be 350 miles long, with a breadth varying from sixteen to fifty miles. They were the first white men to set foot on its northern shores. The natives were the most unciviUsed they had seen. Stewart soon arranged to start a store for the benefit of the natives. The African Lakes Corporation, Ltd., 'the first of all the trading companies in that region, was formed, and did excellent civilising service' (Stewart's Dawn in the Dark Continent, p. 219). The corporation acquired a capital of 150,000l., and proved of immense service in fighting the slave traffic. Stewart, who returned to Lovedale at the end of 1877, left Livingstonia, which he modelled on Lovedale, to the guidance of Dr. Laws. Its prosperity grew quickly. The mission now consists of a network of stations stretching for many miles along the western shore of Lake Nyasa as well as inland, while Livingstonia itself has become a city of modern type.
From 1878 to 1890 Stewart chiefly devoted his energies to the consolidation and expansion of Lovedale, alike on its missionary and its educational sides. Sir George Grey [q. v.] obtained for him a government grant of 3000l. for industrial training there. He erected technical work-shops, initiated a mission farm of 2000 acres, and founded a mission hospital, the first in South Africa, where native nurses and hospital assistants might be trained, and a medical school begun.
Stewart became a leading authority on all native questions, and was frequently consulted by Sir Bartle Frere [q. v.]. General Gordon [q. v.], Cecil Rhodes [q. v. Suppl. II], and Lord Milner. In 1888 he helped to draft a bill codifying the native criminal law, and did much to ensure the adoption by Cape Colony of the principle that legally the native has equal rights with the white man. In 1904 he gave evidence before the Native Affairs Commission, stoutly opposing the creed of Ethiopianism, which aimed at setting up in Africa a self-supporting and self-governing native church.
In September 1891 Stewart, amid many difficulties and dangers, established a new mission on the model of Lovedale, within the territories of the Imperial British East Africa Company, now the East African Protectorate, about 200 miles from Mombasa. This East African mission is now large and flourishing.
Returning to Scotland, Stewart in the winter of 1892-3 gave a course of lectures on evangelistic theology to the divinity students of the Free Church of Scotland in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen; in 1892 he received from Glasgow University the honorary degree of D.D., and in 1899 he was moderator of the general assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. Later in 1899, at the seventh general council of the Alliance of Reformed Churches at Washington, U.S.A., he pleaded for a union of all presbyterian churches in the mission fleld, in an address entitled 'Yesterday and To-day in Africa.'
Stewart defended British action in the Boer war (1899-1901) on the ground that the Transvaal government was incurably corrupt and injurious to the interests of the natives and the country. In 1902 he delivered the Duff missionary lectures in Edinburgh, which, published as 'Dawn in the Dark Continent' (1903), gave a popular account of what missionary societies have accomplished in Africa, and is used as a text-book in mission circles in Great Britain and America. He revisited America in 1903 to examine new methods in negro colleges. Returning to Lovedale in April 1904, he presided over the first General Missionary Conference at Johannesburg (June). In November 1904 and January 1905 he was at Cape Town with a view to furthering native education. He died at Lovedale on 21 Dec. 1905, and was buried on Christmas Day on Sandili's Kop, a rocky eminence about a mile and a half east of Lovedale. At the funeral all races and denominations in South Africa were represented.
A presentation portrait, painted by John Bowie, A.R.S.A., Edinburgh, now hangs in the United Free Church Assembly Hall of Edinburgh.
In November 1866 he married Mina, youngest daughter of Alexander Stephen, shipbuilder, of Glasgow. She survived him, having borne him one son and eight daughters.
As the founder of Livingstonia, Stewart played no mean part as an empire-builder. Lord Milner described him as 'the biggest human in South Africa.' Besides the works cited, Stewart was author of : 1. 'Lovedale, Past and Present,' 1884. 2. 'Lovedale Illustrated,' 1894. 3. 'Livingstonia, its Origin,' 1894. 4. 'Kafir Phrase Book and Vocabulary,' 1898. 5. 'Outlines of Kafir Grammar,' 1902. He was also a contributor to religious and geographical periodicals, and founded and edited the newspapers, 'Lovedale News' and the ’Christian Express,' both of which are pubhshed at Lovedale and have well served the mission cause.
