(18th January, 1849), he says:
“Most of our boxes which come to us from England are opened, and usually lightened of their contents. You will perhaps remember one in which Sechele’s cloak was. It contained, on leaving Glasgow, besides the articles which came here, a parcel of surgical instruments which I ordered, and of course paid for. One of these was a valuable cupping apparatus. The value at which the instruments were purchased for me was L4, 12s., their real value much more.
“The box which you kindly packed for us and despatched to Glasgow has, we hear, been gutted by the Custom-House thieves, and only a very few plain karosses left in it. When we see a box which has been opened we have not half the pleasure which we otherwise should in unpacking it…. Can you give me any information how these annoyances may be prevented? Or must we submit to it as one of the crooked things of this life, which Solomon says cannot be made straight?”
Not only in these scenes of active missionary labor, but everywhere else, Livingstone was in the habit of preaching to the natives, and conversing seriously with them on religion, his favorite topics being the love of Christ, the Fatherhood of God, the resurrection, and the last judgment. His preaching to them, in Dr. Moffat’s judgment, was highly effective. It was simple, scriptural, conversational, went straight to the point, was well fitted to arrest the attention, and remarkably adapted to the capacity of the people. To his father he writes (5th July, 1848): “For a long time I felt much depressed after preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ to apparently insensible hearts; but now I like to dwell on the love of the great Mediator, for it always warms my own heart, and I know that the gospel is the power of God–the great means which He employs for the regeneration of our ruined world.”
In the beginning of 1849 Livingstone made the first of a series of journeys to the north, in the hope of planting native missionaries among the people. Not to interrupt the continuous account of these journeys, we may advert here to a visit paid to him at Kolobeng, on his return from the first of them, in the end of the year, by Mr. Freeman of the London Missionary Society, who was at that time visiting the African stations. Mr. Freeman, to Livingstone’s regret, was in favor of keeping up all Colonial stations, because the London Society alone paid attention to the black population. He was not much in sympathy with Livingstone.
“Mr. Freeman,” he writes confidentially to Mr. Watt, “gave us no hope to expect any new field to be taken up. ‘Expenditure to be reduced in Africa’ was the word, when I proposed the new region beyond us, and there is nobody willing to go except Mr. Moffat and myself. Six hundred miles additional land-carriage, mosquitoes in myriads, sparrows by the million, an epidemic frequently fatal, don’t look well in a picture. I am 270 miles from Kuruman; land-carriage for all that we use makes a fearful inroad into the L100 of salary, and then 600 miles beyond this makes one think unutterable things, for nobody likes to call for more salary. I think the Indian salary ought to be given to those who go into the tropics. I have a very strong desire to go and reduce the new language to writing, but I cannot perform impossibilities. I don’t think it quite fair for the Churches to expect their messenger to live, as if he were the Prodigal Son, on the husks that the swine do eat, but I should be ashamed to say so to any one but yourself.”
“I cannot perform impossibilities,” said Livingstone; but few men could come so near doing it. His activity of mind and body at this outskirt of civilization was wonderful. A Jack-of-all-trades, he is building houses and schools, cultivating gardens, scheming in every manner of way how to get water, which in the remarkable drought of the season becomes scarcer and scarcer; as a missionary he is holding meetings every other night, preaching on Sundays, and taking such other opportunities as he can find to gain the people to Christ; as a medical man he is dealing with the more difficult cases of disease, those which baffle the native doctors; as a man of science he is taking observations, collecting specimens, thinking out geographical, geological, meteorological, and other problems bearing on the structure and condition of the continent; as a missionary statesman he is planning how the actual force might be disposed of to most advantage, and is looking round in this direction and in that, over hundreds of miles, for openings for native agents; and to promote these objects he is writing long letters to the Directors, to the _Missionary Chronicle_ to the _British Banner_, to private friends, to any one likely to take an interest in his plans.
But this does not exhaust his labors. He is deeply interested in philological studies, and is writing on the Sichuana language:
“I have been hatching a grammar of the Sichuana language,” he writes to Mr. Watt. “It is different in structure from any other language, except the ancient Egyptian. Most of the changes are effected by means of prefixes or affixes, the radical remaining unchanged. Attempts have been made to form grammars, but all have gone on the principle of establishing a resemblance between Sichuana, Latin, and Greek; mine is on the principle of analysing the language without reference to any others. Grammatical terms are only used when I cannot express my meaning in any other way. The analysis renders the whole language very simple, and I believe the principle elicited extends to most of the languages between this and Egypt. I wish to know whether I could get 20 or 30 copies printed for private distribution at an expense not beyond my means. It would be a mere tract, and about the size of this letter when folded, 40 or 50 pages perhaps[28]. Will you ascertain the cost, and tell me whether, in the event of my continuing hot on the subject half a year hence, you would be the corrector of the press?… Will you examine catalogues to find whether there is any dictionary of ancient Egyptian within my means, so that I might purchase and compare? I should not grudge two or three pounds for it. Professor Vater has written on it, but I do not know what dictionary he consulted. One Tattam has written a Coptic grammar; perhaps that has a vocabulary, and might serve my purpose. I see Tattam advertised by John Russell Smith, 4 Old Compton Street, Soho, London,–‘Tattam (H.), _Lexicon Egyptiaco-Latinum e veteribus linguae Egyptiacae monumentis; _ thick 8vo, bds., 10s., Oxf., 1835.’ Will you purchase the above for me?”
[Footnote 28: This gives a correct idea of the length of many of his letters.]
At Mabotsa and Chonuane the Livingstones had spent but a little time; Kolobeng may be said to have been the only permanent home they ever had. During these years several of their children were born, and it was the only considerable period of their lives when both had their children about them. Looking back afterward on this period, and its manifold occupations, whilst detained in Manyuema, in the year 1870, Dr. Livingstone wrote the following striking words:
The heart that felt this one regret in looking back to this busy time must have been true indeed to the instincts of a parent. But Livingstone’s case was no exception to that mysterious law of our life in this world, by which, in so many things, we learn how to correct our errors only after the opportunity is gone. Of all the crooks in his lot, that which gave him so short an opportunity of securing the affections and moulding the character of his children seems to have been the hardest to bear. His long detention at Manyuema appears, as we shall see hereafter, to have been spent by him in learning more completely the lesson of submission to the will of God; and the hard trial of separation from his family, entailing on them what seemed irreparable loss, was among the last of his sorrows over which he was able to write the words with which he closes the account of his wife’s death in the _Zambesi and its Tributaries_,–“FIAT, DOMINE, VOLUNTUS TUA!”
CHAPTER VI
KOLOBENG _continued_–LAKE ‘NGAMI.
A.D. 1849-1852.
Kolobeng failing through drought–Sebituane’s country and the Lake ‘Ngami–Livingstone sets out with Messrs. Oswell and Murray–Rivers Zouga and Tamanak’le–Old ideas of the interior revolutionized–Enthusiasm of Livingstone–Discovers Lake ‘Ngami–Obliged to return–Prize from Royal Geographical Society–Second expedition to the lake, with wife and children–Children attacked by fever–Again obliged to return–Conviction as to healthier spot beyond–Idea of finding passage to sea either west or east–Birth and death of a child–Family visits Kuruman–Third expedition, again with family–He hopes to find a new locality–Perils of the journey–He reaches Sebituane–The chiefs illness and death–Distress of Livingstone–Mr. Oswell and he go on the Linyanti–Discovery of the Upper Zambesi–No locality found for settlement–More extended journey necessary–He returns–Birth of Oswald Livingstone–Crisis in Livingstone’s life–His guiding principles–New plans–The Makololo begin to practice slave-trade–New thoughts about commerce–Letters to Directors–The Bakwains–_Pros_ and _cons_ of his new plan–His unabated missionary zeal–He goes with his family to the Cape–His literary activity.
When Sechele turned back after going so far with Livingstone eastward, it appeared that his courage had failed him. “Will you go with me northward?” Livingstone once asked him, and it turned out that he was desirous to do so. He wished to see Sebituane, a great chief living to the north of Lake ‘Ngami, who had saved his life in his infancy, and otherwise done him much service. Sebituane was a man of great ability, who had brought a vast number of tribes into subjection, and now ruled over a very extensive territory, being one of the greatest magnates of Africa. Livingstone, too, had naturally a strong desire to become acquainted with so influential a man. The fact of his living near the lake revived the project that had slumbered for years in his mind–to be the first of the missionaries who should look on its waters. At Kolobeng, too, the settlement was in such straits, owing to the excessive drought which dried up the very river, that the people would be compelled to leave it and settle elsewhere. The want of water, and consequently of food, in the gardens, obliged the men to be absent collecting locusts, so that there was hardly any one to come either to church or school. Even the observance of the Sabbath broke down. If Kolobeng should have to be abandoned, where would Livingstone go next? It was certainly worth his while to look if a suitable locality could not be found in Sebituane’s territory. He had resolved that he would not stay with the Bakwains always. If the new region were not suitable for himself, he might find openings for native teachers; at all events, he would go northward and see. Just before he started, messengers came to him from Lechulatebe, chief of the people of the lake, asking him to visit his country, and giving such an account of the quantity of ivory that the cupidity of the Bakwain guides was roused, and they became quite eager to be there.
On 1st June, 1849, Livingstone accordingly set out from Kolobeng. Sechele was not of the party, but two English hunting friends accompanied him, Mr. Oswell and Mr. Murray–Mr. Oswell generously defraying the cost of the guides. Sekomi, a neighboring chief who secretly wished the expedition to fail, lest his monopoly of the ivory should be broken up, remonstrated with them for rushing on to certain death–they must be killed by the sun and thirst, and if he did not stop them, people would blame him for the issue. “No fear,” said Livingstone, “people will only blame our own stupidity.”
The great Kalahari desert, of which Livingstone has given so full an account, lay between them and the lake. They passed along its northeast border, and had traversed about half of the distance, when one day it seemed most unexpectedly that they had got to their journey’s end. Mr. Oswell was a little in advance, and having cleared an intervening thick belt of trees, beheld in the soft light of the setting sun what seemed a magnificent lake twenty miles in circumference; and at the sight threw his hat in the air, and raised a shout which made the Bakwains think him mad. He fancied it was ‘Ngami, and, indeed, it was a wonderful deception, caused by a large salt-pan gleaming in the light of the sun; in fact, the old, but ever new phenomenon of the mirage. The real ‘Ngami was yet 300 miles farther on.
Livingstone has given ample details of his progress in the _Missionary Travels_, dwelling especially on his joy when he reached the beautiful river Zouga, whose waters flowed from ‘Ngami. Providence frustrated an attempt to rouse ill-feeling against him on the part of two men who had been sent by Sekomi, apparently to help him, but who now went before him and circulated a report that the object of the travelers was to plunder all the tribes living on the river and the lake. Half-way up, the principal man was attacked by fever, and died; the natives thought it a judgment, and seeing through Sekomi’s reason for wishing the expedition not to succeed, they by and by became quite friendly, under Livingstone’s fair and kind treatment.
A matter of great significance in his future history occurred at the junction of the rivers Tamanak’le and Zouga:
“I inquired,” he says, “whence the Tamanak’le came. ‘Oh! from a country full of rivers,–so many, no one can tell their number, and full of large trees.’ This was the first confirmation of statements I had heard from the Bakwains who had been with Sebituane, that the country beyond was not the ‘large sandy plateau’ of the philosophers. The prospect of a highway, capable of being traversed by boats to an entirely unexplored and very populous region, grew from that time forward stronger and stronger in my mind; so much so, that when we actually came to the lake, this idea occupied such a large portion of my mental vision, that the actual discovery seemed of but little importance. I find I wrote, when the emotions caused by the magnificent prospects of the new country were first awakened in my breast, that they might subject me to the charge of enthusiasm, a charge which I deserved, as nothing good or great had ever been accomplished in the world without it[29].'”
