Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone (fun to read .txt) 📕

Moshua Rivulet. 15 45 33 32 22 0 5 Feb. 9 1 2

Tangwe Rivulet, or 16 13 38 32 29 0 Feb. 20

Sand River, 1/4 mile broad.

Tete or Nyungwe station, 16 9 3 33 28 0 Mar. 2, 17 4 8

house of commandant.

Hot Spring Makorozi, 15 59 35 . . . Mar. 13

about 10 m. up the river.

Below Tete, island of 16 34 46 32 51 0 Apr. 23 1 .

Mozambique, on the Zambesi.

Island of Nkuesa. 17 1 6 . . . Apr. 25

Senna, 300 yards S.W. 17 27 1 34 57 0 6 |April 27| 2 6

of the Mud Fort on the bank |May 8, 9|

of the river.

Islet of Shupanga. 17 51 38 . . . May 12

Small islet in the middle of 17 59 21 . . . May 13

the Zambesi, and six or eight

miles below Shupanga.

Mazaro or Mutu, 18 3 37 35 57 0 May 14 2 2

where the Kilimane River

branches off the Zambesi.

Kilimane Village, 17 53 8 36 40 0 7 June 13, 25, 27 1 6

at the house of Senor

Galdino Jose Nunes,

colonel of militia.

Positions. Latitude. Longitude. Date. No. of Sets South. East. of Lunar Distances.

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1 Probably 20d 25'. -- I. A.

2 Probably 20d 10'. -- I. A.

3 Probably 28d 56'. -- I. A.

4 Probably 31d 46' 30". -- I. A.

5 Probably 31d 56'. -- I. A.

6 Probably 35d 10' 15". -- I. A.

7 Probably 36d 56' 8". -- I. A.

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Appendix. -- Book Review in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February, 1858.

[This review is provided to allow the reader to view Livingstone's achievement as it was seen by a contemporary. -- A. L., 1997.]

Livingstone's Travels in South Africa.*

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`Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa'.

By David Livingstone, LL.D., D.C.L. 1 vol. 8vo.

With Maps and numerous Illustrations. Harper and Brothers.

`Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa'.

By Henry Barth, Ph.D., D.C.L. 3 vols. 8vo.

With Map and numerous Illustrations. Harper and Brothers.

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These two works, each embodying the results of years of travel and research, entirely revolutionize all our theories as to the geographical and physical character of Central Africa. Instead of lofty mountains and sandy deserts, we have a wide basin, or rather series of basins, with lakes and great rivers, and a soil fertile even when compared with the abounding exuberance of our own Western valleys and prairies.

Barth, traveling southward from the Mediterranean, explored this region till within eight degrees of the equator. Livingstone, traveling northward from the Cape of Good Hope, approached the equator from the south as nearly as Barth did from the north. He then traversed the whole breadth of the continent diagonally from the west to the east.

His special researches cover the entire space between the eighth and fifteenth parallels of south latitude. Between the regions explored by Barth and Livingstone lies an unexplored tract extending eight degrees on each side of the equator, and occupying the whole breadth of the continent from east to west. Lieutenant Burton, famous for his expedition to Mecca and Medina, set out from Zanzibar a few months since, with the design of traversing this very region.

If he succeeds in his purpose his explorations will fill up the void between those of Barth and Livingstone.

Dr. Livingstone, with whose travels we are at present specially concerned, is no ordinary man. The son of a Presbyterian deacon and small trader in Glasgow; set to work in a cotton factory at ten years old; buying a Latin grammar with his first earnings; working from six in the morning till eight at night, then attending evening-school till ten, and pursuing his studies till midnight; at sixteen a fair classical scholar, with no inconsiderable reading in books of science and travels, gained, sentence by sentence, with the book open before him on his spinning-jenny; botanizing and geologizing on holidays and at spare hours; poring over books of astrology till he was startled by inward suggestions to sell his soul to the Evil One as the price of the mysterious knowledge of the stars; soundly flogged by the good deacon his father by way of imparting to him a liking for Boston's "Fourfold State"

and Wilberforce's "Practical Christianity"; then convinced by the writings of the worthy Thomas Dick that there was no hostility between Science and Religion, embracing with heart and mind the doctrines of evangelical Christianity, and resolving to devote his life to their extension among the heathen -- such are the leading features of the early life of David Livingstone.

He would equip himself for the warfare and afterward fight with the powers of darkness at his own cost. So at the age of nineteen -- a slim, loose-jointed lad -- he commenced the study of medicine and Greek, and afterward of theology, in the University of Glasgow, attending lectures in the winter, paying his expenses by working as a cotton-spinner during the summer, without receiving a farthing of aid from any one.

His purpose was to go to China as a medical missionary, and he would have accomplished his object solely by his own efforts had not some friends advised him to join the London Missionary Society.

He offered himself, with a half hope that his application would be rejected, for it was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to work his own way to become dependent in a measure upon others.

By the time when his medical and theological studies were completed, the Opium War had rendered it inexpedient to go to China, and his destination was fixed for Southern Africa.

He reached his field of labor in 1840. Having tarried for three months at the head station at Kuruman, and taken to wife a daughter of the well-known missionary Mr. Moffat, he pushed still farther into the country, and attached himself to the band of Sechele, chief of the Bakwains, or "Alligators", a Bechuana tribe.

Here, cutting himself for six months wholly off from all European society, he gained an insight into the language, laws, modes of life, and habits of the Bechuanas, which proved of incalculable advantage in all his subsequent intercourse with them.

Sechele gave a ready ear to the missionary's instructions.

"Did your forefathers know of a future judgment?" he asked.

"They knew of it," replied the missionary, who proceeded to describe the scenes of the last great day.

"You startle me: these words make all my bones to shake; I have no more strength in me. But my forefathers were living at the same time yours were; and how is it that they did not send them word about these terrible things? They all passed away into darkness without knowing whither they were going."

Mr. Moffat had translated the Bible into the Bechuana language, which he had reduced to writing, and Sechele set himself to learn to read, with so much assiduity that he began to grow corpulent from lack of his accustomed exercise. His great favorite was Isaiah.

"He was a fine man, that Isaiah; he knew how to speak," he was wont to say, using the very words applied by the Glasgow Professor to the Apostle Paul.

Having become convinced of the truth of Christianity, he wished his people also to become Christians. "I will call them together," he said, "and with our rhinoceros-skin whips we will soon make them all believe together."

Livingstone, mindful, perhaps, of the ill success of his worthy father in the matter of Wilberforce on "Practical Christianity", did not favor the proposed line of argument. He was, in fact, in no great haste to urge Sechele to make a full profession of faith by receiving the ordinance of baptism; for the chief had, in accordance with the customs of his people, taken a number of wives, of whom he must, in this case, put away all except one.

The head-wife was a greasy old jade, who was in the habit of attending church without her gown, and when her husband sent her home to make her toilet, she would pout out her thick lips in unutterable disgust at his new-fangled notions, while some of the other wives were the best scholars in the school. After a while Sechele took the matter into his own hands, sent his supernumerary wives back to their friends -- not empty-handed -- and was baptized.

Mr. Livingstone's station was in the region since rendered famous by the hunting exploits of Gordon Cumming. He vouches for the truth of the wonderful stories told by that redoubtable Nimrod, who visited him during each of his excursions. He himself, indeed, had an adventure with a lion quite equal to any thing narrated by Cumming or Andersson, the result of which was one dead lion, two Bechuanas fearfully wounded, his own arm marked with eleven distinct teeth-marks, the bone crunched to splinters, and