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| Dr David Livingstone |
Author(s): Harry H. Johnston
Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 41, No. 5 (May, 1913), pp. 423-446
Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute ofBritish Geographers)
Remarks From The President: Forever linked with his in the fortunes of that dark continent; and many others who were connected with his labours.
It would ill become me in such company to say much about the great man whom we commemorate. But it is open to me to remark that his was the type of character and career that will always remain an inspiration for our race. Born with no social advantages, possessing no prospects, backed by no powerful influence, this invincible Scotsman hewed his way through the world, and carved his name deep in the history of mankind, until in the end he was carried to his grave in Westminster Abbey amid the sorrowing admiration of an entire people, and bequeathed a name which has been, and will ever be, a light to his countrymen. How did he do it? By boldness of conception, by fertility and courage in execution, by a noble endurance in suffering and disappointment, by self sacrifice unto death, he wrested triumph even from failure, and in the darkness never failed to see the dawn. His spirit hovers over Central Africa, just as that of Cecil Rhodes, of many of whose ideals he was the unconscious parent, broods over the South African regions that bear his name. And, though Africa has changed since Livingstone's day beyond all human recognition; though settled territories and demarcated frontiers have taken the place of lawlessness and intertribal warfare; though geographical problems which he went down to the grave without having solved are now among the common places of school primers; though exploration has given way to peaceful evolution, and railways have replaced the tortuous crawl of the caravan; though Africa is no longer merely aEuropean interest, but has almost become a European possession yet the work of Livingstone still stands forth in monumental grandeur among the achievements of human energy, and the spirit of Livingstone will continue to inspire a generation that knew him not, but will never cease to revere his name.
With these few introductory remarks, ladies and gentlemen, I will ask our lecturer to address us.
LIVINGSTONE AS AN EXPLORER.
By Sir HARRY H. JOHNSTON, G.C.M.G., K.C.B.
David Livingstone, it is scarcely necessary to remind you, was of Highland descent, his grandfather having been a crofter on the little island of Ulva, off the west coast of the larger island, Mull. In appearance he showed clearly that the predominant strain in his ancestry was what we call Iberian for want of a more definite word. That is to say, that he was of that very old racial strain still existing in Western Scotland, Western Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall, which has apparently some kinship in origin with the peoples of the Mediterranean, and especially of Spain and Portugal. Indeed. according to such descriptions as we have of him, and such portraits as illustrate his appearance, he was not unlike a Spaniard, especially in youth and early middle age. His height scarcely reached to 5 feet 7 inches, his hair and moustache, until they were whitened with premature old age, were black, his eyes hazel, his complexion much tanned by the African sun, but at all times inclining to sallow. He possessed a natural dignity of aspect, however, which never failed to make the requisite impression on Africans and Europeans alike. Bubbling over with sly humour, with world-wide sympathies, and entirely free from any narrowness of outlook, he possessed a very strong measure of self-respect, coupled with a quiet, intense obstinacy of purpose. In earlier life he was so eager to advance the bounds of knowledge, and so certain that he was a predestined and appointed agent to accomplish great purposes, that he may have been slightly arrogant and contemptuous towards fools and palterers. Once or twice during that absolute martyrdom of the six years which comprised the second Zambezi expedition he may have given way occasionally to temper, and in one instance have been somewhat unjust. His treatment of Thomas Baines and of Richard Thornton, members of the Second Zambezi expedition, cannot be altogether defended, though Thornton was reconciled, and returned to work under him. But in regard to Baines, he only sinned by deputy, so to speak. Like many other great men in history, he had a natural desire to help his immediate relations, and he had wished to give his brother Charles a chance of distinction by making him secretary to the Government Zambezi expedition of 1858; and Charles Livingstone, both on the Zambezi and afterwards as a Consul in West Africa, showed that so far as achievements and disposition were concerned, he was by no means on the same plane as his truly great brother. It was Charles Livingstone who fomented the few squabbles and misunderstandings which broke out in the early days of the Zambezi expedition, and David's only share of the blame lay in the fact that he once or twice supported his brother, and did not give sufficient consideration to the other side.
As an estimate which is one of unmitigated praise generally defeats its object and provokes a reaction of criticism, I have sought diligently to record all the aspects and details of the character and acts of David Livingstone which could be gathered from the remembrance of contemporaries or could be found in books and letters; therefore I mention these trivial points of disparagement. But, as a matter of fact, a research into the life and work of Livingstone (which I may mention I have carried on for a period of thirty years, beginning with my association with Stanley, with Sir John Kirk, and with some of Livingstone's old Swahili followers on the Congo) leaves me unable to quote anything of importance which could be regarded as serious dispraise of this remarkable man. On the other hand, a frequently repeated reading of his works leaves me increasingly astonished at his achievements with the means that he possessed, and more than ever convinced that he was so far the greatest of Afriean explorers, judged not only by his actual achievements, but by his character, disposition, and mental capacity.* He wrote things, he expressed ideas in the forties, fifties, and sixties of the last century which seem to those who read them to-day singularly modern as conceptions, conclusions, and lines of profitable study. For instance, apart from his boyish passion for geology and the records of the rocks, and his feeling that here lay before us a new and much vaster Bible, he had only just attained manhood when by dint of reading he begins to express his conviction that Christian missionaries were going to produce not only the awakening but the renaissance of China, an eventuality which has now come to pass. Scarcely landed in South Africa, he conceives the idea, barely formulated then, of the far-spreading affinities of the Bantu peoples, and the possibility through this community of language of carrying British missionary work and British political influence up through the centre of Africa to Abyssinia. He also, fifteen years afterwards, grasped the important fact before any other explorer of Africa, that the part of the continent white men should make for in their settlements was the high plateau region of the interior rather than the banks of great rivers or the seaboard.
Indeed, it requires very little accentuation of his opinions expressed in private letters in 1841, to formulate the phrase, since so potent, of iC The Cape to Cairo." He never lost sight of this ideal, and during his last years speculated on its ultimate achievement through the work of Sir Samuel Baker on the Mountain Nile and the Albert Nyanza. It was only when Stanley chilled these anticipations by informing him that Great Britain had lost her interest in African problems, and that it was perhaps the United States which was going to re-organize Egypt through the loan of American officers, that Livingstone's ideals now transcended the limitations of national politics. In his journal on May 1, 1872, just one year before his death, he wrote the celebrated words which have been recorded on his tombstone, " All I can add in my loneliness is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one, American, Englishman, or Turk, who would help to heal the open sore of the world."
Yet he was under no illusions about the negro and his inherent weakness as a self-governing race : "The evils inflicted by the Arabs are enormous, but probably not greater than the people (the negroes) inflict on each other," is one of his mature conclusions. His last seven years' explorations of South-Central Africa brought home to him the devastation of Africa by the negro peoples and their internecine wars. He records in 1866 his impression that a good deal of the Yao country between the Ruvuma and Lake Nyasa once supported a prodigious iron-smelting and grain-growing population. The land was marked with the ridges in which they formerly planted their crops and from which they drained off the too abundant moisture of the rains, while the ground was strewn with pieces of broken pots. Internecine wars had led to famine and depopulation, yet the surviving Yao tribes had invaded the lands of the A-nyanja and Alolo, and (wrote Livingstone) Yao raids in the middle nineteenth century for the supply of Arab caravans almost depopulated the fertile tracts to the south-east of Lake Nyasa. The evidence of Livingstone and other travellers of the fifties, sixties, and seventies, brings home to us the widespread devastation caused by bands of Angoni-Zulus. These Zulu raids over East-Central Africa during the nineteenth century were one of the greatest disasters of its history. They had their origin in the convulsions caused in Natal and Zululand by the conquests of Chaka the Destroyer, and their effects long remained written on the surface of
Nyasaland, Northeast Rhodesia and German East Africa.