[Footnote 29: _Missionary Travels_, p. 65.]
Twelve days after, the travelers came to the northeast end of Lake ‘Ngami, and it was on 1st August, 1849, that this fine sheet of water was beheld for the first time by Europeans. It was of such magnitude that they could not see the farther shore, and they could only guess its size from the reports of the natives that it took three days to go round it.
Lechulatebe, the chief who had sent him the invitation, was quite a young man, and his reception by no means corresponded to what the invitation implied. He had no idea of Livingstone going on to Sebituane, who lived two hundred miles farther north, and perhaps supplying him with fire-arms which would make him a more dangerous neighbor. He therefore refused Livingstone guides to Sebituane, and sent men to prevent him from crossing the river. Livingstone was not to be baulked, and worked many hours in the river trying to make a raft out of some rotten wood,–at the imminent risk of his life, as he afterward found, for the Zouga abounds with alligators. The season was now far advanced, and as Mr. Oswell volunteered to go down to the Cape and bring up a boat next year, the expedition was abandoned for the time.
Returning home by the Zouga, they had better opportunity to mark the extraordinary richness of the country, and the abundance and luxuriance of its products, both animal and vegetable. Elephants existed in crowds, and ivory was so abundant that a trader was purchasing it at the rate of ten tusks for a musket worth fifteen shillings. Two years later, after effect had been given to Livingstone’s discovery, the price had risen very greatly.
Writing to his friend Watt, he dwells with delight on the river Zouga:
“It is a glorious river; you never saw anything so grand. The banks are extremely beautiful, lined with gigantic trees, many quite new. One bore a fruit a foot in length and three inches in diameter. Another measured seventy feet in circumference. Apart from the branches it looked like a mass of granite; and then the Bakoba in their canoes–did I not enjoy sailing in them? Remember how long I have been in a parched-up land, and answer. The Bakoba are a fine frank race of men, and seem to understand the message better than any people to whom I have spoken on Divine subjects for the first time. What think you of a navigable highway into a large section of the interior? yet that the Tamanak’le is…. Who will go into that goodly land? Who? Is it not the Niger of this part of Africa?… I greatly enjoyed sailing in their canoes, rude enough things, hollowed out of the trunks of single trees, and visiting the villages along the Zouga. I felt but little when I looked on the lake; but the Zouga and Tamanak’le awakened emotions not to be described. I hope to go up the latter next year.”
The discovery of the lake and the river was communicated to the Royal Geographical Society in extracts from Livingstone’s letters to the London Missionary Society, and to his friend and former fellow-traveler, Captain Steele. In 1849 the Society voted him a sum of twenty-five guineas “for his successful journey, in company with Messrs. Oswell and Murray, across the South African desert, for the discovery of an interesting country, a fine river, and an extensive inland lake.” In addressing Dr. Tidman and Alderman Challis, who represented the London Missionary Society, the President (the late Captain, afterward Rear-Admiral, W. Smyth, R.N., who distinguished himself in early life by his journey across the Andes to Lima, and thence to the Atlantic) adverted to the value of the discoveries in themselves, and in the influence they would have on the regions beyond. He spoke also of the help which Livingstone had derived as an explorer from his influence as a missionary. The journey he had performed successfully had hitherto baffled the best-furnished travelers. In 1834, an expedition under Dr. Andrew Smith, the largest and best-appointed that ever left Cape Town, had gone as far as 23 deg. south latitude; but that proved to be the utmost distance they could reach, and they were compelled to return. Captain Sir James E. Alexander, the only scientific traveler subsequently sent out from England by the Geographical Society, in despair of the lake, and of discovery by the oft-tried eastern route, explored the neighborhood of the western coast instead[30]. The President frankly ascribed Livingstone’s success to the influence he had acquired as a missionary among the natives, and Livingstone thoroughly believed this. “The lake,” he wrote to his friend Watt, “belongs to missionary enterprise.” “Only last year,” he subsequently wrote to the Geographical Society, “a party of engineers, in about thirty wagons, made many and persevering efforts to cross the desert at different points, but though inured to the climate, and stimulated by the prospect of gain from the ivory they expected to procure, they were compelled, for want of water, to give up the undertaking.” The year after Livingstone’s first visit, Mr. Francis Galton tried, but failed, to reach the lake, though he was so successful in other directions as to obtain the Society’s gold medal in 1852.
[Footnote 30: Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xx. p. xxviii.]
Livingstone was evidently gratified at the honor paid him, and the reception of the twenty-five guineas from the Queen. But the gift had also a comical side. It carried him back to the days of his Radical youth, when he and his friends used to criticise pretty sharply the destination of the nation’s money. “The Royal Geographical Society,” he writes to his parents (4th December, 1850), “have awarded twenty-five guineas for the discovery of the lake. It is from the Queen. You must be very loyal, all of you. Next time she comes your way, shout till you are hoarse. Oh, you Radicals, don’t be thinking it came out of your pockets! Long live Victoria[31]!”
[Footnote 31: In a more serious vein he wrote in a previous letter: “I wonder you do not go to see the Queen. I was as disloyal as others when in England, for though I might have seen her in London, I never went. Do you ever pray for her?” This letter is dated 5th February, 1850, and must have been written before he heard of the prize.]
Defeated in his endeavor to reach Sebituane in 1849, Livingstone, the following season, put in practice his favorite maxim, “Try again.” He left Kolobeng in April, 1850, and this time he was accompanied by Sechele, Mebalwe, twenty Bakwains, Mrs. Livingstone, and their whole troop of infantry, which now amounted to three. Traveling in the charming climate of South Africa in the roomy wagon, at the pace of two miles and a half an hour, is not like traveling at home; but it was a proof of Livingstone’s great unwillingness to be separated from his family, that he took them with him, notwithstanding the risk of mosquitoes, fever, and want of water. The people of Kolobeng were so engrossed at the time with their employments, that till harvest was over, little missionary work could be done.
The journey was difficult, and on the northern branch of the Zouga many trees had to be cut down to allow the wagons to pass. The presence of a formidable enemy was reported on the banks of the Tamanak’le,–the tsetse-fly, whose bite is so fatal to oxen. To avoid it, another route had to be chosen. When they got near the lake, it was found that fever had recently attacked a party of Englishmen, one of whom had died, while the rest recovered under the care of Dr. and Mrs. Livingstone. Livingstone took his family to have a peep at the lake; “the children,” he wrote, “took to playing in it as ducklings do. Paidling in it was great fun.” Great fun to them, who had seen little enough water for a while; and in a quiet way, great fun to their father too,–his own children “paidling” in his own lake! He was beginning to find that in a missionary point of view, the presence of his wife and children was a considerable advantage; it inspired the natives with confidence, and promoted tender feelings and kind relations. The chief, Lechulatebe, was at last propitiated at a considerable sacrifice, having taken a fancy to a valuable rifle of Livingstone’s, the gift of a friend, which could not be replaced. The chief vowed that if he got it he would give Livingstone everything he wished, and protect and feed his wife and children into the bargain, while he went on to Sebituane. Livingstone at once handed him the gun. “It is of great consequence,” he said, “to gain the confidence of these fellows at the beginning.” It was his intention that Mrs. Livingstone and the children should remain at Lechulatebe’s until he should have returned. But the scheme was upset by an outburst of fever. Among others, two of the children were attacked. There was no help but to go home. The gun was left behind in the hope that ere long Livingstone would get back to claim the fulfillment of the chiefs promise. It was plain that the neighborhood of the lake was not habitable by Europeans. Hence a fresh confirmation of his views as to the need of native agency, if intertropical Africa was ever to be Christianized.
But Livingstone was convinced that there must be a healthier spot to the north. Writing to Mr. Watt (18th August, 1850), he not only expresses this conviction, but gives the ground on which it rested. The extract which we subjoin gives a glimpse of the sagacity that from apparently little things drew great conclusions; but more than that, it indicates the birth of the great idea that dominated the next period of Livingstone’s life–the desire and determination to find a passage to the sea, either on the east or the west coast:
“A more salubrious climate must exist farther up to the north, and that the country is higher, seems evident from the fact mentioned by the Bakoba, that the water of the Teoge, the river that falls into the ‘Ngami at the northwest point of it, flows with great rapidity. Canoes ascending, punt all the way, and the men must hold on by reeds in order to prevent their being carried down by the current. Large trees, spring-bucks and other antelopes are sometimes brought down by it. Do you wonder at my pressing on in the way we have done? The Bechuana mission has been carried on in a _cul-de-sac._ I tried to break through by going among the Eastern tribes, but the Boers shut up that field. A French missionary, Mr. Fredoux, of Motito, tried to follow on my trail to the Bamangwato, but was turned back by a party of armed Boers. When we burst through the barrier on the north, it appeared very plain that no mission could be successful there, unless we could get a well-watered country leaving a passage to the sea on either the east or west coast. This project I am almost afraid to meet, but nothing else will do. I intend (D.V.) to go in next year and remain a twelvemonth. My wife, poor soul–I pity her!–proposed to let me go for that time while she remained at Kolobeng. You will pray for us both during that period.”
A week later (August 24, 1850) he writes to the Directors that no convenient access to the region can be obtained from the south, the lake being 870 miles from Kuruman:
“We must have a passage to the sea on either the eastern or western coast. I have hitherto been afraid to broach the subject on which my perhaps dreamy imagination dwells. You at home are accustomed to look on a project as half finished when you have received the co-operation of the ladies. My better half has promised me a twelvemonth’s leave of absence for mine. Without promising anything, I mean to follow a useful motto in many circumstances, and _Try again_.”
On returning to Kolobeng, Mrs. Livingstone was delivered of a daughter–her fourth child. An epidemic was raging at the time, and the child was seized and cut off, at the age of six weeks. The loss, or rather the removal, of the child affected Livingstone greatly. “It was the first death in our family,” he says in his Journal, “but was just as likely to have happened had we remained at home, and We have now one of our number in heaven.”
To his parents he writes (4th December, 1850):
“Our last child, a sweet little girl with blue eyes, was taken from us to join the company of the redeemed, through the merits of Him of whom she never heard. It is wonderful how soon the affections twine round a little stranger. We felt her loss keenly. She was attacked by the prevailing sickness, which attacked many native children, and bore up under it for a fortnight. We could not apply remedies to one so young, except the simplest. She uttered a piercing cry previous to expiring, and then went away to see the King in his beauty, and the land–the glorious land, and its inhabitants. Hers is the first grave in all that country marked as the resting-place of one of whom it is believed and confessed that she shall live again.”
Mrs. Livingstone had an attack of serious illness, accompanied by paralysis of the right side of the face, and rest being essential for her, the family went, for a time, to Kuruman. Dr. Livingstone had a strong desire to go to the Cape for the excision of his uvula, which had long been troublesome. But, with characteristic self-denial, he put his own case out of view, staying with his wife, that she might have the rest and attention she needed. He tried to persuade his father-in-law to perform the operation, and, under his direction, Dr. Moffat went so far as to make a pair of scissors for the purpose; but his courage, so well tried in other fields, was not equal to the performance of such a surgical operation.
