Beacon Lights of History, Volume 14: The New Era — David Livingstone, Part 1

DAVID LIVINGSTONE.

1813-1873. AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT.

BY CYRUS C.

ADAMS.

Africa is the most ancient and the most recent conquest of the human race.

As far as the light of history can be projected into the past, we see Egypt among the first and foremost on the threshold of civilization.

The continent discovered last and opened last to the enterprises of the world is still Africa.

Why is it that we see there both the dawn of civilization and the tardiest development of human progress?

The reasons are not far to seek.

The physical conformation of no other continent is so unfavorable for exploration and development.

Africa's straight coast-lines, affording little shelter to the primitive ships of early mariners, repelled the enterprising Phoenicians and other seafarers in their eager search for new lands worth colonizing.

Nor was it easy for explorers to penetrate into the interior.

In its surface Africa has been compared to an inverted saucer,--the high plateaus occupying most of the interior descending to the sea by short, abrupt, and steep slopes, so that the wide and peaceful rivers of the plateaus are lashed into foam as they approach the ocean by many series of rapids and cataracts.

In all the other continents rivers have been the lines of least resistance to the advance of man.

Civilization has developed first along the great rivers.

The valleys were first settled, and up these valleys man carried his industries and commerce far inland.

Thus the Euphrates and Tigris of Mesopotamia, the Ganges and Indus of India, and the Hoang and Yangtse of China, were the creators of history; but this is true in Africa only of the Nile.

All the other rivers have been impediments instead of helpful factors in the formidable task of exploration and development.

The trying climate, also, gave Africa odious repute and delayed for centuries the study and utilization of the continent.

When the British expedition under Captain Tuckey attempted to ascend the Congo, in 1816, to see if it were really the lower part of the Niger River, as had been conjectured, nearly all of its members perished miserably among the rapids less than two hundred miles from the sea.

Such tragedies as this paralyzed enterprise in Africa until white men learned that the climate was not so deadly, after all, if they adhered to the manner of life, the hygienic rules, that should be observed in that tropical expanse.

In all the other continents, also, explorers have had the advantage of domestic animals to carry their food and camp equipment; but in large parts of tropical Africa the horse, ox, and mule cannot live.

The bite of the little tsetse fly kills them.

Its sting is hardly so annoying as that of the mosquito, but near the base of its proboscis is a little bag containing the fatal poison.

Camels have been loaded near Zanzibar for the journey to Tanganyika, but they did not live to reach the great lake.

The "ship of the desert" can never be utilized in the humid regions of tropical Africa.

The elephant is found from sea to sea, but he has not proved to be so amenable to domestication as his Asian brother.

He may yet be reduced to useful servitude.

The efforts in this direction in the German and French colonies are somewhat encouraging, though in 1901 only six elephants had thus far been broken to work and were daily used as beasts of burden.

Explorers of tropical Africa have always been compelled to rely upon human porterage, the most expensive and unsatisfactory form of transportation, with the result that nearly all the great lines of exploration have been extended through the continent at enormous cost.

So most other parts of the world were occupied, colonized, civilized, before Africa was explored.

A continent one-fourth larger than our own was for centuries neglected and despised.

"Nothing good can come out of Africa" became proverbial.

Seventy years ago Africa, away from the coasts and the Nile, was almost a blank upon our maps, save for fanciful details that are ludicrously grotesque in the light of our present knowledge (1902).

Then dawned the era of David Livingstone.

Sixty-two years ago this humble Scotchman went to South Africa as a missionary.

It was not long before he became imbued with the idea that missionary service could not be projected on broad, economic, and effective lines till the field was known.

The explorer, he said, must precede the teacher and the merchant.

We can work best for Christianity and civilization after we learn what the people are and know the nature of their environment.

This was the thought that took him into the unknown; that inspired him with unflagging courage and zeal throughout twenty years of weary plodding in the African wilderness among hundreds of tribes who never before had seen a white man.

And all the years he was studying the country and winning the love of its people, his faith in Africa, in its abounding resources worth the world's seeking, in the capacity of its people for development, steadily grew till it became the all-pervading impulse of his life.

Livingstone's faith converted the world to the belief that, after all, there was good in Africa.