"It was wearisome to see the skulls and bones scattered about everywhere; one would fain not notice, but they are so striking that they cannot be avoided," is an extract from Livingstone's journal as he comes in contact with the Angoni raids in South-west Nyasaland. As he begins to leave the basin of the upper Luangwa for the unknown Bemba regions beyond, he notices the uninhabited condition of the country due to the slave raids of the Awemba; a fresh factor in Afriean history. The Awemba or Aba-emba did not come from the south like the Zulus, but from Congoland, and their irruption into South-Central Africa was one of the results of great tribal disturbances there due to the conquests of the Sudanese Bushongo. Livingstone writes in December, 1866: "I shall make this beautiful land (North-east Rhodesia) better known, which is an essential part of the process by which it will become the pleasant haunts of men. It is impossible to describe its rich luxuriance, but most of it is running to waste through the slave-trading and eternal wars."
Yet while condoling with the Mananja snrvivors from the Yao slaveraids in Nyasaland, he was asked by the men amongst them for guns and powder, not to defend themselves only, but so that they might imitate the Yao and go slave-raiding ; and he noted in 1866 that the much-harried A-chewa people, instead of loathing the Mazitu, or " wild beast" Angoni Zulus for their raids, admired them and strove to dress up their young men like them.
Here are some extracts from his journals, giving pictures of the slave trade in Yaoland before it became Portuguese Nyasaland. His expedition had passed a woman tied by the neck to a tree, and dead. The people of the country explained that she was unable to keep up with the other slaves of a gang, and the master decided that she should not become the slave of another. They also saw one lying in the path, shot or stabbed, for she was in a pool of blood. As to this he wrote :
" We passed a slave woman shot or stabbed through the body lying on the path. An Arab who passed early that morning had done it in anger at losing the price he had given for her, because she was unable to walk any longer. . . . One of the men wandered from the party, and saw slaves in slave-sticks. They were too weak to say where they had come from. Some were quite young. . . ." One woman whom Livingstone redeemed was worth the trouble that he took on her account. He noticed a fine upstanding person, already put into the slave-stick, appeal to him in a loud voice as his caravan passed by, to see justice done. She declared that she had been on a trading journey with a servant, and had been seized by the old man of the village on the plea that she was a wife running away from her husband, to whom he intended to restore her. In reality he was bargaining to dispose of her to the slavers, and had already sold her servant. Livingstone gave him a small present of cloth, and allowed the woman to accompany his caravan for several days' journey inland till she could reach her own people. She showed herself most grateful for this kindness, and behaved herself with perfect propriety, " in every way like a lady." She proved a most useful ally as they got into her own country, in buying food for them, and in seeing that they were not treated with any injustice by the natives.
Livingstone's description of the horrors of the slave-raids and the slave-trade in Eastern Congoland are too well known to neecl quotation in order to convince you that the Central Africa he knew merited his pity and his appeal for intervention. Of course not all the Arabs were ruthless murderers and slave-raiders. Tipu-tipu and some others were only ivory traders, though they made use of slave-porters.
Livingstone's attitude towards slavery and the slave-trade we now know to have been a perfectly reasonable one, based quite as much on a far-sighted appreciation of the economic importance of free labour in Africa as on an equally far-sighted instinct of philanthropy. He criticised severely, but not unjustly, the Dutch-speaking colonists of South Africa for their treatment of the Bechuana and Bushmen; the Portuguese for their acquiescence or participation in the Central African slave-trade; his own Government for lack of zeal in regard to the repression of the slave trade at Zanzibar (I am referring to the sixties of the last century); and the Arabs-whose nobility of disposition he was well able to appreciate where it was manifest?for the misuse of the power they had acquired in the region of the great lakes.
In the middle of the nineteenth century we find him writing quietly to deprecate the butchery of big game which was beginning to rage in central South Africa. Some of these gentlemen-hunters he denounced as " itinerant butchers," and he points out that so far from their reckless slaughter of wild beasts earning for them a high position in the regard of the natives, they were often regarded with a certain amount of contempt.* Yet if it were necessary for the protection of human life, or other reasonable human needs such as hunger, or for the enlargement of scientific knowledge, he could handle a rifle and a shot-gun nearly as well as anyone of his sportsman friends; and that he was a thorough sportsman in the best definitions of the word-what the Americans would call "a real white man "?is evident from the unqualified regard which all the great sportsmen-naturalists and pioneers of South Africa expressed for him. Despite all rivalries in exploration, all attempts on the part of the malicious and the envious to sow discord between them, William Cotton Oswell, throughout his own unblemished career, wrote and spoke of Livingstone in the highest terms, without any qualification whatever. The same was the case with Frank Yardon, Gordon Cumming (even though he may have winced at the reproof of his butchery), William Webb, Thomas Steele, and James Chapman.
But if he blamed and criticised, he was far readier to praise and thank. Those who have been so willing to underline his criticism of the Portuguese, have omitted to place alongside it much that he recorded in their favour and many cordial expressions of thanks which he tendered them for their frequent assistance. "May God remember them in their day of need," he wrote in deepest gratitude for Portuguese hospitality and kindness at the crisis of his journey on the frontiers of Angola; and in another place," The universal hospitality of the Portuguese was most gratifying as it was most unexpected. And even now as I copy my journal I remember it all with a glow of gratitude."
In very truth, but for the action of the Portuguese towards him when he reached the Kwango river from the Upper Zambezi, he might have perished and have been scarcely heard of in the history of Africa. He had only a small escort of scared Makololo, already frightened at their own boldness in travelling so far away from home; he was almost entirely without trade goods or provisions, ill and weak with semi-starvation and dysentery. The truculent natives on the east bank of the Kwango refused him a passage across the river, and avowed their intentions of seizing and enslaving his Makololo, while at him they had begun to fire their muskets. He would almost certainly have died from one cause or another at this juncture, but for the intervention of a Portuguese sergeant of militia on the west bank of the Kwango, who prevailed on the natives to ferry him across; and once he had got him as a guest, treated him with every kindness and hospitality and sent him forward, safe and well provisioned, to finish his journey to the Atlantic coast. The Aeting-Governor of Angola in those days was the Bishop of Angola, whose sentiments on the subject of religion as recorded by Livingstone are broad-minded enough not to seem out of date for an advanced Review of 1913. This Bishop-Governor gave him an excellent riding-horse, which was of material use to him on his return expedition to the Zambezi, besides helping him in every possible way not only to return to the Zambezi, but to cross Africa to the Portuguese dominions on the other side.
Yet there is one little incident in relation to Livingstone and the Portuguese at this period (1855) which is worth recording, as it is so characteristic of both. Though Livingstone obviously concealed his intentions with the desire of not provoking too much remonstrance or opposition in South Africa, he had evidently determined from the very first on making an overland journey from Capetown to Angola by way of the Upper Zambezi, for he had taken the precaution of providing himself before leaving Capetown with a Portuguese passport. Landed on the west bank of the Kwango with the shots of the turbulent Bashinje peoples on the other side still ringing in his ears, dripping, no doubt, from the water in the canoe, enfeebled with dysentery and semi-starvation, in rags and tatters, this object of pity, while he was being saluted by the Portuguese sergeant of militia with phrases of sonorous welcome, was being pestered by another Portuguese ofiicial " to show his passport,J; and though he was travelling almost without luggage, except such as could be put into a sack, a bag, and a tin box, from one or other of these packages he produced the passport, which was pronounced" to be quite in order/'
Livingstone, or more likely his brother Charles, wrote harshly of the Portuguese on the lower Zambezi, and the want of good-will that they showed to his expedition of 1858-64. Yet in the account given of that six years of martyrdom one is struck over and over again with the forbearance, the unwearied kindness and hospitality, and often the acts of material help afforded by the Portuguese officials. The fact is that both parties were in a false position. The despatch by the British Government of the second Zambezi expedition was an act characteristic at times of our foreign and colonial policy-an attempt to shirk responsibility, to get someone else to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, and to avoid recourse to diplomacy.*
Judged by modern lights, the Portuguese claim to lock up the Zambezi and the access to Lake Nyasa was unjustifiable, just as we cannot any longer defend in theory the attempt made by the British some years ago to constitute the commerce of Nigeria as the monopoly of a British company, or many other temporary or long-standing practices in our colonial policy. But the claim of the Portuguese was an historic and an uncontested one of 350 years' standing, when Livingstone started as a British Consul on a very indefinite mission to open up Zambezi to British commerce, settlement, aud missionary work. The British Government should not have sent him on this enterprise without first of all coming to terms with Portugal; and in all probability the Portuguese might have been just as susceptible to reason as they proved to be when the matter was seriously tackled eighteen years after Livingstone's death. As it was, Livingstone and the members of his staff were allowed to do pretty much as they pleased in the Zambezi delta, on the Zambezi itself, and on the Shire, but it was made quite clear to them that if their efforts resulted in success all British commerce in those regions must pass through a Portuguese customs house.