Some glimpses of Livingstone’s musings at this time, showing, among other things, how much more he thought of his spiritual than his Highland ancestry, occur in a letter to his parents, written immediately after his return from his second visit to the lake (28th July, 1850). If they should carry out their project of emigration to America, they would have an interesting family gathering:
“One, however, will be ‘over the hills and far away’ from your happy meeting. The meeting which we hope will take place in Heaven will be unlike a happy one, in so far as earthly relationships are concerned. One will be so much taken up in looking at Jesus, I don’t know when we shall be disposed to sit down and talk about the days of lang syne. And then there will be so many notables whom we should like to notice and shake hands with–Luke, for instance, the beloved physician, and Jeremiah, and old Job, and Noah, and Enoch, that if you are wise, you will make the most of your union while you are together, and not fail to write me fully, while you have the opportunity here….
“Charles thinks we are not the descendants of the Puritans. I don’t know what you are, but I am. And if you dispute it, I shall stick to the answer of a poor little boy before a magistrate. M.–‘Who were your parents?’ _Boy_ (rubbing his eyes with his jacket-sleeve)–‘Never had none, sir.’ Dr. Wardlaw says that the Scotch Independents are the descendants of the Puritans, and I suppose the pedigree is through Rowland Hill and Whitefield. But I was a member of the very church in which John Howe, the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell, preached, and exercised the pastorate. I was ordained, too, by English Independents. Moreover, I am a Doctor too. Agnes and Janet, get up this moment and curtsy to his Reverence! John and Charles, remember the dream of the sheaves! _I_ descended from kilts and Donald Dhus? Na, na, I won’t believe it.
“We have a difficult, difficult field to cultivate here. All I can say is, that I think knowledge is increasing. But for the belief that the Holy Spirit works, and will work for us, I should give up in despair. Remember us in your prayers, that we grow not weary in well-doing. It is hard to work for years with pure motives, and all the time be looked on by most of those to whom our lives are devoted, as having some sinister object in view. Disinterested labor–benevolence–is so out of their line of thought, that many look upon us as having some ulterior object in view. But He who died for us, and whom we ought to copy, did more for us than we can do for any one else. He endured the contradiction of sinners. May we have grace to follow in his steps!’
The third, and at last successful, effort to reach Sebituane was made in April, 1851. Livingstone was again accompanied by his family, and by Mr. Oswell. He left Kolobeng with the intention not to return, at least not immediately, but to settle with his family in such a spot as might be found advantageous, in the hilly region, of whose existence he was assured. They found the desert drier than ever, no rain having fallen throughout an immense extent of territory. To the kindness of Mr. Oswell the party was indebted for most valuable assistance in procuring water, wells having been dug or cleared by his people beforehand at various places, and at one place at the hazard of Mr. Oswell’s life, under an attack from an infuriated lioness. In his private Journal, and in his letters to home, Livingstone again and again acknowledges with deepest gratitude the numberless acts of kindness done by Mr. Oswell to him and his family, and often adds the prayer that God would reward him, and of His grace give him the highest of all blessings. “Though I cannot repay, I may record with gratitude his kindness, so that, if spared to look upon these, my private memoranda, in future years, proper emotions may ascend to Him who inclined his heart to show so much friendship.”
The party followed the old route, around the bed of the Zouga, then crossed a piece of the driest desert they had ever seen, with not an insect or a bird to break the stillness. On the third day a bird chirped in a bush, when the dog began to bark! Shobo, their guide, a Bushman, lost his way, and for four days they were absolutely without water. In his _Missionary Travels_, Livingstone records quietly, as was his wont his terrible anxiety about his children.
“The supply of water in the wagons had been wasted by one of our servants, and by the afternoon only a small portion remained for the children. This was a bitterly anxious night; and next morning, the less there was of water, the more thirsty the little rogues became. The idea of their perishing before our eyes was terrible; it would almost have been a relief to me to have been reproached with being the entire cause of the catastrophe, but not one syllable of upbraiding was uttered by their mother, though the tearful eye told the agony within. In the afternoon of the fifth day, to our inexpressible relief, some of the men returned with a supply of that fluid of which we had never before felt the true value.”
“No one,” he remarks in his Journal, “knows the value of water till be is deprived of it. We never need any spirits to qualify it, or prevent an immense draught of it from doing us harm. I have drunk water swarming with insects, thick with mud, putrid from other mixtures, and no stinted draughts of it either, yet never felt any inconvenience from it.”
“My opinion is,” he said on another occasion, “that the most severe labors and privations may be undergone without alcoholic stimulus, because those who have endured the most had nothing else but water, and not always enough of that.”
One of the great charms of Livingstone’s character, and one of the secrets of his power–his personal interest in each individual, however humble–appeared in connection with Shobo, the Bushman guide, who misled them and took the blunder so coolly. “What a wonderful people,” he says in his Journal, “the Bushmen are! always merry and laughing, and never telling lies wantonly like the Bechuana. They have more of the appearance of worship than any of the Bechuana. When will these dwellers in the wilderness bow down before their Lord? No man seems to care for the Bushman’s soul. I often wished I knew their language, but never more than when we traveled with our Bushman guide, Shobo.”
Livingstone had given a fair trial to the experiment of traveling along with his family. In one of his letters at this time he speaks of the extraordinary pain caused by the mosquitoes of those parts, and of his children being so covered with their bites, that not a square inch of whole skin was to be found on their bodies. It is no wonder that he gave up the idea of carrying them with him in the more extended journey he was now contemplating. He could not leave them at Kolobeng, exposed to the raids of the Boers; to Kuruman there were also invincible objections; the only possible plan was to send them to England, though he hoped that when he got settled in some suitable part of Sebituane’s dominions, with a free road to the sea, they would return to him, and help him to bring the people to Christ.
In the _Missionary Travels_ Livingstone has given a full account of Sebituane, chief of the Makololo, “unquestionably the greatest man in all that country”–his remarkable career, his wonderful warlike exploits (for which he could always bring forward justifying reasons), his interesting and attractive character, and wide and powerful influence. In one thing Sebituane was very like Livingstone himself; he had the art of gaining the affections both of his own people and of strangers. When a party of poor men came to his town to sell hoes or skins, he would sit down among them, talk freely and pleasantly to them, and probably cause some lordly dish to be brought, and give them a feast on it, perhaps the first they had ever shared. Delighted beyond measure with his affability and liberality, they felt their hearts warm toward him; and as he never allowed a party of strangers to go away without giving every one of them–servants and all–a present, his praises were sounded far and wide. “He has a heart! he is wise!” were the usual expressions Livingstone heard before he saw him.
Sebituane received Livingstone with great kindness, for it had been one of the dreams of his life to have intercourse with the white man. He placed full confidence in him from the beginning, and was ready to give him everything he might need. On the first Sunday when the usual service was held he was present, and Livingstone was very thankful that he was there, for it turned out to be the only proclamation of the gospel he ever heard. For just after realizing what he had so long and ardently desired, he was seized with severe inflammation of the lungs, and died after a fortnight’s illness. Livingstone, being a stranger, feared to prescribe, lest, in the event of his death, he should be accused of having caused it. On visiting him, and seeing that he was dying, he spoke a few words respecting hope after death. But being checked by the attendants for introducing the subject, he could only commend his soul to God. The last words of Sebituane were words of kindness to Livingstone’s son: “Take him to Maunku (one of his wives) and tell her to give him some milk.” Livingstone was deeply affected by his death. A deeper sense of brotherhood, a warmer glow of affection had been kindled in his heart toward Sebituane than had seemed possible. With his very tender conscience and deep sense of spiritual realities, Livingstone was afraid, as in the case of Sehamy eight years before, that he had not spoken to him so pointedly as he might have done. It is awfully affecting to follow him into the unseen world, of which he had heard for the first time just before he was called away. In his Journal, Livingstone gives way to his feelings as he very seldom allowed himself to do. His words bring to mind David’s lament for Jonathan or for Absalom, although he had known Sebituane less than a month, and he was one of the race whom many Boers and slave-stealers regarded as having no souls:
“Poor Sebituane, my heart bleeds for thee; and what would I not do for thee now? I will weep for thee till the day of my death. Little didst thou think when, in the visit of the white man, thou sawest the long cherished desires of years accomplished, that the sentence of death had gone forth! Thou thoughtest that thou shouldest procure a weapon from the white man which would be a shield from the attacks of the fierce Matebele; but a more deadly dart than theirs was aimed at thee; and though, thou couldest well ward off a dart–none ever better–thou didst not see that of the king of terrors. I will weep for thee, my brother, and I will cast forth my sorrows in despair for thy condition! But I know that thou wilt receive no injustice whither thou art gone; ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’ I leave thee to Him. Alas! alas! Sebituane. I might have said more to him. God forgive me. Free me from blood-guiltiness. If I had said more of death I might have been suspected as having foreseen the event, and as guilty of bewitching him. I might have recommended Jesus and his great atonement more. It is, however, very difficult to break through the thick crust of ignorance which envelops their minds.”
The death of Sebituane was a great blow in another sense. The region over which his influence extended was immense, and he had promised to show it to Livingstone and to select a suitable locality for his residence. This heathen chief would have given to Christ’s servant what the Boers refused him! Livingstone would have had his wish–an entirely new country to work upon, where the name of Christ had never yet been spoken. So at least he thought. Sebituane’s successor in the chiefdom was his daughter, Ma-mochisane. From her he received liberty to visit any part of the country he chose. While waiting for a reply (she was residing at a distance), he one day fell into a great danger from an elephant which had come on him unexpectedly. “We were startled by his coming a little way in the direction in which we were standing, but he did not give us chase. I have had many escapes. We seem immortal till our work is done.”
Mr. Oswell and he then proceeded in a northeasterly direction, passing through the town of Linyanti, and on the 3d of August they came on the beautiful river at Sesheke:
“We thanked God for permitting us to see this glorious river. All we said to each other was ‘How glorious! how magnificent! how beautiful!’… In crossing, the waves lifted up the canoe and made it roll beautifully. The scenery of the Firths of Forth and Clyde was brought vividly to my view, and had I been fond of indulging in sentimental effusions, my lachrymal apparatus seemed fully charged. But then the old man who was conducting us across might have said, ‘What on earth are you blubbering for? Afraid of these crocodiles, eh?’ The little sentimentality which exceeded was forced to take its course down the inside of the nose. We have other work in this world than indulging in sentimentality of the ‘Sonnet to the Moon’ variety.”
The river, which went here by the name of Sesheke, was found to be the Zambesi, which had not previously been known to exist in that region. In writing about it to his brother Charles, he says, “It was the first _river_ I ever saw.” Its discovery in this locality constituted one of the great geographical feats with which the name of Livingstone is connected. He heard of rapids above, and of great water-falls below; but it was reserved for him on a future visit to behold the great Victoria Falls, which in the popular imagination have filled a higher place than many of his more useful discoveries.
The travelers were still a good many days’ distance from Ma-mochisane, without whose presence nothing could be settled; but besides, the reedy banks of the rivers were found to be unsuitable for a settlement, and the higher regions were too much exposed to the attacks of Mosilikatse. Livingstone saw no prospect of obtaining a suitable station, and with great reluctance he made up his mind to retrace the weary road, and return to Kolobeng. The people were very anxious for him to stay, and offered to make a garden for him, and to fulfill Sebituane’s promise to give him oxen in return for those killed by the tsetse.