"I shall never forget," said Stanley, one day in New York, "the time when I stood with Livingstone on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, and he raised his trembling hand above his head, leaned towards me as he looked me in the eye, and said in a voice broken with emotion: 'The day is coming when the whole world will know that Africa is worth reclaiming, and that its people may be brought out of barbarism.

The world needs Africa; and teachers, merchants, railroads, and every influence of civilization will be spread through this continent to fit it for the place in human interests that belongs to it.'

I thought then that Livingstone was an enthusiast and a visionary; but long ago I learned to believe that every word he said was true."

Europe and America were thrilled by the simple narrative of those twenty-two thousand miles of wanderings that brought into the light of day millions of human beings who had been as much unknown to us as though they inhabited Mars.

Livingstone did not live to know it, but it was he who kindled the great African Movement,--an outburst of zeal for geographic discovery and economic development such as was never seen before.

Thirteen years ago (1889) a Frenchman named De Bissy completed the largest map yet made of Africa.

In the preparation of this great work, which occupied much of his time for eight years, he used as his sources of information nearly eighteen hundred route and other maps, nearly all of which were the result of the work of explorers in the preceding quarter of a century.

All that we know of the geography of over three-fourths of Africa is the work of the past half-century since Livingstone made his first journey in 1849; and we know far more of inner Africa to-day than was known of inner North America three hundred years after Columbus discovered the western world.

A little over a century ago, our great-grandfathers were reading in their school geographies that North America had no conspicuous mountains except the Alleghanies; and these mountains and the Andes of South America were believed to be one and the same chain, interrupted by the Gulf of Mexico.

Many men not yet bent with years can remember when the interior of Africa was a white space on the maps; but it is not possible to-day to make such a geographical blunder as we have mentioned, about any part of Africa.

It is because of the work he did in those twenty years, sowing all the while the seeds from which sprang the great African Movement, that "the gentle master of African exploration" is acclaimed to-day as one of the world's great men, and that his body rests in Westminster Abbey among the illustrious dead of Britain.

The son of a worthy weaver in Blantyre, Scotland, Livingstone's early life was that of a poor boy, working in a spinning-mill, quiet, sober, affectionate, and faithful in every relation of life.

Moved at last by the thirst for knowledge that has distinguished many a humble Scotch boy, he entered the University at Glasgow, studying during the winter months and spending the summers at his trade in the factory, fitting himself all the while for the conquests he little dreamed he was to achieve over difficulties almost insurmountable.

A classmate spoke of him as a pale, thin, retiring young man, but frank and most kind-hearted, ready for any good and useful work, even for chopping the University fuel and grinding wheat for the bread.

In 1838, when he was twenty-five years old, he went to London to be examined as a candidate for the African missionary service.

Two years later he was sent to South Africa, where for eight or nine years he labored among the natives earnestly and unostentatiously north of the place now famous as the site of the Kimberley diamond mines.

It was here that he became intimately acquainted with the celebrated missionary, Robert Moffatt, whose daughter he married.

His devoted wife accompanied him in some of his later travels, but long before he finished his work her body was laid to rest under the shade of a tree that for years was pointed out to all visitors to the Lower Zambesi.

In 1849, began the series of explorations that continued till his death.

"The end of geographical discovery is the beginning of missionary enterprise," he wrote.

Burning with zeal to reveal Africa to the world, Livingstone never forgot the main aim of his life,--to open ways for the planting of mission stations among all the scores of tribes he visited.

"I hope God will in mercy permit me to establish the Gospel somewhere in this region," he wrote from the land of the Barotse, on the Upper Zambesi.

Does he now look down from his eternal home upon that very land whose churches and schools are the fruition of the labors of French Protestants; whose king, in London to attend the coronation of Edward VII.

, said he wanted more teachers and more men to train his people to build houses and work iron?

He prayed that he might live to see "the double influence of the spirit of commerce and Christianity employed to stay the bitter fountain of African misery."

The glowing zeal of the Christian philanthropist and the untiring ardor of the born explorer were perfectly blended in the spirit of the great pioneer of modern African discovery.

Livingstone's routes through Africa would extend about seven times between New York City and San Francisco; and in his almost endless marches over plain, through jungle, across mountains and wide rivers, the natives met him almost without exception in a generous and hospitable spirit.