However that may be, the breakdown of this second Zambezi expedition was really not due to unwillingness on the part of the Portuguese to negotiate, but to the gigantic and unforeseen difficulties of the task on which Livingstone had embarked. The Chinde mouth of the Zambezi delta either did not exist in those days as a navigable passage, or was unknown or unrevealed. The Kongone mouth, practically discovered by Livingstone's expedition, was one with a dangerous and shallow bar; and although occasionally by marvellous feats of seamanship small steamers were got across it, the Kongone bar was one of the first causes of disappointment, loss, failure, and threatened disaster. In one instance, the disaster would have been almost complete but for the efforts and kindness of the Portuguese. Then the Zambezi and the Shire proved full of difficulties for navigation. Above Tete were the almost impassable Quebra Baco rapids, while the navigation of the Central Zambezi between Quebra Baco and Victoria Falls was likewise beset with difficulties from the banks of the river on both sides being ranged over by truculent tribes and greedy chieftains.*
The Makololo power on the upper Zambezi was rapidly decaying, yet owing to the great impression made on the chief and people by Livingstone's lieutenant, Sir John Kirk, the Makololo would have thrown their remaining energies into the support of a British settlement and administration of their country, and offered considerable grants of healthy unoccupied land for that purpose: in fact, they wished to forestall the work which long since has been done by the British South Africa Company. But their proposals remained a dead letter owing to the inaccessibility of their country. Advance up the Shire to Lake Nyasa was temporarily stopped by the impassable Murchison Falls. The land route across the Shire Highlands, across what is now one of the most peaceful, prosperous, and best governed parts of Africa, was arrested by the slave raids of the Muhammadan Yaos. But Lake Nyasa, in spite of all difficulties, was discovered by Livingstone, accompanied by Kirk, Charles Livingstone, and Edward Eae, on September 16, 1859.t
Twice did Livingstone, after this date, return to Lake Nyasa; in 1831 and in 1863. With a sailing-boat he and Kirk explored its shores (chiefly on the west) as far north as the Tumbuka or Northern Atonga country, and himself marched through Western Angoniland and the Arab settlements of Kotakota. In 1863 he was obliged to reach the lake by marching overland, boats having been lost or destroyed and steamers proved to draw too much water for the depleted Shire river. Once more he sought the hospitality of Kotakota, and from this Arab town he marched with desperate eagerness to the north-west ward, hoping to accomplish something remarkable in geographical discovery which might enlarge our knowledge of Central Africa. But the knowledge that his expedition had been publicly cancelled, obliged him to stop within ten days' march of Lake Bangweulu and painfully return to England.
His last seven years of Afriean exploration were somewhat meagrely assisted by a grant of £500 from the Boyal Geographical Society and a grant of £500 from the Foreign Office. He was allowed to retain the title of Consul, but accorded no pay, and further warned that he must expect no pension. He might have been unable to continue his work at all-the work for which he was so clearly cut out-had it not been for the private generosity of Mr. James Young, the great chemist of Glasgow, William Webb of Newstead Abbey, and, perhaps, one should add, Mr. John Murray the publisher. Livingstone-few of us seem to realize-had himself borne a considerable share of t he expense of this six years' government expedition to Zambezia. He had spent ?6000 of his own money on the Lady Nyasa, a steamer specially designed for him. Gathering together, therefore, such funds as he could set aside from the provision he had made for the education and maintenance of his four children, and combining with this the money subscribed by private friends and public bodies, he embarked in 1866 on his self-imposed mission of inquiry into the hydrography of Central Africa.
When resting at Linyanti on the Chobe river in 1855, he had heard from an intelligent Arab of Zanzibar, who had just reached that place overland from the east coast, of Lake Tanganyika and the great river Lualaba of Central Africa. He was at that time puzzled by the contradictory Portuguese and Arab stories of the Chambezi, which on account of the similarity of name was declared by armchair geogra/phers to be the real Zambezi and the head stream of the Kafue. In 1864 he asked himself to what system belonged this mysterious Lake Shuia or Bemba (which he afterwards called Bangweulu) ? To that of the Zambezi ? If not, to what other? He realized in 1855 that the Kasai, which he had discovered in South Congoland, must be a very important affiuent of the Congo, if not a main stream of that system. But he evidently did not conceive it possible till near the time of his death, that the Congo basin could extend so far as it does to the south-east and be fed by the Chambezi and the Lualaba. In his mind there could only be one alternative to the Zambezi as the recipient of these reported lakes and rivers of the Bemba country ; and that was the Nile.
The animosity between Burton and Speke, the pardonable vanity as an explorer of Sir Samuel Baker, and other factors, had induced in the 'sixties of the last century very incorrect ideas about the ultimate sources of the Nile. The 'Victoria Nyanza had been split up into a number of separate lakelets or swamps, and the size and length of the Albert Nyanza exaggerated to an extraordinary degree. With regard to this last factor, we now know that Sir Samuel Baker's speculations were not so entirely unjustifiable. His gaze had penetrated south sufficiently far to have realized the general outlines of the Semliki valley. He was deceived by the blue slopes of Kuwenzori on the east and the lofty plateaus of Mboka and Bukonjo on the west of the Semliki, into imagining that the Albert lake * had an indefinite extension towards the south between vast mountain walls. In fact, if he could have seen a little farther or have heard stories of Lakes Edward and Kivu, he might have been still more positive on this score.f Then again, neither Burton nor Speke had properly examined the north end of Lake Tanganyika to ascertain whether water flowed out of it or into it. The rumoured Kusizi river might be an effluent, and Tanganyika be the farthest southern source of the Nile waters. Or Tanganyika might feed the Great River which since 1855 Livingstone knew to be dimly rumoured to emerge from a cluster of lakes and flow northward through the heart of Central Africa. Or it might be a locked basin independent of the Nile system; in which case the "Luapura" would prove to be the upper Albertine Nile.#
It was to the solution of this problem that Livingstone, without a thought for anything else, and yet regarding it as a mission divinely inspired, devoted all his remaining energies; but in the middle of this task he was forced to realize the appalling devastation of Central Africa which was now resulting from the Arab slave raids. From about 1869 he had two objects ever before him : one was to solve the Nile problem, and the other to rouse the conscience of the world in regard to the Central Afriean slave-trade.