Setting out with the wagons on 13th August, 1851, the party proceeded slowly homeward. On 15th September, 1851, Livingstone’s Journal has this unexpected and simple entry: “A son, William Oswell Livingstone[32], born at a place we always call Bellevue.” On the 18th: “Thomas attacked by fever; removed to a high part on his account. Thomas was seized with fever three times at about an interval of a fortnight.” Not a word about Mrs. Livingstone, but three pages of observations about medical treatment of fever, thunderstorms, constitutions of Indian and African people, leanness of the game, letter received from Directors approving generally of his course, a gold watch sent by Captain Steele, and Gordon Cumming’s book, “a miserably poor thing.” Amazed, we ask, Had Livingstone any heart? But ere long we come upon a copy of a letter, and some remarks connected with it, that give us an impression of the depth and strength of his nature, unsurpassed by anything that has yet occurred.
[Footnote 32: He had intended to call him Charles, and announced this to his father; but, finding that Mr. Oswell, to whom he was so much indebted, would be pleased with the compliment, he changed his purpose and the name accordingly.]
“The following extracts,” he says, “show in what light our efforts are regarded by those who, as much as we do, desire that the ‘gospel may be preached to all nations,'” Then follows a copy of a letter which had been addressed to him before they set out by Mrs. Moffat, his mother-in-law, remonstrating in the strongest terms against his plan of taking his wife with him; reminding him of the death of the child, and other sad occurrences of last year; and in the name of everything that was just, kind, and even decent, beseeching him to abandon an arrangement which all the world would condemn. Another letter from the same writer informed him that much prayer had been offered that, if the arrangements were not in accordance with Christian propriety, he might in great mercy be prevented by some dispensation of Providence from carrying them out. Mrs. Moffat was a woman of the highest gifts and character, and full of admiration for Livingstone. The insertion of these letters in his Journal shows that, in carrying out his plan, the objections to which it was liable were before his mind in the strongest conceivable form. No man who knows what Livingstone was will imagine for a moment that he had not the most tender regard for the health, the comfort, and the feelings of his wife; in matters of delicacy he had the most scrupulous regard to propriety; his resolution to take her with him must, therefore, have sprung from something far stronger than even his affection for her. What was this stronger force?
It was his inviolable sense of duty, and his indefeasible conviction that his Father in heaven would not forsake him whilst pursuing a course in obedience to his will, and designed to advance the welfare of his children. As this furnishes the key to Livingstone’s future life, and the answer to one of the most serious objections ever brought against it, it is right to spend a little time in elucidating the principles by which he was guided.
There was a saying of the late Sir Herbert Edwardes which he highly valued: “He who has to act on his own responsibility is a slave if he does not act on his own judgment.” Acting on this maxim, he must set aside the views of others as to his duty, provided his own judgment was clear regarding it. He must even set aside the feelings and apparent interest of those dearest to him, because duty was above everything else. His faith in God convinced him that, in the long run, it could never be the worse for him and his that he had firmly done his duty. All true faith has in it an element of venture, and in Livingstone’s faith this element was strong. Trusting God, he could expose to venture even the health, comfort, and welfare of his wife and children. He was convinced that it was his duty to go forth with them and seek a new station for the Gospel in Sebituane’s country. If this was true, God would take care of them, and it was “better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.” People thoughtlessly accused him of making light of the interests of his family. No man suffered keener pangs from the course he had to follow concerning them, and no man pondered more deeply what duty to them required.
But to do all this, Livingstone must have had a very clear perception of the course of duty. This is true. But how did he get this? First, his singleness of heart, so to speak, attracted the light: “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” Then, he was very clear and very minute in his prayers. Further, he was most careful to scan all the providential indications that might throw light on the Divine will. And when he had been carried so far on in the line of duty, he had a strong presumption that the line would be continued, and that he would not be called to turn back. It was in front, not in rear, that he expected to find the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. In course of time, this hardened into a strong instinctive habit, which almost dispensed with the process of reasoning.
In Dean Stanley’s _Sinai and Palestine_ allusion is made to a kindred experience,–that which bore Abraham from Chaldea, Moses from Egypt, and the greater part of the tribes from the comfortable pastures of Gilead and Bashan to the rugged hill-country of Judah and Ephraim. Notwithstanding all the attractions of the richer countries, they were borne onward and forward, not knowing whither they went; instinctively feeling that they were fulfilling the high purposes to which they were called. In the later part of Livingstone’s life, the necessity of going forward to the close of the career that had opened for him seemed to settle the whole question of duty.
But at this earlier stage, he had been conscientiously scrutinizing all that had any bearing on that question; and now that he finds himself close to his home, and can thank God for the safe confinement of his wife, and the health of the new-born child, he gathers together all the providences that showed that in this journey, which excited such horror even among his best friends, he had after all been following the guidance of his Father. First, in the matter of guides, he had been wonderfully helped, notwithstanding a deep plot to deprive him of any. Then there was the sickness of Sekomi, whose interest had been secured through his going to see him, and prescribing for him; this had propitiated one of the tribes. The services of Shobo, too, and the selection of the northern route, proposed by Kamati, had been of great use. Their going to Sesheke, and their detention for two months, thus allowing them time to collect information respecting the whole country; the river Chobe not rising at its usual time; the saving of Livingstone’s oxen from the tsetse, notwithstanding their detention on the Zouga; his not going with Mr. Oswell to a place where the tsetse destroyed many of the oxen; the better health of Mrs. Livingstone during her confinement than in any previous one; a very opportune present they had got, just before her confinement, of two bottles of wine[33]; the approbation of the Directors, the presentation of a gold watch by Captain Steele, the kind attentions of Mr. Oswell, and the cookery of one of their native servants named George; the recovery of Thomas, whereas at Kuruman a child had been cut off; the commencement of the rains, just as they were leaving the river, and the request of Mr. Oswell that they should draw upon him for as much money as they should need, were all among the indications that a faithful and protecting Father in heaven had been ordering their path, and would order it in like manner in all time to come.
[Footnote 33: In writing to his father, Livingstone mentions that the wine was a gift from Mrs. Bysshe Shelley, in acknowledgment of his aid in repairing a wheel of her wagon.]
Writing at this time to his father-in-law, Mr. Moffat, he said, after announcing the birth of Oswell: “What you say about difference of opinion is true. In my past life, I have always managed to think for myself, and act accordingly. I have occasionally met with people who took it on themselves to act for me, and they have offered their thoughts with an emphatic ‘I think’; but I have excused them on the score of being a little soft-headed in believing they could think both for me and themselves.”
While Kolobeng was Livingstone’s headquarters, a new trouble rose upon the mission horizon. The Makololo (as Sebituane’s people were called) began to practice the slave-trade. It arose simply from their desire to possess guns. For eight old muskets they had given to a neighboring tribe eight boys, that had been taken from their enemies in war, being the only article for which the guns could be got. Soon after, in a fray against another tribe, two hundred captives were taken, and, on returning, the Makololo met some Arab traders from Zanzibar, who for three muskets received about thirty of their captives.
Another of the master ideas of his life now began to take hold upon Livingstone. Africa was exposed to a terrible evil through the desire of the natives to possess articles of European manufacture, and their readiness for this purpose to engage in the slave-trade. Though no African had ever been known to sell his own children into captivity, the tribes were ready enough to sell other children that had fallen into their hands by war or otherwise. But if a legitimate traffic were established through which they might obtain whatever European goods they desired in exchange for ivory and other articles of native produce, would not this frightful slave-trade be brought to an end? The idea was destined to receive many a confirmation before Livingstone drew his last breath of African air. It naturally gave a great impulse to the purpose which had already struck its roots into his soul–to find a road to the sea either on the eastern or western coast. Interests wider and grander than even the planting of mission stations on the territories of Sebituane now rose to his view. The welfare of the whole continent, both spiritual and temporal, was concerned in the success of this plan of opening new channels to the enterprise of British and other merchants, always eager to hear of new markets for their goods. By driving away the slave-trade, much would be done to prepare the way for Christian missions which could not thrive in an atmosphere of war and commotion. An idea involving issues so vast was fitted to take a right powerful hold on Livingstone’s heart, and make him feel that no sacrifice could be too great to be encountered, cheerfully and patiently, for such an end.
Writing to the Directors (October, 1851), he says:
“You will see by the accompanying sketch-map what an immense region God in his grace has opened up. If we can enter in and form a settlement, we shall be able in the course of a very few years to put a stop to the slave-trade in that quarter. It is probable that the mere supply of English manufacturers on Sebituane’s part will effect this, for they did not like the slave-trade, and promised to abstain. I think it will be impossible to make a fair commencement unless I can secure two years devoid of family cares. I shall be obliged to go southward, perhaps to the Cape, to have my uvula excised and my arm mended (the latter, if it can be done, only). It has occurred to me that, as we must send our children to England, it would be no great additional expense to send them now along with their mother. This arrangement would enable me to proceed, and devote about two or perhaps three years to this new region; but I must beg your sanction, and if you please let it be given or withheld as soon as you can conveniently, so that it might meet me at the Cape. To orphanize my children will be like tearing out my bowels, but when I can find time to write you fully you will perceive it is the only way, except giving up that region altogether.
“Kuruman will not answer as a residence, nor yet the Colony. If I were to follow my own inclinations, they would lead me to settle down quietly with the Bakwains, or some other small tribe, and devote some of my time to my children; but _Providence seems to call me to the regions beyond_, and if I leave them anywhere in this country, it will be to let them become heathens. If you think it right to support them, I believe my parents in Scotland would attend to them otherwise.”
Continuing the subject in a more leisurely way a few weeks later, he refers to the very great increase of traffic that had taken place since the discovery of Lake ‘Ngami two years before; the fondness of the people for European articles; the numerous kinds of native produce besides ivory, such as beeswax, ostrich feathers, etc., of which the natives made little or no use, but which they would take care of if regular trade were established among them. He thought that if traders were to come up the Zambesi and make purchases from the producers they would both benefit themselves and drive the slave-dealer from the market. It might be useful to establish a sanatorium, to which missionaries might come from less healthy districts to recruit. This would diminish the reluctance of missionaries to settle in the interior. For himself, though he had reared three stations with much bodily labor and fatigue, he would cheerfully undergo much more if a new station would answer such objects. In referring to the countries drained by the Zambesi, he believed he was speaking of a large section of the slave-producing region of Africa. He then went on to say that to a certain extent their hopes had been disappointed; Mr. Oswell had not been able to find a passage to the sea, and he had not been able to find a station for missionary work. They therefore returned together. “He assisted me,” adds Livingstone, “in every possible way. May God reward him!”
In regard to mission work for the future an important question arose, What should be done for the Bakwains? They could not remain at Kolobeng–hunger and the Boers decided that point. Was it not, then, his duty to find and found a new station for them? Dr. Livingstone thought not. He had always told them that he would remain with them only for a few years. One of his great ideas on missions in Africa was that a fair trial should be given to as many places as possible, and if the trial did not succeed the missionaries should pass on to other tribes. He had a great aversion to the common impression that the less success one had the stronger was one’s duty to remain. Missionaries were only too ready to settle down and make themselves as comfortable as possible, whereas the great need was for men to move on, to strike out into the regions beyond, to go into all the world. He had far more sympathy for tribes that had never heard the gospel than for those who had had it for years. He used to refer to certain tribes near Griqualand that had got a little instruction, but had no stated missionaries; they used to send some of their people to the Griquas to learn what they could, and afterward some others; and these persons, returning, communicated what they knew, till a wonderful measure of knowledge was acquired, and a numerous church was formed. If the seed had once been sown in any place it would not remain dormant, but would excite the desire for further knowledge; and on the whole it would be better for the people to be thrown somewhat on their own resources than to have everything done for them by missionaries from Europe. In regard to the Bakwains, though they had promised well at first, they had not been a very teachable people. He was not inclined to blame them; they had been so pinched by hunger and badgered by the Boers that they could not attend to instruction; or rather, they had too good an excuse for not doing so. “I have much affection for them,” he says in his Journal, “and though I pass from them I do not relinquish the hope that they will yet turn to Him to whose mercy and love they have often been invited. The seed of the living Word will not perish.”
