Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/746

722 LIVINGSTONE days at home, the prospect was too tempting to be rejected. He was appointed H.M. consul to central Africa without a salary, and Government contributed only 500 to the expedition. The chief help came from private friends. During the latter part of the expedition Government granted him 1000, 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 Nyassa and Tanganyika. At first Living stone 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 January 28, 1866. He was landed at the mouth of the Kovuma on March 22, and started for the interior on April 4. His company consisted of thirteen sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine African boys from Nassick 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 Nyassa, Livingstone struck in a north-north west direction for the south end of Lake Tanganyika, over country much of which had not previously been explored. The Loangwa was crossed on December 15, and on Christ mas day Livingstone lost his four goats, a loss which he felt very keenly, and the medicine chest was stolen in January 1868. Fever came upon him, and for a time was his almost constant companion ; this, with the fearful dysentery and dreadful ulcers and other ailments which subsequently attacked him, and which he had no medicine to counteract, no doubt told fatally on even his iron frame. The Chambeze was crossed on January 28, and the south end of Tanganyika reached March 31. Here, much to his vexation, he got into the company of Arab slave dealers, by whom his movements were hampered ; but he succeeded in reaching Lake Moero. After visiting Lake Mofvva and the Lualaba, which he believed was the upper part of the Nile, he, on July 18, discovered Lake Bangweolo. Pro ceeding up the west coast of Tanganyika, he reached Ujiji on March 14, 1869, "a ruckle of bones." Supplies had been forwarded to him at Ujiji, but had been knavishly made away with by those to whose care they had been entrusted. Livingstone recrossed Tanganyika in July, and through the country of the Manyuema he tried in vain, for a whole year, to reach and cross the Lualaba, baffled partly by the natives, partly by the slave hunters, and partly by his long illnesses. It was, indeed, 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 clay whpn the market was busiest and commenced shooting down the poor 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 to a considerable extent 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 October 13. Five days after his arrival in Ujiji he was cheered and inspired with new life, and completely set upagain, as he said, by the timely arrival of Mr H. M. Stanley, the richly laden almoner of Mr Gordon Bsnnett, of the New York Herald. Mr Stanley s residence with Livingstone was almost the only bright episode of these last sad years. With Stanley Livingstone explored the north end of Tanganyika, and proved conclusively that the Lusize runs into and not out of it. In the end of the year the two started eastward for Unyanyembe, 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 at Unyanyembe 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 August 15 for Lake Bangweolo, 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 Bangweolo, Livingstone s object being to go round by the south and away west to find the " foun tains." Vexatious delays took place, and the journey became one constant wade below, under an almost endless pour of rain from above. The doctor got worse and worse, but no idea of danger seems to have occurred to him. At last, in the middle of April, he had unwillingly to submit 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 April 27 : " Knocked up quite, and remain recover sent to buy milch goats. We are on the banks of the Molilamo." On April 30 he with difficulty wound up his watch, and early on the morning of May 1 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 OH April 18, 1874, was deposited in Westminster Abbey, amid tokens of mourning and admiration such as England accords only to her greatest sons. Government bore all the funeral expenses. His faithfully kept journals during these seven years wanderings were published under the title of the Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa, in 1874, edited by his old friend the Rev. Horace Waller. In spite of his sufferings and the many compulsory delays, Livingstone s discoveries during these last years were both extensive and of prime importance as leading to a solution of African hydrography. No single African explorer has ever done so much for African geography as Livingstone during his thirty years work. His travels covered one- third of the continent, extending from the Cape to near the equator, and from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Livingstone was no hurried traveller ; he did his journeying leisurely, carefully observing and recording all that was worthy of note, with rare geographical instinct and the eye of a trained scientific observer, studying the ways of the people, eating their food, living in their huts, and sympa thizing with their joys and sorrows. It will be long till the tradition of his sojourn dies out among the native tribes, who almost, without exception, treated Livingstone as a superior being; his treatment of them was always tender, gentle, and gentlemanly. But the direct gains to geography and science are perhaps not the greatest results of Living stone s journeys. He conceived, developed, and carried out to success a noble and many-sided purpose, with an unflinch ing and self-sacrificing energy and courage that entitle him to take rank among the great and strong who single- handed have been able materially to influence human pro gress, and the advancement of knowledge. His example and his death have acted like an inspiration, filling Africa with an army of explorers and missionaries, and raising in Europe so powerful a feeling against the slave trade that it may be considered as having received its deathblow. Personally Livingstone was a pure and tender-hearted man,