Let us briefly consider his achievements as a geographical discoverer. He directly inspired the search for Lake Ngami, and was the main agent in carrying South Afriean exploration beyond the arid plateaus of Bechuanaland and the Kalahari desert into what is really the Zambezi basin. Oswell and Murray contributed to the cost of his journeys, but he by his influence found the guides and secured the friendship or the neutrality of the native chiefs. He acted as interpreter-in-chief, and, thanks to the mastery he had acquired over the Sechuana language, was able to converse fully and freely with the natives of South-Central Africa. He also picked up a considerable knowledge of other dialects. He served diligently and skilfully as physician and surgeon all who were connected with these journeys. But his own predilections were for botany, zoology, and the study of man. It was the impression that native reports of his character had made on Sebituane, the Makololo conqueror of the upper Zambezi, and the resultant protection afforded, which made it so easy for Livingstone and Oswell to reach the Chobe river and the upper Zambezi in 1851.
Between 1852 and 1856, Livingstone traced the main course of the Zambezi from its confluence with the Chobe northwards to near the sources of the Liba, and from this point west wards he was the first scientific geographer to lay down correctly the position of the upper Kasai and Kwango affluents of the Congo.
Livingstone may be quoted as the discoverer of the great Kasai (perhaps the principal among the Congo affluents for volume and for extent of drainage area). At first it would seem probable that the Pombeiros, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, must have crossed the Kasai in order to reach the court of the Mwata Yanvo. But they appear to have deflected their route southwards, after leaving the upper Kwango, so that they passed round the sources of the Kasai, leaving them to the north. Ladislaus Magyar, the Hungarian explorer and trader (who married a negress of Bihe and travelled over Angola between 1849 and 1864), penetrated about 1851 to the upper Kwango and the north-west limits of the Zambezi basin, and may have seen the infant Kasai in 1855, a few months before or after Livingstone passed by. But he did not communicate the information to the world until after Livingstone's journey, and never, I think, specifically mentioned the Kasai, at any rate, before the publication of Livingstone's book. Moreover, he was no trained geographer or taker of observations for fixing points of latitude and longitude. Silva Porto, a Portuguese trader of Bihe, reached the upper Zambezi and South Congoland in the fifties and sixties, but his wanderings resulted in no additions to the map of Africa.
It is, indeed, remarkable what Livingstone's predecessors missed rather than what they found. Dr. Lacerda reached to little Lake Mofwe, an isolated lagoon about 20 miles south of Mweru and a short distance east of the Luapula. Yet apparently neither he nor any member of his expedition, before or after his death, had the curiosity to penetrate northwards one day's journey and discover Lake Mweru, or visit the banks of the Luapula. Going through the Bisa country they heard of a lake?" Lake Chuia," or Shuia, a short distance to the westward, and knew that the Chambezi flowed into it. This was Livingstone's Bangweulu* (named, as he tells us, from one of its islands). But the Portuguese of Lacerda's mission, like those of the Monteiro-Gamitto expedition of 1831-2, made no effort to locate Bangweulu and place it definitely on the map. Lake Nyasa was heard of (as "Nyanja ") by the Portuguese of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth ; but it was not till 1846 that its waters-so far as historical records go-were actually seen by a Portuguese (Candido de Costa Cardoso). Gasparo de Bocarro passed near to Lake Nyasa in 1616 on his way to Kilwa and Mombasa, but seems to have crossed Lake Malombe or the upper Shire only, and not actually to have seen Lake Nyasa.
Returning from Angola to the Chobe river, he discovered the Victoria falls, and followed the Zambezi more or less closely down to its delta, emerging on the sea-coast at Quelimane.
On his second Zambezi expedition he revealed to the world Lake Nyasa, lake Chilwa (mis-written Shirwa), the high mountains of the Shire region, and the course of the Shire river, the Luangwa river to the west of lake Nyasa, most of the northern confluents of the Zambezi in their lower courses, and the Butonga highlands. This second expedition was also the means of effecting a great increase in our knowledge of the Zambezi delta.
On his third great African journey he renewed previous explorations in the direction of the Buvuma, and traced a good deal of the course of that East African river. He was practically the first European to explore West Nyasaland and the northern Bemba or Awemba country; he discovered the south end of Tanganyika, and made a shrewd guess at its outlet through the Rukuga (which river he styled the Longumba). He first revealed the great Mweru swamp or Chisera. ["Elephants, buffaloes, and zebras grazed in large numbers on the long sloping banks of a river or marsh called Chisera." This considerable extent of alternate swamps or shallow water was afterwards re-discovered by Sir Alfred Sharpc.] Livingstone made known to us lakes Mworu and Bangweulu and the connecting Luapula river, and the course of the great Lualaba or upper Congo at Nyangwe. He also recorded the existence of the upper Lualaba or Kamolondo.* He was the first European to penetrate as far north as S. lat. 3? 30' near the Elila river, and describe the Manyuemaj forests with the large chimpanzis and pygmy elephants found in them. He mentions for the first time the Lomami river, and is the first explorer to hear of the country of Katanga, its mineral wealth and its?as yet?unexplored, inhabited caverns of vast size. ;i A month to the westward of Kazembe's country lies Katanga, where the people smelt copper ore (malachite) into large ingots shaped like the capital letter I, weighing from fifty to a hundred pounds. The natives draw the copper into wire for armlets and leglets. Gold is also found at Katanga." Livingstone was the first writer to mention the possible existence of Lake Kivu ; of Kavirondo gulf (Victoria Nyanza); and of Lake Naivasha: from Arab information, of course.
He was the first to record the existence of drilled stones in the country to the south-west of Tanganyika, which seemed to be evidence of the existence of a people of ancient Bushmen culture in that direction,# and his remarks generally on the Stone Age in Africa, on the possible existence of undiscovered ancient types of mammals and of mammalian fossils, all show an enlightenment in speculative scientific imagination greatly in advance of his times. He was also in all probability the first writer since the Portuguese chroniclers of the sixteenth century to allude to the remarkable ruins of stone-built forts, villages, and cities in South-East Africa. He derived his information from natives, and perhaps also from Boer hunters. He also mentions the coins found in excavating the shore of Zanzibar island, with Kufic inscriptions, and perhaps dating back to the ninth or tenth century a.d. (Sir John Kirk confirms this statement, and adds that some of these coins were of Harun-ar-rashid's reign, and bore the name of his viziers, Yahya or Fadl.)
His biblical studies drew him into Egyptology, and one of his incentives to the exploration of the Nile sources was the conviction that Moses when living in Egypt had taken a great interest in Nile exploration. Livingstone half hoped that in discovering the ultimate sources of the Nile he might come across archaeologieal traces of Egyptian influence. He was not pursuing in this direction an absolute chimera.
The physical appearance of so many of the Bantu tribes between Lunda on the south-west and Manyuema, Bambare and Buguha on the north-east, constantly suggested to Livingstone's mincl the idea of an immigration of Egyptians into Central Africa. Had he lived to penetrate to the countries north of Tanganyika to see the Hima or Tusi aristocracy on the highlands of Equatorial Africa, he would have been still more convinced of the ancient inflow of Egyptian influence into these regions: though it is a theory which it is very unsafe to pursue on the scanty evidence we possess at the present time.
When travelling from Tanganyika to Mweru in 1869, he remarks on the appearance of the chief and people of Itawa. " Nsama, the chief, was an old man with head and face like those sculptured on the Assyrian monuments. . . . His people were particularly handsome, many of the Itawa men with as beautiful heads as one could find in an assembly of Europeans. Their bodies were well shaped, with small hands and feet-none of the West Coast ugliness?no prognathous jaws or lark heels."
There is another entry in his journal derived from Arab information which bears on this theory of the Hamitic permeation of Negro Africa.
"The royal house of Merere of the Basango" (north-east Nyasaland) " is said to have been founded by a light-coloured" (Hamitic ?) "adventurer, who arrived in the country with six companions of the same race. Their for a long time had straight noses, pale skins, and long hair."