The finger of Providence clearly pointed to a region farther north in the country of the Barotse or beyond it, He admitted that there were _pros_ and _cons_ in the case. Against his plan,–some of his brethren did not hesitate to charge him with being actuated by worldly ambition. This was the more trying, for sometimes he suspected his own motives. Others dwelt on what was due to his family. Moreover, his own predilections were all for a quiet life. And there was also the consideration, that as the Directors could not well realize the distances he would have to travel before he reached the field, he might appear more as an explorer than a missionary. On the other hand:
“I am conscious,” he says, “that though there is much impurity in my motives, they are in the main for the glory of Him to whom I have devoted myself. I never anticipated fame from the discovery of the Lake. I cared very little about it, but the sight of the Tamanak’le, and the report of other large rivers beyond, all densely populated, awakened many and enthusiastic feelings…. Then, again, consider the multitude that in the Providence of God have been brought to light in the country of Sebituane; the probability that in our efforts to evangelize we shall put a stop to the slave-trade in a large region, and by means of the highway into the North which we have discovered bring unknown nations into the sympathies of the Christian world. If I were to choose my work, it would be to reduce this new language, translate the Bible into it, and be the means of forming a small church. Let this be accomplished, I think I could then lie down and die contented. Two years’ absence will be necessary…. Nothing but a strong conviction that the step will lead to the glory of Christ would make me orphanize my children. Even now my bowels yearn over them. They Will forget me; but I hope when the day of trial comes, I shall not be found a more sorry soldier than those who serve an earthly sovereign. Should you not feel yourselves justified in incurring the expense of their support in England, I shall feel called upon to renounce the hope of carrying the gospel into that country, and labor among those who live in a more healthy country, viz., the Bakwains. But, stay, I am not sure; so powerfully convinced am I that it is the will of the Lord I should, _I will go, no matter who opposes_; but from you I expect nothing but encouragement. I know you wish as ardently as I can that all the world may be filled with the glory of the Lord. I feel relieved when I lay the whole case before you.”
He proposed that a brother missionary, Mr. Ashton, should be placed among the Bamangwato, a people who were in the habit of spreading themselves through the Bakalahari, and should thus form a link between himself and the brethren in the south.
In a postscript, dated Bamangwato, 14th November, he gratefully acknowledges a letter from the Directors, in which his plans are approved of generally. They had recommended him to complete a dictionary of the Sichuana language. This he would have been delighted to do when his mind was full of the subject, but with the new projects now before him, and the probability of having to deal with a new language for the Zambesi district, he could not undertake such a work at present.
In a subsequent letter to the Directors (Cape Town, 17th March, 1852), Livingstone finds it necessary to go into full details with regard to his finances. Though he writes with perfect calmness, it is evident that his exchequer was sadly embarrassed. In fact, he had already not only spent all the salary (L100) of 1852, but fifty-seven pounds of 1853, and the balance would be absorbed by expenses in Cape Town. He had been as economical as possible; in personal expenditure most careful–he had been a teetotaler for twenty years. He did not hesitate to express his conviction that the salary was inadequate, and to urge the Directors to defray the extra expenditure which was now inevitable; but with characteristic generosity he urged Mr. Moffat’s Claims much more warmly than his own.
From expressions in Livingstone’s letter to the Directors, it is evident that he was fully aware of the risk he ran, in his new line of work, of appearing to sink the missionary in the explorer. There is no doubt that next to the charge of forgetting the claims of his family, to which we have already adverted, this was the most plausible of the objections taken to his subsequent career. But any one who has candidly followed his course of thought and feeling from the moment when the sense of unseen realities burst on him at Blantyre, to the time at which we have now arrived, must see that this view is altogether destitute of support. The impulse of divine love that had urged him first to become a missionary had now become with him the settled habit of his life. No new ambition had flitted across his path, for though he had become known as a geographical discoverer, he says he thought very little of the fact, and his life shows this to have been true. Twelve years of missionary life had given birth to no sense of weariness, no abatement of interest in these poor black savages, no reluctance to make common cause with them in the affairs of life, no despair of being able to do them good. On the contrary, he was confirmed in his opinion of the efficacy of his favorite plan of native agency, and if he could but get a suitable base of operations, he was eager to set it going, and on every side he was assured of native welcome. Shortly before (5th February, 1850), when writing to his father with reference to a proposal of his brother Charles that he should go and settle in America, he had said: “I am a missionary, heart and soul. God had an only Son, and He was a missionary and a physician. A poor, poor imitation of Him I am, or wish to be. In this service I hope to live, in it I wish to die.” The spectre of the slave-trade had enlarged his horizon, and shown him the necessity of a commercial revolution for the whole of Africa, before effectual and permanent good could be done in any part of it. The plan which he had now in view multiplied the risks he ran, and compelled him to think anew whether he was ready to sacrifice himself, and if so, for what. All that Livingstone did was thus done with open eyes and well-considered resolution. Adverting to the prevalence of fever in some parts of the country, while other parts were comparatively healthy, he says in his Journal: “I offer myself as a forlorn hope in order to ascertain whether there is a place fit to be a sanatorium for more unhealthy spots. May God accept my service, and use me for his glory. A great honor it is to he a fellow-worker with God.” “It is a great venture,” he writes to his sister (28th April, 1851). “Fever may cut us all off. I feel much when I think of the children dying. But who will go if we don’t? Not one. I would venture everything for Christ. Pity I have so little to give. But He will accept us, for He is a good master. Never one like Him. He can sympathize. May He forgive, and purify, and bless us.”
If in his spirit of high consecration he was thus unchanged, equally far was he from having a fanatical disregard of life, and the rules of provident living.
“Jesus,” he says, “came not to judge,–[Greek: kriuo],–condemn judicially, or execute vengeance on any one. His was a message of peace and love. He shall not strive nor cry, neither shall his voice he heard in the streets. Missionaries ought to follow his example. Neither insist on our rights, nor appear as if we could allow our goods to be destroyed without regret: for if we are righteous overmuch, or stand up for our rights with too much vehemence, we beget dislikes, and the people see no difference between ourselves and them. And if we appear to care nothing for the things of this world, they conclude we are rich, and when they beg, our refusal is ascribed to niggardliness, and our property, too, is wantonly destroyed. ‘Ga ba tloke’=they are not in need, is the phrase employed when our goods are allowed to go to destruction by the neglect of servants…. In coming among savage people, we ought to make them feel we are of them, ‘we seek not yours, but you’; but while very careful not to make a gain of them, we ought to be as careful to appear thankful, and appreciate any effort they may make for our comfort or subsistence.”
On reaching Kolobeng from ‘Ngami they found the station deserted. The Bakwains had removed to Limauee. Sechele came down the day after, and presented them with an ox–a valuable gift in his circumstances. Sechele had much yet to bear from the Boers; and after being, without provocation, attacked, pillaged, and wasted, and robbed of his children, he was bent on going to the Queen of England to state his wrongs. This, however, he could not accomplish, though he went as far as the Cape. Coming back afterward to his own people, he gathered large numbers about him from other tribes, to whose improvement he devoted himself with much success. He still survives, with the one wife whom he retained; and, though not without some drawbacks (which Livingstone ascribed to the bad example set him by some), he maintains his Christian profession. His people are settled at some miles’ distance from Kolobeng, and have a missionary station, supported by a Hanoverian Society. His regard for the memory of Livingstone is very great, and he reads with eagerness all that he can find about him. He has ever been a warm friend of missions has a wonderful knowledge of the Bible, and can preach well. The influence of Livingstone in his early days was doubtless a real power in mission-work. Mebalwe, too, we are informed by Dr. Moffat, still survives; a useful man, an able preacher, and one who has done much to bring his people to Christ.
It was painful to Livingstone to say good-bye to the Bakwains, and (as Mrs. Moffat afterward reminded him) his friends were not all in favor of his doing so; but he regarded his departure as inevitable. After a short stay at Kuruman, he and his family went on to Cape Town, where they arrived on the 16th of March, 1852, and had new proofs of Mr. Oswell’s kindness. After eleven years’ absence, Livingstone’s dress-coat had fallen a little out of fashion, and the whole costume of the party was somewhat in the style of Robinson Crusoe. The generosity of “the best friend we have in Africa” made all comfortable, Mr. Oswell remarking that Livingstone had as good a right as he to the money drawn from the “preserves on his estate”–the elephants. Mentally, Livingstone traces to its source the kindness of his friend, thinking of One to whom he owed all–“O divine Love, I have not loved Thee strongly, deeply, warmly enough.” The retrospect of his eleven years of African labor, unexampled though they had been, only awakened in him the sense of unprofitable service.
Before closing the record of this period, we must take a glance at the remarkable literary activity which it witnessed. We have had occasion to refer to Livingstone’s first letters to Captain Steele, for the Geographical Society; additional letters were contributed from time to time. His philological researches have also been noticed. In addition to these, we find him writing two articles on African Missions for the _British Quarterly Review_, only one of which was published. He likewise wrote two papers for the _British Banner_ on the Boers. While crossing the desert, after leaving the Cape on his first great journey, he wrote a remarkable paper on “Missionary Sacrifices,” and another of great vigor on the Boers. Still another paper on Lake ‘Ngami was written for a Missionary Journal contemplated, but never started, under the editorship of the late Mr. Isaac Taylor; and he had one in his mind on the religion of the Bechuanas, presenting a view which differed somewhat from that of Mr. Moffat. Writing to Mr. Watt from Linyanti (3d October, 1853), on printing one of his papers, he says:
“But the expense, my dear man. What a mess I am in, writing papers which cannot pay their own way! Pauper papers, in fact, which must go to the workhouse for support. Ugh! Has the Caffre War paper shared the same fate? and the Language paper too? Here I have two by me, which I will keep in their native obscurity. One is on the South African Boers and slavery, in which I show that their church is, and always has been, the great bulwark of slavery, cattle-lifting, and Caffre-marauding; and I correct the mistaken views of some writers who describe the Boers as all that is good, and of others who describe as all that is bad, by showing who are the good and who are the bad. The other, which I rather admire,–what father doesn’t his own progeny?–is on the missionary work, and designed to aid young men of piety to form a more correct idea of it than is to be had from much of the missionary biography of ‘sacrifices.’ I magnify the enterprise, exult in the future, etc., etc. It was written in coming across the desert, and if it never does aught else, it imparted comfort and encouragement to myself[34]…. I feel almost inclined to send it…. If the Caffre War one is rejected, then farewell to spouting in Reviews.”
[Footnote 34: For extracts from the paper on “Missionary Sacrifices,” see Appendix No. I. For part of the paper on the Boers, see _Catholic Presbyterian_ December, 1879 (London, Nisbet and Co.).]