Love was the secret of his success.

He won his way by kindness.

Give the barbarous African time to see that you wish him well, that you would do him good in ways he knows are helpful, and his affection is evoked.

It was said that the British could never establish their rule over the great Wabemba tribe, southwest of Tanganyika, without a military campaign.

In 1894, two humble Catholic fathers entered Lobemba, walked straight to the chief town, and were told that if they did not leave the country in one day they would be killed.

As the stern message was delivered, they saw an old woman on the ground in great pain from a severe wound.

The news soon spread that these unwelcome strangers had washed and dressed the wound, and made the old woman comfortable.

"These people love men," was the word that passed from lip to lip, as the sick and suffering came out from the town to be treated, while thousands of natives looked on.

At nightfall the white men were told they might remain another day; they ministered for eleven days to those who needed help, and were then invited to remain the rest of their lives.

The mission stations of the White Fathers are to-day scattered all over Lobemba; the country is open in every corner to the whites, and in 1899 British rule was established.

The victory was won, not with guns, but by gentle, helpful kindness.

Livingstone never believed that the sympathies of our common humanity are extinct even in the bosom of a savage.

Enfolded in the panoply of Christian kindness, he passed unscathed among the most warlike tribes.

No memory of wrong or pain rankled in the heart of any man, woman, or child he ever met.

He is known to-day as "the good old man" wherever his path led him in those twenty years.

When explorers began to study the healthful highlands of the Akikuyu tribe in East Africa a few years ago, the natives rushed to arms.

"Keep away from us," they said.

"One of your white men came through the land, stealing food from our gardens, and killing all who said he ought to pay us for our vegetables.

We want nothing to do with thieves and murderers like you."

But no vengeance fell on the head of any white traveller who ever followed in the footsteps of Livingstone.

Those explorers have achieved most who adhered to his example of unfailing kindness, mercy, and justice.

The brutal German, whose crimes made the Akikuyu hostile to all whites, marked his path with blood from the Indian Ocean to Victoria Nyanza.

Serpa Pinto, renowned for the scientific value of his work, aroused condemnation and disgust because he fought his way through many tribes, among whom Livingstone and Arnot had wandered almost alone and in perfect safety.

Fortunately, there have not been many explorers militant.

The brilliant discoveries of Grenfell, Delcommune, Lemaire, and others, who are in the first rank of African pioneers, were made without harming a native.

Let us glance at a few of Livingstone's discoveries and form our own conclusions as to whether his sublime faith in the future of Africa has thus far been justified by events.

In the depths of the wilderness he discovered the large lake, Mweru, through which the Upper Congo flows.

Though white influences have reached that remote region only within the past two or three years, a little steamboat now plies those waters.

A

photograph of Mpweto, one of the white settlements on the lake, shows the commodious quarters of the Europeans, two long lines of cabins in which the native workmen live, and well-tilled gardens extending for a half-mile along the shore.

Livingstone brought to light the coal fields of the Zambesi, the only coal yet known in tropical Africa.

While these lines are being written, the British of Rhodesia are preparing to open mines along these deposits.

He told the world of the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, the largest known, a mile wide and twice as high as Niagara.

The installation of an electrical plant at this great source of power is now in progress, and it is hoped within three years to transmit electrically all the power required to work the large copper mines in the north, the coal fields in the east, and to move trains on the Cape to Cairo Railroad for a distance of three hundred miles.

The recent improvements in long-distance transmission of power encourages the belief that the Victoria Falls may some day possess large industrial utility for a wide region around them.

Coffee plantations on the hills overlooking the long expanse of Nyassa, the splendid freshwater sea which Livingstone revealed in its setting of mountains, are selling their superior product in London at a high price.

The town of Blantyre, among the Nyassa highlands which Livingstone first described, has a newspaper, telegraphic and cable communication with all the world, and industrial schools in which the manual arts are taught to hundreds of natives.

Here is the large brick church, now famous, built by native craftsmen, who before Livingstone's time had never seen a white man, and lived in a state of barbarism; an edifice that would adorn the suburbs of any American city, and of which the explorer, Joseph Thomson, said: "It is the most wonderful sight I have seen in Africa."