His journeys into southern Congoland threw a very interesting light on a native kingdom made famous by the earlier Portuguese explorations-that of the Kazembe of Lunda, whose capital was between Lakes Mweru and Bangweulu.
In the early seventeenth century a great negro empire had arisen in southern Congoland, partly due, no doubt, to the arms and trade goods derived from the Portuguese, but partly also to the after-effects of the Sudanese civilization of Central Congoland under the Bushongo dynasty. This Empire of Lunda ruled over all the south of Congoland and a small part of northern Zambezia.
In the early eighteenth century a member of the family of the Lunda emperor, or " Mwata Yanvo," moved to the south of Lake Mweru and founded a feudatory kingdom there. He received the title of Kazembe, or " lieutenant."
Kazembe's capital was by the side of a little lake called Mofwe. Livingstone approached it along a path as broad as a carriage road one mile long, the chiefs residence being enclosed by a wall of reeds 8 or 9 feet high and 300 yards square. The innermost gateway was decorated by about sixty human skulls, and had a cannon, dressed in gaudy colours, placed under a shed before it. This, no doubt, was a gift from the Portuguese. Kazembe himself had a heavy, uninteresting countenance, without beard or whiskers, somewhat of the Chinese type, his eyes with an outward squint. He smiled but once during the day, yet that was pleasant enough, though the cropped ears of his courtiers and the human skulls at the gate made Livingstone indisposed to look on him with favour. Kazembe was usually attended by his executioner, who wore a broad Lunda sword under his arm, and a seissor-like instrument at his neck for cropping ears. This was the punishment inflicted on all who incurred the Kazembe's displeasure.
Kazembe sat before his hut on a square seat placed on lion and leopard skins. " He was clothed in white Manchester print and a red baize petticoat so as to look like a crinoline put on wrong side foremost. His arms, legs, and head were covered with ornaments, and a cap made of various coloured beads in neat patterns. A crown of yellow feathers surmounted his cap. His head men came forward, shaded by a huge ill-made umbrella and followed by dependents ..." This Central Afriean monarch (whose descendant was finally deposed for cruelties by the British Government) bore an evil reputation; yet he was a good friend to Livingstone and put no obstacle in his path ; though he politely told him that lakes and rivers only oonsisted of water, and that to ascertain this fact by ocular inspection would not repay him for his fatigues and outlay in trade goods!
Livingstone from boyhood had taken a great interest in botany and in the appearance of trees and flowers in the landscape. His observant glance led him to note all the more salient features of the Afriean flora from the Cape to the equatorial forests of Manyuema. His books are full of little word-pictures of the strange, sfcately or beautiful trees and plants he encounters. He records in his journal the spectacle of the Crinum "lilies" of the Luangwa valley, which in the first rains " flower so profusely that they almost mask the rich, dark, red colour of the loamy soil, and form a covering of pure white where the land has been cleared by the hoe." The weird stone- or pebble-like Mesembryanthemums of the Kalahari Desert, and the gouty, leafless geraniums and vividly coloured pumpkins and gourds of the same region arrest his attention ; the Bauhinia bushes with their golden or bluish tinted, bifid leaves, and the scale insects on them exuding a sweet manna; the noble giraffe-acacia trees, the euphorbias of very diverse modes of growth, the Strophanthus creepers whose seeds possess medicinal or violently poisonous qualities, the borassus and hyphasne fan-palms, the wild date, and the " noble raphias," the pandanus and dracasnas of the Zambezi delta or of inner Congoland, the innumerable forest trees of northern Zambezia and southern Congoland : all are illustrated in his pages by well-chosen words and sometimes explanatory drawings; and most are correctly named, in contrast with the very unscientific nomenclature of the generality of travellers in his day.
Livingstone notices as he descends the slopes of the mountains towards the Chambezi the abundance of the fig-tree which yields the bark-cloth, so that the natives cared little for the cotton cloths of Europe and India. He also in this region observed green mushrooms, which, on being peeled, revealed a pink fleshy inside (the Visimba of the natives). Only one or two of these mushrooms were put into a wooden mortar to flavour other and much larger kinds, the whole being pounded up into a savoury mess, which was then cooked and eaten. But in Livingstone's experienee this mushroom diet "only produced dreams of the by-gone days, so that the saliva ran from the mouth in these dreams and wetted the pillow.', The country on the Chambezi slope of these Muchinga mountains was devoid of game, the game having been killed out by far-reaching and longcontinued drives through the hopo fences into pitfalls.
He crossed Tanganyika to resume his search for the Lualaba in July, 1869. In his journal he recorded the abundance of pandanus screw pines off the west coast of that lake. As he travelled through the Guha and Manyuema countries he entered "the land of grey parrots with red tails" [" to play with grey parrots was the great amusement of the Manyuema people"]. The Manyuema country he describes as "surprisingly beautiful, palms crowning the highest heights of the mountains, and climbers of cable size in great numbers hanging among the gigantic trees." Strange birds and monkeys were every where to be seen. The women went innocently naked; and the Adams of this Eden wore nothing but a small piece of bark cloth. Both sexes atoned for their absence of clothing by having their bodies tattooed with full moons, stars, crocodiles, "and devices recalling Egyptian hieroglyphics." Yet although their country-prior to the Arab raids-seemed an earthly paradise, smallpox came every three or four years to Manyuemaland and killed many of the people.
It was in the Manyuema country that he came into contact with the large chimpanzi (Troglodytes schweinfurthf) of eastern equatorial Africa, whose range extends from the Welle-Mubangi river and Unyoro to the eastern bend of the upper Congo and the west coast of Tanganyika.
The Soko, as he called this large chimpanzi, always tried to bite off the ends of the fingers and toes of the men with whom it fought, not otherwise doing them any harm. It made nests, which Livingstone described as poor contrivances with no architectural skill.
The Manyuema told him, however, that the flesh of the soko was delicious; and Livingstone thinks that through devouring this ape they may have been led into cannibalism. The sokos gave tongue like foxhounds; this was their nearest approach to speech. They also laughed when in play, and in their relations with the natives were quite as often playful as ill tempered. The lion, which seemingly existed in the Manyuema country in spite of the forest, was said to attack and kill the soko, but never to eat him. The sokos lived in monogamous communities of about ten. Intruders from other camps were beaten off with fists and loud yells. If one tried to seize the female of another, the remainder of the party united to box and bite him. The male often carried his child, relieving the mother occasionally of her burden.
Rhinoceroses were shot in the Manyuema country. He also alludes to the pygmy elephant of Congoland, " a small variety, only 5 feet 8 inches high at the withers, yet with tusks 6 feet 8 inches in length;" and notes the killing of an elephant with three tusks, one of them growing out through the base of the trunk.
[The pygmy elephant (Elephas africanus pumilus) of the equatorial Kamerun-Congo forests, was only rediscovered in the early part of the twentieth century.]
Livingstone was almost an expert in geology and petrology. He felt the keenest interest in the records of the rocks, and fully realized the importance of palaeo-botany. When descending the valley of the Central Zambezi in 1856 he discovered fossil remains of Araucaria, or of conifers now confined to South America and Australasia; and fully realized what his discovery meant in regard to ancient land connections between South Africa, India, and South America. He was much impressed with the probable coal-bearing strata of sandstone throughout the Euvuma valley. A great many pieces or blocks of silicified wood appeared on the surface of the soil at the bottom of the slope up the plateaus. " This " (he wrote) " in Africa is a sure indication of the presence of coal beneath." In the sands of some of the rivers pieces of coal were quite common. He originated the theory of the rift valley of Lake Nyasa. "It looks as though a sudden rent had been made so as to form the lake and tilt all these rocks nearly over" (namely, in the direction of Ruvuma). His observations would seem to show that the level of Lake Nyasa was once about 55 feet above its present high-water mark. It is possible that at this high level its overflow of waters first of all passed into the basin of Lake Chilwa, and then flowed northwards into the Ruvuma system.
