LIVINGSTONE, DAVID, African traveler and missionary% was a native of Scotland, and was born at Blantyre, in Lanarkshire, in the year 1817. At the age of ten he became a " piecer" in a cotton-factory, and for many years was engaged in hard work as an operative. An evening-school furnished him with the 'opportunity of acquiring some knowledge of Latin and Greek, and finally, after attending a course of medicine at Glasgow university-, and the theological lectures of the late Dr. Wardlaw, professor of theology- to the Scotch Independents, he offered himself to the London missionary soci ety, by whom he was ordained as a medical missionary in 1840. In the summer of that year he landed at Port Natal in s. Africa. Circumstances made him acquainted with the rev. Robert Moffat, hirnself a distinguished missionary, and whose daughter he subsequently married. For 16 years Livincestone proved himself a faithful and zealous servant of the London missionary society. ''The two most important results achieved by him in this period were the discovery of lake Ngami (Aug. 1, 1849), and his crossing the continent of s. Africa, from the Zambesi (or Leeambye) to the Congo, and thence to Loando, the capital of Angola, which took him about 18 months (from Jan., 1853, to June, 1854). In Sept. of the same year lie left Loando on his return across the conti nent, reached Linzanti (in lat. 18° 17' s., and long. 23° 50' e.), the capital of the great Makololo tribe, and from thence proceeded along-the banks of the Leeambye to Quilt mane on the Indian ocean, which he reached May 20, 1856. He then took ship for England. In 1857 Livingstone published his lifissionary Travels and Researches 2:4 South Africa, a work of great interest and value. Returning in 1858 as British consul al Quili mane, he spent several years in further exploring the Zambesi, in ascending the Shire, and discoverimr lake Shirwa and lake Nyassa—the Maravi of the old maps. A narra
tive of these discoveries was published during a visit he paid to England in 1864-65. In the mean time, lakes Tanganyika, Victoria. Nyanza, and Albert Nyanza had been dis covered by Burton, Speke, and Baker, but the true source of the Nile was still a prob lem. With a view to its solution, Livingstone, in 1866, entered the interior, and nothing was heard of him for two years. The communications received from him afterwards deseribe his discovery of the great water-system of the Chambeze in the elevated region to the s. of Tanganyika. It flows first w. and then turns northward, forming a succes sion of lakes, lying to the w. of the Tanganyika. To determine its course after it leaves these, whether it joins the Nile or turns westward and forms the Congo, was the grand task which Livingstone seemed resolved to accomplish or perish. He was much baffled by inundations, the hostility of the slave-dealers, and by the want of supplies, which were habitually delayed and plundered by those who conveyed them. When nothing certain had been heard of him for some time, Mr. Stanley, of the New York Herald, boldly pushed his way from Zanzibar to Ujiji, where, in 1871, he found the traveler in great destitution. On parting. with Mr. Stanley, Livingstone started on a fresh exploration of the river-system of the Chambeze or Lualaba, convinced that it would turn out to be the head-waters of the Nile. In May, 1873, however, he died at 'Ella, beyond lake Bemba. His body was brought home in April. 1874, and interred in 'West minster abbey. His Last Journals were preserved, and published in Dec., 1874.