If he had met with more encouragement from editors he would have written more. But the editorial cold shoulder was beyond even his power of endurance. He laid aside his pen in a kind of disgust, and this doubtless was one of the reasons that made him unwilling to resume it on his return to England. Editors were wiser then; and the offer from one London Magazine of L400 for four articles, and from _Good Words_ of L1000 for a number of papers to be fixed afterward,–offers which, however, were not accepted finally,–showed how the tide had turned.
CHAPTER VII.
FROM THE CAPE TO LINYANTI.
A.D. 1852-1853.
Unfavorable feeling at Cape Town–Departure of Mrs. Livingstone and children–Livingstone’s detention and difficulties–Letter to his wife–To Agnes–Occupations at Cape Town–The Astronomer-Royal–Livingstone leaves the Cape and reaches Kuruman–Destruction of Kolobeng by the Boers–Letters to his wife and Rev. J. Moore–His resolution to open up Africa _or perish_–Arrival at Linyanti–Unhealthiness of the country–Thoughts on setting out for coast–Sekeletu’s kindness–Livingstone’s missionary activity–Death of Mpepe, and of his father–Meeting with Ma-mochisane–Barotse country–Determines to go to Loanda–Heathenism unadulterated–Taste for the beautiful–Letter to his children–to his father–Last Sunday at Linyanti–Prospect of his falling.
When Livingstone arrived at the Cape, he found the authorities in a state of excitement over the Caffre War, and very far from friendly toward the London Missionary Society, some of whose missionaries–himself among the number–were regarded as “unpatriotic.” He had a very poor opinion of the officials, and their treatment of the natives scandalized him. He describes the trial of an old soldier, Botha, as “the most horrid exhibition I ever witnessed.” The noble conduct of Botha in prison was a beautiful contrast to the scene in court. This whole Caffre War had exemplified the blundering of the British authorities, and was teaching the natives developments, the issue of which could not be foreseen. As for himself, he writes to Mr. Moffat, that he was cordially hated, and perhaps he might be pulled up; but he knew that some of his letters had been read by the Duke of Wellington and Lord Brougham with pleasure, and, possibly, he might get justice. He bids his father-in-law not to be surprised if he saw him abused in the newspapers.
On the 23d April, 1852, Mrs. Livingstone and the four children sailed from Cape Town for England. The sending of his children to be brought up by others was a very great trial, and Dr. Livingstone seized the opportunity to impress on the Directors that those by whom missionaries were sent out had a great duty to the children whom their parents were compelled to send away. Referring to the filthy conversation and ways of the heathen, he says:
“Missionaries expose their children to a contamination which they have had no hand in producing. We expose them and ourselves for a time in order to elevate those sad captives of sin and Satan, who are the victims of the degradation of ages. None of those who complain about missionaries sending their children home ever descend to this. And again, as Mr. James in his _Young Man from Home_ forcibly shows, a greater misfortune cannot befall a youth than to be cast into the world without a home. In regard to even the vestige of a home, my children are absolutely vagabonds. When shall we return to Kolobeng? When to Kuruman? _Never_. The mark of Cain is on your foreheads, your father is a missionary. Our children ought to have both the sympathies and prayers of those at whose bidding we become strangers for life.”
Was there ever a plea more powerful or more just? It is sad to think that the coldness of Christians at home should have led a man like Livingstone to fancy that, because his children were the children of a missionary, they would bear the mark of Cain, and be homeless vagabonds. Why are we at home so forgetful of the privilege of refreshing the bowels of those who take their lives in their hands for the love of Christ, by making a home for their offspring? In a higher state of Christianity there will be hundreds of the best families at home delighted, for the love of their Master, to welcome and bring up the missionary’s children. And when the Great Day comes, none will more surely receive that best of all forms of repayment, “Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these my brethren, ye did it unto Me.”
Livingstone, who had now got the troublesome uvula cut out, was detained at the Cape nearly two months after his family left. He was so distrusted by the authorities that they would hardly sell powder and shot to him, and he had to fight a battle that demanded all his courage and perseverance for a few boxes of percussion-caps. At the last moment, a troublesome country postmaster, to whom he had complained of an overcharge of postage, threatened an action against him for defamation of character, and, rather than be further detained, deep in debt though he was, Livingstone had to pay him a considerable sum. His family were much in his thoughts; he found some relief in writing by every mail. His letters to his wife are too sacred to be spread before the public; we confine ourselves to a single extract, to show over what a host of suppressed emotions he had to march in this expedition:
“_Cape Town, 5th May_, 1852.–MY DEAREST MARY,–How I miss you now, and the children! My heart yearns incessantly over you. How many thoughts of the past crowd into my mind! I feel as if I would treat you all much more tenderly and lovingly than ever. You have been a great blessing to me. You attended to my comfort in many, many ways. May God bless you for all your kindnesses! I see no face now to be compared with that sunburnt one which has so often greeted me with its kind looks. Let us do our duty to our Saviour, and we shall meet again. I wish that time were now. You may read the letters over again which I wrote at Mabotsa, the sweet time you know. As I told you before, I tell you again, they are true, true; there is not a bit of hypocrisy in them. I never show all my feelings; but I can say truly, my dearest, that I loved you when I married you, and the longer I lived with you, I loved you the better…. Let us do our duty to Christ, and He will bring us through the world with honor and usefulness. He is our refuge and high tower; let us trust in Him at all times, and in all circumstances. Love Him more and more, and diffuse his love among the children. Take them all round you, and kiss them for me. Tell them I have left them for the love of Jesus, and they must love Him too, and avoid sin, for that displeases Jesus. I shall be delighted to hear of you all safe in England….”
A few days later, he writes to his eldest daughter, then in her fifth year:
“_Cape Town, 18th May_, 1852.–MY DEAR AGNES,–This is your own little letter. Mamma will read it to you, and you will hear her just as if I were speaking to you, for the words which I write are those which she will read. I am still at Cape Town. You know you left me there when you all went into the big ship and sailed away. Well, I shall leave Cape Town soon. Malatsi has gone for the oxen, and then I shall go away back to Sebituane’s country, and see Seipone and Meriye, who gave you the beads and fed you with milk and honey. I shall not see you again for a long time, and I am very sorry. I have no Nannie now. I have given you back to Jesus, your Friend–your Papa who is in heaven. He is above you, but He is always near you. When we ask things from Him, that is praying to Him; and if you do or say a naughty thing ask Him to pardon you, and bless you, and make you one of his children. Love Jesus much, for He loves you, and He came and died for you. Oh, how good Jesus is! I love Him, and I shall love Him as long as I live. You must love Him too, and you must love your brothers and mamma, and never tease them or be naughty, for Jesus does not like to see naughtiness.–Good-bye, my dear Nannie,
D. LIVINGSTON.”
Among his other occupations at Cape Town, Livingstone put himself under the instructions of the Astronomer-Royal, Mr. (afterward Sir Thomas) Maclear, who became one of his best and most esteemed friends. His object was to qualify himself more thoroughly for taking observations that would give perfect accuracy to his geographical explorations. He tried English preaching too, but his throat was still tender, and he felt very nervous, as he had done at Ongar. “What a little thing,” he writes to Mr. Moffat, “is sufficient to bring down to old-wifeishness such a rough tyke as I consider myself! Poor, proud human nature is a great fool after all.” A second effort was more successful. “I preached,” he writes to his wife, “on the text, ‘Why will ye die?’ I had it written out and only referred to it twice, which is an improvement in English. I hope good was done. The people were very attentive indeed. I felt less at a loss than in Union Chapel[35].” He arranged with a mercantile friend, Mr. Rutherfoord, to direct the operations of a native trader, George Fleming, whom that gentleman was to employ for the purpose of introducing lawful traffic in order to supplant the slave-trade.
[Footnote 35: The manuscript of this sermon still exists. The sermon is very simple, scriptural, and earnest, in the style of Bishop Ryle, or of Mr. Moody.]
It was not till the 8th of June that he left the Cape. His wagon was loaded to double the usual weight from his good nature in taking everybody’s packages. His oxen were lean, and he was too poor to provide better. He reached Griqua Town on the 15th August, and Kuruman a fortnight later. Many things had occasioned unexpected delay, and the last crowning detention was caused by the breaking down of a wheel. It turned out, however, that these delays were probably the means of saving his life. Had they not occurred he would have reached Kolobeng in August. But this was the very time when the commando of the Boers, numbering 600 colonists and many natives besides, were busy with the work of death and destruction. Had he been at Kolobeng, Pretorius would probably have executed his threat of killing him; at the least he would have been deprived of all the property that he carried with him, and his projected enterprise would have been brought to an end.
In a letter to his wife, Livingstone gives full details of the horrible outrage perpetrated shortly before by the Boers at Kolobeng:
“_Kuruman, 20th September_, 1852.–Along with this I send you a long letter; this I write in order to give you the latest news. The Boers gutted our house at Kolobeng; they brought four wagons down and took away sofa, table, bed, all the crockery, your desk (I hope it had nothing in it–Have you the letters?), smashed the wooden chairs, took away the iron ones, tore out the leaves of all the books, and scattered them in front of the house, smashed the bottles containing medicines, windows, oven-door, took away the smith-bellows, anvil, all the tools,–in fact everything worth taking; three corn-mills, a bag of coffee, for which I paid six pounds, and lots of coffee, tea, and sugar, which the gentlemen who went to the north left; took all our cattle and Paul’s and Mebalwe’s. They then went up to Limauee, went to church morning and afternoon, and heard Mebalwe preach! After the second service they told Sechele that they had come to fight, because he allowed Englishmen to proceed to the North, though they had repeatedly ordered him not to do so. He replied that he was a man of peace, that he could not molest Englishmen, because they had never done him any harm, and always treated him well. In the morning they commenced firing on the town with swivels, and set fire to it. The heat forced some of the women to flee, the men to huddle together on the small hill in the middle of the town; the smoke prevented them seeing the Boers, and the cannon killed many, sixty (60) Bakwains. The Boers then came near to kill and destroy them all, but the Bakwains killed thirty-five (35), and many horses. They fought the whole day, but the Boers could not dislodge them. They stopped firing in the evening, and then the Bakwains retired on account of having no water. The above sixty are not all men; women and children are among the slain. The Boers were 600, and they had 700 natives with them. All the corn is burned. Parties went out and burned Bangwaketse town, and swept off all the cattle. Sebubi’s cattle are all gone. All the Bakhatla cattle gone. Neither Bangwaketse nor Bakhatla fired a shot. All the corn burned of the whole three tribes. Everything edible is taken from them. How will they live! They told Sechele that the Queen had given off the land to them, and henceforth they were the masters,–had abolished chieftainship. Sir Harry Smith tried the same, and England has paid two millions of money to catch one chief, and he is still as free as the winds of heaven. How will it end? I don’t know, but I will tell you the beginning. There are two parties of Boers gone to the Lake. These will to a dead certainty be cut off. They amount to thirty-six men. Parties are sent now in pursuit of them. The Bakwains will plunder and murder the Boers without mercy, and by and by the Boers will ask the English Government to assist them to put down rebellion, and of this rebellion I shall have, of course, to bear the blame. They often expressed a wish to get hold of me. I wait here a little in order to get information when the path is clear. Kind Providence detained me from falling into the very thick of it. God will preserve me still. He has work for me or He would have allowed me to go in just when the Boers were there. We shall remove more easily now that we are lightened of our furniture. They have taken away our sofa. I never had a good rest on it. We had only got it ready when we left. Well, they can’t have taken away all the stones. We shall have a seat in spite of them, and that, too, with a merry heart which doeth good like a medicine. I wonder what the Peace Society would do with these worthies. They are Christians. The Dutch predicants baptise all their children, and admit them to the Lord’s Supper….”