Here follow a few word-pictures of Central Afriean scenery selected from his Journals : On January 9, 1867, he had ascended a hardened sandstone range (of what have since been called the Sharpe mountains), with very beautiful valleys having the appearance of well-kept English parks ; but they were in fact full of water to overflowing, immense sponges, covered with close, short, green turf. Then followed a march through mountains which he describes as being of delicately-tinted pink and white dolomite. In the ravines there were noble Eaphia palms. He ascended this northern part of the dividing range between the Zambezi system and the Chambezi, till he reached a height of about 538? feet above sea-level, the mountains further rising above that to nearly 7000 feet.
He thus describes the south end of lake Tanganyika in the western part of Ulungu. " From altitudes of nearly 6000 feet above sea-level one descends 2000 feet to the lake shores, and still the surface of the waters is upwards of 2500 feet above sea level. The sides of its basin are very steep, sometimes the rocks run a sheer 2000 feet down to the water. Nowhere is there 3 miles of level land from the foot of the cliffs to the shore. Top, sides, and bottom of this tableland are covered with well-grown forest and rich grass, except where the bare rocks protrude. The scenery is extremely beautiful."
"The Aisi, a stream of 15 yards broad, and thigh-deep, came down alongside our precipitous path, forming cascades by leaping 800 feet at a time. The bright red of the schists among the green sward made the dullest of my attendants patise and remark with wonder. Antelopes, buffaloes, and elephants abound on the steep slopes, and hippopotami, crocodiles, and fish swarm in the water. One elephant got out of our way to a comparatively level spot, and then stood and roared at us. . . . The first village we came to on the banks of the lake had a grove of oil palms and other trees around it . . . not the dwarf species seen on Lake Nyasa, but one with fruit quite as large as those on the west coast. After being a fortnight at this lake (Tanganyika) it still appears one of surpassing loveliness. Its peacefulness is remarkable, though at times it is said to be lashed up by storms. It lies in a deep basin, whose sides are nearly perpendicular, but covered well with trees; the rocks which appear are bright-red argillaceous schist; the trees at present all green; down some of these rocks come beautiful cascades, and buffaloes, elephants, and antelopes wander and graze on the more level spots; while lions roar all night. The level place below is not 2 miles from the perpendicular heights. The village (Pambete), at which we first touched the lake, is surrounded by oil-palm trees?not the stunted ones of Lake Nyasa, but the real West Coast oil-palm tree, requiring two men to carry a bunch of the ripe fruit. In the morning and evening huge crocodiles may be observed quietly making their way to their feeding-grounds; hippopotami snort by night and at early morning."
This is how he describes the route and the way of travel with the Arabs from Tanganyika to Mweru through the Itawa country.
"The valleys along which we travelled at the base of a range of low granite mountains were beautiful with their green grass and their clumps of trees of a great variety of form, creating that park-like scenery so characteristic of tropical Africa. The loug line of slaves and carriers brought up by their Arab employers added life to the scene. The great caravan went in three bodies and numbered four hundred and fifty persons in all, each body had a guide and a flag, and when that was planted all the company of this section stopped till it was lifted and a drum was beaten and a kudu's horn sounded. Each of the three parties was headed by about a dozen leaders, or wenyi-para, dressed with a fantastic head-gear of feathers and beads, red cloth on their bodies, and skins cut into strips and twisted. These took their places in line, the drum beat, the horn sounded harshly, and all fell iu to resume the march. The female slaves walked bravely along carrying loads on their heads, but the actual wives of the Arabs were usually covered with a fine white shawl and wore ornaments of gold and silver on their hieads, and many pounds' weight of fine copper leglets above the ankles. As soon as the slaves and wives arrived at the camping-place they began to cook, showing in this art a great deal of expertness, and making savoury dishes for their masters out of wild fruits and quite unlikely materials."
On March 29,1871, he reached the outlying villages of Nyangwe, on the upper Congo. The country even at that date was open and dotted with trees, chiefly a species of Bauhinia that resists the annual grass-burnings. There were many Manyuema villages, each with a host of pigs. The altitudes seemed to be about 2000 feet above sea-level. The upper Congo or main Lualaba was narrower here than higher up its course in the south, but still a mighty river, at least 3000 yards broad, always deep, and quite impossible to ford. The current was about 2 miles an hour flowing north. The pigs at this place must have an interesting history as regards their origin. They could not have been brought thither by the Arabs on account of Muhammadan prejudice. They could not have come from the north, because the domestic pig of the Sus scrofa type is absolutely unknown in the interior of Equatorial Africa. They must have reached the Lualaba through the Kua countries, which in turn received them from Lunda, and that empire from Angola and the Portuguese. From the same direction, perhaps, had come the Brazilian musk-ducks which Livingstone found in such abundance on the islands off the west coast of Tanganyika. The pine-apple also was just penetrating these Congo forest countries from the Atlantic seaboard.
These few excerpts are typical of all Livingstone's published works. But the irony of his fate is this. There are indications in Livingstone's last journals and in the preface to these which was written by the late Rev. Horace Waller, that he compiled a good deal of scientific material dealing with native languages and ethnology, possibly with botany and zoology, and this has never seen the light. We know Livingstone deposited in the Grey Library at Capetown all his earlier linguistic researches, where apparently they still remain at the present day, having found there a tomb. But what happened to the scientific material which the Pev. Horace Waller thought "unsuited to the reading of the general public" - My own inquiries in this respect have been fruitless; but perhaps this mention of the loss which the study of Africa has sustained by the non-publication of some of Livingstone's researches may arouse some one to search for, find, and publish what may prove to be (from a scientific point of view) the best of Livingstone's work.
This great explorer started on his earliest African journeys with a sound constitution; but the first shock to his system was the crunching of his left arm by the lion at Mabotsa. He did not, however, suffer much from malarial fever till he reached the upper Zambezi in Barotseland in 1854. The journey thence through South-west Congoland during the rainy season brought on severe attacks of dysentery, and these alternating with malarial fever and rheumatism followed all through Angola, so that he was seldom well for a week until he regained the bracing climate of South Africa at Linyanti in 1855. His rest at this place restored him to comparative health, a cure made more complete by the sea voyage home.
The six years spent in the exploration of Zambezia, Nyasaland, and the Ruvuma were marked by severe attacks of black water fever (as we now know it to have been) and by exhausting dysentery. He never quite regained his old strength and resiliency after that; even though he spent two years(1864-0)in England and Scotland. Moreover, during this time he had no tonic from the consciousness of success, and no complete freedom from monetary anxieties on behalf of his children's and his own future. He was in semi-disgrace, still holding a vague commission as a consul without a consulate, a salary, or any prospects of a pension. He would indeed have been in desperate straits had it not been for the previous and continuing generosity of his publisher and the faithfulness of his friends, William Webb and James Young. Such as these, not forgetting Oswell,would have combined to place him quite beyond the reach of monetary embarrassments had he not been too proud of his independence to accept such help. But, at any rate, they subscribed towards his last great expedition in search of the Nile sources.
When the early summer of 1866 found him once more on African soil free from all entanglements, free to search as he pleased and where he pleased for the mysterious lakes and rivers of innermost Central Africa, his sense of elation long prevailed to counter-balance disappointments from a badly-selected staff of India sepoys. Extracts like the following appear in his journal as he approaches Lake Nyasa from the east:?
" The mere animal pleasure of travelling in a wild unexplored country is very great. When on lands of a couple of thousand feet elevation, brisk exercises gives health, circulates the blood, and the mind works well; the eye is clear, the step is firm, and a day's exercise always makes the evening's repose thoroughly enjoyable."