The natives made the brick, burned the lime, sawed and hewed the timbers, and erected the building to the driving of the last nail.

They had the capacity, and it was evoked by the genius of one of the most remarkable men in Africa, Missionary Scott of Blantyre.

Steamboats are afloat on five of the six important seas of the great lake region of Central Africa; on two of the three which Livingstone discovered.

Only a beginning has been made, for the field stretches from ocean to ocean; but the man who, in 1873--the year of Livingstone's death,--should have predicted one-half of the achievement of the present generation would have been laughed at as a crack-brained visionary.

Even the surface of Africa is changing, and the truth of Livingstone is not always the truth of to-day.

In his first journey, in which he braved the perils of the South African thirst lands, he reached the broad and placid expanse of Lake Ngami, covering an area of three hundred square miles.

In the gradual desiccation of that region, the lake has now entirely disappeared.

Its place is wholly occupied by a partly marshy plain covered with reeds, and no vestige of water surface is to be seen.

He found the little Lake Dilolo so exactly balanced on a flat plain between two great river systems that one stream from the lake flowed north to the Congo and another south to the Zambesi; but for years past there has been no connection between the lake and the Congo.

He sought in vain, like many explorers after him, for the outlet to Lake Tanganyika.

The mystery was not solved till, more than twenty years after, Burton discovered the lake; the solution came when the explorer Thomson and Missionary Hore found the waters of Tanganyika pouring in a perfect torrent down the valley of the Lukuga to the Congo.

The explanation of the strange phenomenon is that for a series of years the evaporation exceeds the water receipts, the level of the lake steadily falls, and the valley of the Lukuga becomes choked with grass; then a period follows when the water receipts exceed the evaporation, and the waters rise, burst through the barriers of vegetation in the Lukuga, and are carried to the Congo once more.

It was his second and third journeys that established Livingstone's fame as a great explorer.

In those journeys (1853-56) his routes were from the Upper Zambesi to Loanda in Portuguese West Africa, and then from Loanda to the mouth of the Zambesi, nearly twelve thousand miles of travel.

The third journey was the first crossing of the continent; and while traversing the wide savannas of the uplands and revealing the Zambesi, the fourth largest river of Africa, from source to delta, he was able to verify one of the most brilliant generalizations ever made by a geologist.

Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society, in 1852, deducing his conclusions from the very fragmentary and imperfect knowledge of Africa then extant, evolved his striking hypothesis as to the physical conformation of the continent, which has been briefly mentioned above and is the accepted fact of to-day.

Livingstone was able to prove the accuracy of this hypothesis, and he dedicated his "Missionary Travels" to its distinguished author.

The Makalolo chief, Sekeletu, on the Zambesi River, supplied Livingstone with men, ivory, and trading commissions, that helped the humble and unknown white man, lacking all financial resources except his slender salary, to make the two great journeys which kindled the world's interest and led to the wonderful achievements of our generation.

In this noteworthy incident we see the human agencies through which Africa will attain the full stature allotted to her.

The Caucasian and the Negro each has his onerous part in the work of bringing the civilized world and Africa into touch and accord.

When Livingstone went home, after his third journey, his fellow-countrymen crowded to see and hear the explorer, who had added more facts to geographical knowledge than any other man of his time.

They saw a person of middle age, plainly and rather carelessly dressed, whose deep-furrowed and well-tanned face indicated a man of quick and keen discernment, strong impulses, inflexible resolution, and habitual self-command.

They heard a speaker whose command of his mother tongue was imperfect, and who apologized for his broken, hesitating speech by saying that he had not spoken the English language for nearly sixteen years.

In no public place did he ever allude to his personal sufferings, though fever had brought him to death's door and the years had been crowded with the most harrowing cares.

The work he had done and would carry on to the end, the new Africa he alone could describe, the faith that had grown and strengthened in every week of his long pilgrimage that the world needed Africa, its resources and peoples, were the burden of every utterance.

The great London meeting where he first appeared took practical measures to support him in the work he had begun unaided;

and one of the resolutions adopted, declaring that "the important discoveries of Dr. Livingstone will tend hereafter greatly to advance the interest of civilization, commerce, and freedom among the numerous tribes and nations of that vast continent," was prophetic of all the best fruits of the colossal work that has been done to the present time.