Dr. Livingstone was not disposed to restrain his indignation and grief over his losses. For one so patient and good, he had a very large vial of indignation, and on occasion poured it out right heartily over all injustice and cruelty. On no heads was it ever discharged more freely than on these Transvaal Boers. He made a formal representation of his losses both to the Cape and Home authorities, but never received a farthing of compensation. The subsequent history of the Transvaal Republic will convince many that Livingstone was not far from the truth in his estimate of the character of the free and independent Boers.
But while perfectly sincere in his indignation over the treatment of the natives and his own losses, his playful fancy could find a ludicrous side for what concerned himself, and grim enjoyment in showing it to his friends. “Think,” he writes to his friend Watt, “think of a big fat Boeress drinking coffee out of my kettle, and then throwing her tallowy corporeity on my sofa, or keeping her needles in my wife’s writing-desk! Ugh! and then think of foolish John Bull paying so many thousands a year for the suppression of the slave-trade, and allowing Commissioner Aven to make treaties with Boers who carry on the slave-trade…. The Boers are mad with rage against me because my people fought bravely. It was I, they think, who taught them to shoot Boers. Fancy your reverend friend teaching the young idea how to shoot Boers, and praying for a blessing on the work of his hands!”
In the same spirit he writes to his friend Moore:
“I never knew I was so rich until I recounted up the different articles that were taken away. They cannot be replaced in this country under L300. Many things brought to our establishment by my better-half were of considerable value. Of all I am now lightened, and they want to ease me of my head…. The Boers kill the blacks without compunction, and without provocation, because they believe they have no souls…. Viewing the dispensation apart from the extreme wickedness of the Boers, it seemed a judgment on the blacks for their rejection of the gospel. They have verily done despite unto the Spirit of grace…. Their enmity was not manifested to us, but to the gospel. I am grieved for them, and still hope that the good seed will yet vegetate[36].”
[Footnote 36: This letter to Mr. Moore contains a trait of Livingstone, very trifling in the occasion out of which it arose, but showing vividly the nature of the man. He had promised to send Mr. Moore’s little son some curiosities, but had forgotten when his family went to England. Being reminded of his promise in a postscript the little fellow had added to a letter from his father, Livingstone is “overwhelmed with shame and confusion of face.” He feels he has disappointed the boy and forgotten his promise. Again and again Livingstone returns to the subject, and feels assured that his young friend would forgive him if he knew how much he suffered for his fault. That in the midst of his own overwhelming troubles he should feel so much for the disappointment of a little heart in England, shows how terrible a thing it was to him to cause needless pain, and how profoundly it distressed him to seem forgetful of a promise. Years afterward he wrote that he had brought an elephant’s tail for Henry, but one of the men stole all the hairs and sold them. He had still a tusk of a hippopotamus for him, and a tooth for his brother, but he had brought no curiosities, for he could scarcely get along himself.]
But while he could relax playfully at the thought of the desolation at Kolobeng, he knew how to make it the occasion likewise of high resolves. The Boers, as he wrote the Directors, were resolved to shut up the interior. He was determined, with God’s help, to open the country. Time would show which would be most successful in resolution,–they or he. To his brother-in-law he wrote that he would open a path through the country, _or perish_.
As for the contest with the Boers, we may smile at their impotent wrath. It is a singular fact, that while Sechele still retains the position of an independent chief, the republic of the Boers has passed away. It is now part of the British Empire.
The country was so unsettled that for a long time Dr. Livingstone could not get guides at Kuruman to go with him to Sebituane’s. At length, however, he succeeded, and leaving Kuruman finally about the end of December, 1852, in company with George Fleming, Mr. Rutherfoord’s trader, he set out in a new direction, to the west of the old, in order to give a wide berth to the Boers. Traveling rapidly he passed through Sebituane’s country, and in June, 1858, arrived at Linyanti, the capital of the Makololo. He wrote to his wife that he had been very anxious to go to Kolobeng and see with his own eyes the destruction wrought by the savages. He had a great longing, too, to visit once more the grave of Elizabeth, their infant daughter, but he heard that the Boers were in the neighborhood, and were anxious to catch him, and he thought it best not to go. Two years before, he had been at Linyanti with Mr. Oswell. Many details of the new journey are given in the _Missionary Travels_, which it is unnecessary to repeat, It may be enough to state that he found the country flooded, and that on the way it was no unusual thing for him to be wet all day, and to walk through swamps, and water three or four feet deep. Trees, thorns, and reeds offered tremendous resistance, and he and his people must have presented a pitiable sight when forcing their way through reeds with cutting edges. “With our own hands all raw and bloody, and knees through our trousers, we at length emerged.” It was a happy thought to tear his pocket-handkerchief into two parts and tie them over his knees. “I remember,” he says in his Journal, referring to last year’s journey, “the toil which our friend Oswell endured on our account. He never spared himself.” It is not to be supposed that his guides were happy in such a march; it required his tact stretched to its very utmost to prevent them from turning back. “At the Malopo,” he writes to his wife, “there were other dangers besides. When walking before the wagon in the morning twilight, I observed a lioness about fifty yards from me, in the squatting way they walk when going to spring. She was followed by a very large lion, but seeing the wagon, she turned back.” Though he escaped fever at first, he had repeated attacks afterward, and had to be constantly using remedies against it. The unhealthiness of the region to Europeans forced itself painfully on his attention, and made him wonder in what way God would bring the light of the gospel to the poor inhabitants. As a physician his mind was much occupied with the nature of the disease, and the way to cure it. If only he could discover a remedy for that scourge of Africa, what an invaluable boon would he confer on its much-afflicted people!
“I would like,” he says in his Journal, “to devote a portion of my life to the discovery of a remedy for that terrible disease, the African fever[37]. I would go into the parts where it prevails most, and try to discover if the natives have a remedy for it. I must make many inquiries of the river people in this quarter. What an unspeakable mercy it is to be permitted to engage in this most holy and honorable work! What an infinity of lots in the world are poor, miserable, and degraded compared with mine! I might have been a common soldier, a day-laborer, a factory operative, a mechanic, instead of a missionary. If my faculties had been left to run riot or to waste as those of so many young men, I should now have been used up, a dotard, as many of my school-fellows are. I am respected by the natives, their kind expressions often make me ashamed, and they are sincere. So much deference and favor manifested without any effort on my part to secure it comes from the Author of every good gift. I acknowledge the mercies of the great God with devout and reverential gratitude.”
[Footnote 37: Livingstone’s Remedy for African fever. See Appendix No. II.]
Dr. Livingstone had declined a considerate proposal that another missionary should accompany him, and deliberately resolved to go this great journey alone. He knew, in fact, that except Mr. Moffat, who was busy with his translation of the Bible, no other missionary would go with him[38]. But in the absence of all to whom he could unburden his spirit, we find him more freely than usual pouring out his feelings in his Journal, and it is but an act of justice to himself that it should be made known how his thoughts were running, with so bold and difficult an undertaking before him:
[Footnote 38: Dr. Moffat informs us that Livingstone’s desire for his company was most intense, and that he pressed him in such a way as would have been irresistible, had his going been possible. But for his employment in translating, Dr. Moffat would have gone with all his heart.]
_28th September,_ 1852.–Am I on my way to die in Sebituane’s country? Have I seen the end of my wife and children? The breaking up of all my connections with earth, leaving this fair and beautiful world, and knowing so little of it? I am only learning the alphabet of it yet, and entering on an untried state of existence. Following Him who has entered in before me into the cloud, the veil, the Hades, is a serious prospect. Do we begin again in our new existence to learn much by experience, or have we full powers? My soul, whither wilt thou emigrate? Where wilt thou lodge the first night after leaving this body? Will an angel soothe thy fluttering, for sadly flurried wilt thou be in entering upon eternity? Oh! if Jesus speak one word of peace, that will establish in thy breast an everlasting calm! O Jesus, fill me with Thy love now, and I beseech Thee, accept me, and use me a little for Thy glory. I have done nothing for Thee yet, and I would like to do something. O do, do, I beseech Thee, accept me and my service, and take Thou all the glory….”
“_23d January_, 1853,–I think much of my poor children….”
“_4th February_, 1853.–I am spared in health, while all the company have been attacked by the fever. If God has accepted my service, then my life is charmed till my work is done. And though I pass through many dangers unscathed while working the work given me to do, when that is finished, some simple thing will give me my quietus. Death is a glorious event to one going to Jesus. Whither does the soul wing its way? What does it see first? There is something sublime in passing into the second stage of our immortal lives if washed from our sins. But oh! to be consigned to ponder over all our sins with memories excited, every scene of our lives held up as in a mirror before our eyes, and we looking at them and waiting for the day of judgment!”
“_17th February_.–It is not the encountering of difficulties and dangers in obedience to the promptings of the inward spiritual life, which constitutes tempting of God and Providence; but the acting without faith, proceeding on our own errands with no previous convictions of duty, and no prayer for aid and direction.”
“_22d May_.–I will place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. If anything will advance the interests of that kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping of it I shall most promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time and eternity. May grace and strength sufficient to enable me to adhere faithfully to this resolution be imparted to me, so that in truth, not in name only, all my interests and those of my children may be identified with his cause…. I will try and remember always to approach God in secret with as much reverence in speech, posture, and behavior as in public. Help me, Thou who knowest my frame and pitiest as a father his children.”
When Livingstone reached the Makololo, a change had taken place in the government of the tribe. Ma-mochisane, the daughter of Sebituane, had not been happy in her chiefdom, and had found it difficult to get along with the number of husbands whom her dignity as chief required her to maintain. She had given over the government to her brother Sekeletu, a youth of eighteen, who was generally recognized, though not without some reluctance, by his brother, Mpepe. Livingstone could not have foreseen how Sekeletu would receive him, but to his great relief and satisfaction he found him actuated by the most kindly feelings. He found him, boy as he was, full of vague expectations of benefits, marvelous and miraculous, which the missionaries were to bring. It was Livingstone’s first work to disabuse his mind of these expectations, and let him understand that his supreme object was to teach them the way of salvation through Jesus Christ. To a certain extent Sekeletu was interested in this:
“He asked many sensible questions about the system of Christianity in connection with the putting away of wives. They are always furnished with objections sooner than with the information. I commended him for asking me, and will begin a course of instruction to-morrow. He fears that learning to read will change his heart, and make him put away his wives. Much depends on his decision. May God influence his heart to decide aright!”
Two days after Livingstone says in his Journal:
“_1st June_.–The chief presented eight large and three small tusks this morning. I told him and his people I would rather see them trading than giving them to me. They replied that they would get trade with George Fleming, and that, too, as soon as he was well; but these they gave to their father, and they were just as any other present. They asked after the gun-medicine, believing that now my heart would be warm enough to tell them anything, but I could not tell them a lie. I offered to show Sekeletu how to shoot, and that was all the medicine I knew. I felt as if I should have been more pleased had George been amassing ivory than I. Yet this may be an indispensable step in the progress toward opening the west. I must have funds; and here they come pouring in. It would be impossible to overlook his providence who has touched their hearts. I have used no undue influence. Indeed I have used none directly for the purpose Kindness shown has been appreciated here, while much greater kindness shown to tribes in the south has resulted in a belief we missionaries must be fools. I do thank my God sincerely for his favor, and my hearty prayer is that He may continue it, and make whatever use He pleases of me, and may He have mercy on this people!”