In the region wesif of Lake Nyasa, however, a most serious loss occurred to him. Two of his Yao porters deserted. They had been very faithful to him all the way from Lake Nyasa, taking his part in every diffieulty with the natives, and preventing many disputes by their knowledge of the languages. Yet these men " of uniform good conduct " were guilty not only of desertion but of the cruellest robbery. They took with them the load which contained his medicine box, merely because wrapped up with it were five large cloths and the clothing and beads of one of the coast porters. In addition, they took all Livingstone's dishes, a large box of gunpowder, all the flour which he had purchased to last him as far as the Chambezi river, the carpenter's tools, and two guns. "I felt as if I had now received sentence of death, like poor Bishop Mackenzie." All the other goods Livingstone had divided in case of loss or desertion, but he had never dreamed of losing the precious quinine and other remedies. "It is difficult to say from the heart 'Thy will be done,' but I shall try." He then goes on in his diary to put forward all the exeuses that he could for these wicked Yao people, who had been, and were for long afterwards, the curse of Nyasaland, though now they are one of the mainstays of the administration, and their soldiers in British uniforms have gone far and wide over Africa to Ashanti and Somaliland.
From this time onward entries like the following are of frequent occurrence in his journal:-
"I am excessively weak-cannot walk without tottering, and have constant singing in the head, but the Highest will lead me further."
On the night of the 20th of March, 1867, he was terribly bitten from head to foot by the driver ants which invaded his hut. " The more they are disturbed the more vicious are their bites. They become quite insolent." A few months before his death he was similarly attacked, and at last driven from shelter to shelter till he stood nearly naked and bleeding in the pouring rain.
On the 22nd of December, 1867, Livingstone (who wrote in his journal at that time " I am always ill when not working "), having left Kazembe's court in the terrible rains at the height of the rainy season, says of himself;
"Every step I take jars in the chest, and in my very weak state I can scarcely keep up the march, though formerly I was always first, and had to keep in my pace. ... I had a loud singing in the ears, and could scarcely hear the tick of the chronometers."
"After I had been a few days here (near Bangweulu), I had a fit of insensibility, which shows the power of fever without medicine. I found myself floundering outside my hut, and unable to get in. I tried to lift myself from my back by laying hold of two posts at the entrance, but when I got nearly upright I let them go, and fell back heavily on my head on a box. The boys had seen the wretched state I was in, and hung a blanket at the entrance of the hut, that no stranger might see my helplessness; some hours elapsed before I could recognize where I was."
During the winter or rainy season of 1868-9 Livingstone was very ill. He had been wet, times with out number, and suffered from terrible pains in the chest and pneumonia. He was often semi-delirious and subject to delusions, such as that the bark of the trees was covered with figures and faces of men. He thought often of his children and friends, and his thoughts seemed almost to conjure them up before him. For the first time in his life he was being carried, and could not raise himself to a sitting position. The Arabs were very kind to him in his extreme weakness, but the vertical sun, blistering any part of the skin exposed to it, tried him sorely in the day marches. He also extracted twenty maggots from his emaciated body, due to a species of stinging fly, which inserts its eggs into the puncture. As the grubs grew they formed exceedingly painful pimples on his legs. In July, 1870, his feet were almost consumed with irritable, eating ulcers, pulsating with pain and constantly discharging matter. These sores were obviously communicated by mosquitoes from the blood of the wretched slaves, who were tortured with them. Livingstone could fall asleep when he wished, at the shortest notice. A mat, and a shady tree under which to spread it, would at any time afford him a refreshing sleep. But in his last years of travel sleep was often made sad by the realistic dreams of happy English life from which he wakened, to find himself ill and consumed with anxiety that he might not live to complete his mission.
After 1869 he suffered much from the results of the decay and loss of his molar teeth, so that imperfect mastication of rough African food induced severe dyspepsia, and his bodily strength weakened under a condition of permanent mal-nutrition. Stanley, by relieving him when he did, gave him at least two more years of life, a certain measure of happiness, and the sweet consolation that he was not forgotten, and that the magnitude of his discoveries was appreciated. In this brief sunset glow of his life he turned his face once more towards Lake Bangweulu in order to trace the course of the Luapula to Mweru, and its junction with the Lualaba, half hoping that he might then travel down the broad stream till he entered the Bahr-al-Ghazal or the Albert Nyanza; but, although he now possessed comforts he had long lacked, and faithful, comparatively disciplined men, his strength gave out under constant exposure to rain, and to soakings in crossing rivers and marshes. Severe haemorrhage set in from the bowels, and he died of exhaustion at Chitambo's village in the swamps near the south shore of Bangweulu on May 1, 1873.
This brief record of his achievements and his sufferings may fitly close with an extract from his last journals, showing that he died a martyr to that form of religion which we call science :-
"In this journey I have endeavoured to follow with unswerving fidelity the line of duty . . . All the hardship, hunger and toil were met with the full conviction that I was right in persevering to make a complete work of the exploration of the sources of the Nile."
The President : One of our Fellows present here to-night is Sir Alfred Sharpe, whose name has been more than once mentioned by the reader of the paper. Though now retired from the service, Sir Alfred's name is known to every one of you as the able and indefatigable administrator of that possession of ours of Nyasaland, which Livingstone was one of the first to explore, and which has been held up to us to-night by Sir
Harry Johnston, not only as one of the most progressive regions from the administrative point of view, but also one of the fairylands of East Central Africa.
Sir Alfeed Sharpe : In the interesting paper to which we have listened to-night Sir Harry Johnston has referred several times to the Protectorate of Nyasaland. He has very modestly said nothing about what he did himself there in the suppression of the slave trade. I do not propose to tell you all he did, but can assure you that he took a very active part, and was not satisfied until he had either driven out the slave-trading Arabs, or else brought them under subjection to British rule, and he had a very hard job to do it. The Shire highlands of Nyasaland, as Sir Harry Johnston has mentioned, were the district of Africa which Livingstone specially indicated as being in his opinion suitable for missionary effort and for colonization, and what has struck me and everybody else who has travelled in Africa (as Sir Harry Johnston has also mentioned), is the great accuracy of all information which Livingstone gave, and of the opinions which he formed of the countries through which he travelled. Certainly in the case of Nyasaland he was quite right. I succeeded Sir Harry Johnston in the administration of Nyasaland, and was there for many years, and had very ample opportunities of observmg the development of what we may call "Livingstone's schemes." As you know, the first steps taken for the development of Nyasaland were by the various mission societies, and the greatest success has attended that excellent work. Their work was also followed and supplemented by the settlement of British colonists, who are now developing the resources of the country to their own profit and to the good of the Empire. Where Livingstone found native wars and consequent slave raids, are now numerous flourishing plantations of cotton, tobacco, tea, coffee, etc, prosperous British planters, good roads, and, I am glad to say, a railway, which I hope before long will be extended up to Lake Nyasa and down to the sea-coast. There could be no better testimony to the great value of Livingstone's life work than the present condition of Nyasaland, and especially the condition of the natives who live there, I have just returned from a journey through.........
Notes
* Besides getting himself taught on board ship, and later hy Sir Thomas Maclear, to take with great accuracy astronomical observations for fixing latitude and longitude, besides acquainting himself with botany and geology, with patristic literature and Egyptology, Livingstone was an excellent mechanic, a steersman and a mariner. His resourcefulness was at all times remarkable. When he was hard up for fuel on his first steamer journey up the river Shire he landed in the Elephant marsh Here no trees existed and no fuel was obtainable, but his men found many bones of slaughtered elephants. Livingstone at once took the bones on board, burnt them in the furnaces of the Ma-robert, and so continued his journey.
* Many sportsmen-travellers in Africa (wrote Livingstone) have recorded with satisfaction in their books what a high position they occupied in the regard of the natives for their prowess in shooting big garne, yet Livingstone, who so often heard and understood exactly what the Bechuana people of these South-Central Afrioan hunting-grounds were saying, adds that the great hunters were regarded with a certain amount of conternpt by the negroes whom they so lavishly supplied with meat. " Why do these men who are rich and could slaughter oxen every day of their lives at home, come to our country and endure so much thirst for the sake of this dry meat, none of which is equal to beef ? You say it is for play ! But your friends are fools."
* Livingstone was also to blame for having leapt too hastily to a wrong conclusion about the navigability of the Zambezi in 1856, and thus having led the British Government completely astray. He followed the course of the Zambezi from the Viotoria Falls to Tete mainly by land, and, of course, whole sections of the river escaped his observation. He thus emerged on the coast of the Indian ocean at Quielimane with the conviction that, presuming the Zambezi river could be entered by shipping through one of the mouths of its delta?a possibility not concealed from him by the Portuguese?British ships or launches could steam up it to the Makololo country, in the heart of South-Central Africa. He exaggerated in his optimism the amount of sugar-cane and cotton grown in Central Zambezi at that time; and so, in short, the whole of the second Zambezi expedition was intended not to poach on Portuguese preserves, but to reach the heart of South Africa by the
Zambezi channel, and there to carry on a profitable trade with a very enterprising and powerful negro people.
In the year 1860, however, Livingstone and Kirk made the journey from Tete to Sesheke and back mainly by water, and realized the impossibility of continuous navigation of the Zambezi channel between the Quebra Baco rapids and the Victoria Falls. There are several impassabla barriers in between, such as the Morumbua or Quebra Bago, the Kakalole, and still more the Kariba gorge.
Here came the first great disappointment. Livingstone next chose to regard Nyasaland as his goal. In course of time proof of the difficulties of the Shire navigation disheartened the British Government from giving him further support. Lastly, the Ruvuma route proved impracticable, and when this was made clear, the expedition was recalled. That the " six years of martyrdom" were not wasted we now thankfully realize in the existence of the prosperous colony of Nyasaland, and the steady progress of Northern Khodesia. And it is a happy thing for an important alliance to be able to relate that Portuguese rule and commerce on the eastern Zambezi are better established now than they were in Livingstone's day. In fact, his ideals and his aspirations even in regard to the Portuguese have been fulfilled to the letter.
* Even this overland journey up the Zambezi valley to the Makololo country could hardly have been undertaken in 1860 but for the active help of the Portuguese. Most of the Makololo men whom Livingstone had left behind from his first expedition at Tete had been demoralized by long residence there and refused to carry loads or even to march. The Portuguese lent the expedition porters and donkeys. It is only fair to say that Livingstone himself supplies us with information pointing to the obvious fact that he was not the first white man to stand on the shores of Lake Nyasa. A Portuguese magistrate or judge in native affairs at Tete, Senhor Candido de Costa Cardoso, had made a journey about 1846 to the south-west gulf of Lake Nyasa, avery shallow inlet of water, and crossed this in canoes, probably to the Livingstone peninsula. Mr. Ralph Durand, in a series of articles on Livingstone, recently published in the African Mail (essays remarkable for their acumen and research), casts doubts on this achievement of Costa Cardoso; but the geographical details given to Livingstone in 1856 could scarcely have been quoted from one who had not made that journey. But it was clearly the shallow south-west bay of Nyasa which was visited.
* Lake Chowambe, as Livingstone calls it, following a name current amongst Zanzibar Arabs. In August, 1870, Livingstone offered one of the Arabs about ?270 in rupees and goods to leave the ivory trade " which is at present like gold digging," and convey Livingstone down the Lualaba " to see where it went, and back again to its western branching."
On February 25, 1871, he wrote, " I had to suspend my judgment so as to be prepared to find the Lualaba after all perhaps the Congo." Livingstone heard, in 1871, of the Lomami and of other rivers of the Congo system farther west, and believed he might even get thus into touch with the French settlements and the Gaboon, and so prepared despatches to send home that way. He evidently felt by then that though the Lualaba might not be the Upper it Congo, could not be far from the Congo system. X The geographical names, Luapula, Lualaba, Lufira, and Tanganyika were probably first inscribed on the map of Africa by Livingstone in 1856. "Zanganyika" is mentioned by Krapf as the name of a great trading-place in Central Africa, a short time before Burton and Speke discovered the lake in 1857. Livingstone derived his first knowledge of Tanganyika from the Arab, Ben Habib, whom he met at Linyanti in 1855 ; and he heard of the Luapula also from this Arab as well as from Portuguese reports. He derived much information about the geography of southern Angola and South-Central Africa from viva voce information and the quoted records of the Portuguese ; thus from them in 1855-6 he drew pretty accurately the course of the Kunene river and recorded the existence of the great Kubango three years before Andersson discovered it.
The names Lualaba (" Guarava ") and Luapula (" Guapula ") are first mentioned in history by Dr. Lacerda in 1798. He derived his information from the Pereiras, the Goanese slave- and ivory-traders whose explorations north of Tete caused them to be chosen as guides for the great Portuguese expedition of 1798-9. " Lualaba " and " Luapura " appear in the records of travel of the negro Pombeiros who crossed Africa from Angola to Tete in 1806-11. The Pombeiros do not appear actually to have crossed the Lualaba, but to have skirted it near its source and passed to the south of it. Under the name of " Lualap" the upper Congo near Nyangwe is mentioned in the story of a Kanyoka slave woman told to the missionary-philologist Koelle at Sierra Leone about 1849.
* Probably we do not yet know the correct native name for the open water of Bangweulu. It seems sometimes to be known as the Nyanja ya Lubemba or Luemba ; whence " Bemba." Bangweulu, which Livingstone spells Bangweolo, in his propensity to turn all u's into o's after the fashion of the Bechuana peoples, is, or was, the name of one of its islands. The root -cmba in " Bemba," " Awemba," " " Liemba," Luemba " seems to mean " lake."
# " It may be that the Longumba is the outlet of Tanganyika"?Last Journals, November 29, 1871. He states that in its lower course the Longumba is known as the Luamo. This is correct, "Lukuga" or " Bukuga," the name recorded by Joseph Thomson, is only a term applied to the sluggish, swampy, leakage from Tanganyika
which connected that lake with the Luamo affluent of the Congo.
* He wished to name the Luvua-Luapula (Eastern Lualaba) after his great friend, William Webb, and the Western or Kamolondo-Lualaba after James Young, the Lufira (an important affluent of the Kamolondo-Lualaba) after Sir Bartle Frere ; and to give the name of Abraham Lincoln to a supposed lake which he believed to lie in the course of the western Lualaba. It was while being detained for a long time in the Ulungu country, in August, 1867, that Livingstone first heard of the main Lualaba or upper Congo river, " about fifteen days west of Tanganyika, said to be 10 miles broad and known as the Logarawa, flowing northwards." " Kamolondo " is an unrecognizable native name only retained for convenience of distinction ; the better term would be Lualaba, as contrasted with Lufira and Luapula ; and " upper Congo" should be applied to the mighty river which is formed by the junction of all three.
# The Manyuema forest is the southernmost portion of that vast equatorial forest belt which lies to the north and east of the main Congo, and extends with scarcely any interruption from south Kamerun to Ruwenzori and round to north-west Tanganyika and the Manyuema country. This region has a remarkable mammalian fauna, including the okapi, the gorilla, chimpanzi, great forest pig, bongo tragelaph, etc.
X On August 1, 1867, Livingstone describes a perforated stone which had been picked up and placed on one of the poles of an Arab stockade. It was oblong and showed evidence of the boring process in rings, the diameter of the hole in the middle being an inch and a half. The stone was of hard porphyry " and resembled somewhat the weight of a digging-stick which I saw in 1841 in the hands of a Bushman,"