Dr. Livingstone was careful to guard against the supposition that he allowed Sekeletu to enrich him without recompense, and in his Journal he sets down a list of the various articles presented by himself to the chief, including three goats, some fowls, powder, wire, flints, percussion-caps, an umbrella and a hat, the value of the whole being L31, 16s. When Sekeletu knew Dr. Livingstone’s plans, he undertook that he should be provided with all requisites for his journey. But he was most anxious to retain him, and for some time would not let him go. Livingstone had fascinated him. Sekeletu said that he had found a new father. And Livingstone pondered the possibility of establishing a station here. But the fever, the fever! could he bring his family? He must pass on and look for a healthier spot. His desire was to proceed to the country of the Barotse. At length, on the 16th June, Sekeletu gives his answer:
“The chief has acceded to my request to proceed to Barotse and see the country. I told him my heart was sore, because having left my family to explore his land, and, if possible, find a suitable location for a mission, I could not succeed, because detained by him here. He says he will take me with him. He does not like to part with me at all. He is obliged to consult with those who gave their opinion against my leaving. But it is certain I am permitted to go. Thanks be to God for influencing their hearts!”
Before we set out with the chief on this journey, it will be well to give a few extracts from Livingstone’s Journal, showing how unwearied were his efforts to teach the people:
“_Banks of Chobe, Sunday, May 15th_.–Preached twice to about sixty people. Very attentive. It is only divine power which can enlighted dark minds as these…. The people seem to receive ideas on divine subjects slowly. They listen, but never suppose that the truths must become embodied in actual life. They will wait until the chief becomes a Christian, and if he believes, then they refuse to follow,–as was the case among the Bakwains. Procrastination seems as powerful an instrument of deception here as elsewhere.”
“_Sunday, 12th June_.–A good and very attentive audience. We introduce entirely new motives, and were these not perfectly adapted for the human mind and heart by their divine Author, we should have no success.”
“_Sunday, 19th June_.–A good and attentive audience, but immediately after the service I went to see a sick man, and when I returned toward the Kotla, I found the chief had retired into a hut to drink beer; and, as the custom is, about forty men were standing singing to him, or, in other words, begging beer by that means. A minister who had not seen so much pioneer service as I have done would have been shocked to see so little effect produced by an earnest discourse concerning the future judgment, but time must be given to allow the truth to sink into the dark mind, and produce its effect. The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord–that is enough. We can afford to work in faith, for Omnipotence is pledged to fulfill the promise. The great mountains become a plain before the Almighty arm. The poor Bushman, the most degraded of all Adam’s family, shall see his glory, and the dwellers in the wilderness shall bow before Him. The obstacles to the coming of the Kingdom are mighty, but come it will for all that;
“Then let us pray that come it may, As come, it will for a’ that,
That man to man the world o’er
Shall brothers be for a’ that.’
“The hard and cold unbelief which distinguished the last century, and which is still aped by would-be philosophers in the present, would sneer at our faith, and call it superstition, enthusiasm, etc. But were we believers in human progress and no more, there must be a glorious future for our world. Our dreams must come true, even though they are no more than dreams. The world is rolling on to the golden age…. Discoveries and Inventions are cumulative. Another century must present a totally different aspect from the present. And when we view the state of the world and its advancing energies, in the light afforded by childlike, or call it childish, faith, we see the earth filling with the knowledge of the glory of God,–ay, all nations seeing his glory and bowing before Him whose right it is to reign. Our work and its fruits are cumulative. We work toward another state of things. Future missionaries will be rewarded by conversions for every sermon. We are their pioneers and helpers. Let them not forget the watchmen of the night–us, who worked when all was gloom, and no evidence of success in the way of conversion cheered our paths. They will doubtless have more light than we, but we served our Master earnestly, and proclaimed the same gospel as they will do.”
Of the services which Livingstone held with the people, we have the following picture;
“When I stand up, all the women and children draw near, and, having ordered silence, I explain the plan of salvation, the goodness of God in sending his Son to die, the confirmation of his mission by miracles, the last judgment or future state, the evil of sin, God’s commands respecting it, etc.; always choosing one subject only for an address, and taking care to make it short and plain, and applicable to them. This address is listened to with great attention by most of the audience. A short prayer concludes the service, all kneeling down, and remaining so till told to rise. At first we have to enjoin on the women who have children to remain sitting, for when they kneel, they squeeze their children, and a simultaneous skirl is set up by the whole troop of youngsters, who make the prayer inaudible.”
When Livingstone and Sekeletu had gone about sixty miles on the way to the Barotse, they encountered Mpepe, Sekeletu’s half-brother and secret rival. It turned out that Mpepe had a secret plan for killing Sekeletu, and that three times on the day of their meeting that plan was frustrated by apparently accidental causes. On one of these occasions, Livingstone, by covering Sekeletu, prevented him from being speared. Mpepe’s treachery becoming known, he was arrested by Sekeletu’s people, and promptly put to death. The episode was not agreeable, but it illustrated savage life. It turned out that Mpepe favored the slave-trade, and was closely engaged with certain Portuguese traders in intrigues for establishing and extending it. Had Sekeletu been killed, Livingstone’s enterprise would certainly have been put an end to, and very probably likewise Livingstone himself.
The party, numbering about one hundred and sixty, proceeded up the beautiful river which on his former visit Livingstone had first known as the Sesheke, but which was called by the Barotse the Liambai or Leeambye. The term means “the large river,” and Luambeji, Luambesi, Ambezi, Yimbezi, and Zambezi are names applied to it at different parts of its course. In the progress of their journey they came to the town of the father of Mpepe, where, most unexpectedly, Livingstone encountered a horrible scene. Mpepe’s father and another headman were known to have favored the plan for the murder of Sekeletu, and were therefore objects of fear to the latter. When all were met, and Mpepe’s father was questioned why he did not stop his son’s proceedings, Sekeletu suddenly sprang to his feet and gave the two men into custody. All had been planned beforehand. Forthwith they were led away, surrounded by Sekeletu’s warriors, all dream of opposition on their part being as useless as interference would have been on Livingstone’s. Before his eyes he saw them hewn to; pieces with axes, and cast into the river to be devoured by the alligators. Within two hours of their arrival the whole party had left the scene of this shocking tragedy, Livingstone being so horrified that he could not remain. He did his best to show the sin of blood-guiltiness, and bring before the people the scene of the Last Judgment, which was the only thing that seemed to make any impression.
Farther on his way he had an interview with Ma-mochisane, the daughter of Sebituane who had resigned in favor of Sekeletu. He was the first white man she had ever seen. The interview was pleasing and not without touches of womanly character; the poor woman had felt an _embarras de richesses_ in the matter of husbands, and was very uncomfortable when married women complained of her taking their spouses from them. Her soul recoiled from the business; she wished to have a husband of her own and to be like other women.
So anxious was Livingstone to find a healthy locality, that, leaving Sekeletu, he proceeded to the farthest limit of the Barotse country, but no healthy place could be found. It is plain, however, that in spite of all risk, and much as he suffered from the fever, he was planning, if no better place could be found, to return himself to Linyanti and be the Makololo missionary. Not just immediately, however. Having failed in the first object of his journey–to find a healthy locality–he was resolved to follow out the second, and endeavor to discover a highway to the sea. First he would try the west coast, and the point for which he would make was St. Paul de Loanda. He might have found a nearer way, but a Portuguese trader whom he had met, and from whom he had received kindness, was going by that route to St. Philip de Benguela. The trader was implicated in the slave-trade, and Livingstone knew what a disadvantage it would be either to accompany or to follow him. He therefore returned to Linyanti; and there began preparations for the journey to Loanda on the coast.
During the time thus spent in the Barotse country, Livingstone saw heathenism in its most unadulterated form. It was a painful, loathsome, and horrible spectacle. His views of the Fall and of the corruption of human nature were certainly not lightened by the sight. In his Journal he is constantly letting fall expressions of weariness at the noise, the excitement, the wild savage dancing, the heartless cruelty, the utter disregard of feelings, the destruction of children, the drudgery of the old people, the atrocious murders with which he was in contact. Occasionally he would think of other scenes of travel; if a friend, for example, were going to Palestine, he would say how gladly he would kiss the dust that had been trod by the Man of Sorrows. One day a poor girl comes hungry and naked to the wagons, and is relieved from time to time; then disappears to die in the woods of starvation or be torn in pieces by the hyenas. Another day, as he is preaching, a boy, walking along with his mother, is suddenly seized by a man, utters a shriek as if his heart had burst, and becomes, as Livingstone finds, a hopeless slave. Another time, the sickening sight is a line of slaves attached by a chain. That chain haunts and harrows him.
Amid all his difficulties he patiently pursued his work as missionary. Twice every Sunday he preached, usually to good audiences, the number rising on occasions so high as a thousand. It was a great work to sow the good seed so widely, where no Christian man had ever been, proclaiming every Lord’s Day to fresh ears the message of Divine love. Sometimes he was in great hopes that a true impression had been made. But usually, whenever the service was over, the wild savage dance with all its demon noises succeeded, and the missionary could but look on and sigh. So ready was he for labor that when he could get any willing to learn, he commenced teaching them the alphabet. But he was continually met by the notion that his religion was a religion of medicines, and that all the good it could do was by charms. Intellectual culture seemed indispensable to dissipate this inveterate superstition regarding Christian influence.
A few extracts from his Journal in the Barotse country will more vividly exhibit his state of mind:
“_27th August_, 1853.–The more intimately I become acquainted with barbarians, the more disgusting does heathenism become. It is inconceivably vile. They are always boasting of their fierceness, yet dare not visit another tribe for fear of being killed. They never visit anywhere but for the purpose of plunder and oppression. They never go anywhere but with a club or spear in hand. It is lamentable to see those who might be children of God, dwelling in peace and love, so utterly the children of the devil, dwelling in fear and continual irritation. They bestow honors and flattering titles on me in confusing profusion. All from the least to the greatest call me Father, Lord, etc., and bestow food without recompense, out of pure kindness. They need a healer. May God enable me to be such to them….
“_31st August_.–The slave-trade seems pushed into the very centre of the continent from both sides. It must be profitable….
“_September 25, Sunday_.–A quiet audience to-day. The seed being sown, the least of all seeds now, but it will grow a mighty tree. It is as it were a small stone cut out of a mountain, but it will fill the whole earth. He that believeth shall not make haste. Surely if God can bear with hardened impenitent sinners for thirty, forty, or fifty years, waiting to be gracious, we may take it for granted that his is the best way. He could destroy his enemies, but He waits to be gracious. To become irritated with their stubbornness and hardness of heart is ungodlike….
“_13th October_.–Missionaries ought to cultivate a taste for the beautiful. We are necessarily compelled to contemplate much moral impurity and degradation. We are so often doomed to disappointment. We are apt to become either callous or melancholy, or, if preserved from these, the constant strain on the sensibilities is likely to injure the bodily health. On this account it seems necessary to cultivate that faculty for the gratification of which God has made such universal provision. See the green earth and blue sky, the lofty mountain and the verdant valley, the glorious orbs of day and night, and the starry canopy with all their celestial splendor, the graceful flowers so chaste in form and perfect in coloring. The various forms of animated life present to him whose heart is at peace with God through the blood of his Son an indescribable charm. He sees in the calm beauties of nature such abundant provision for the welfare of humanity and animate existence. There appears on the quiet repose of