Livingstone

Preface

Wuen Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Company did me the honour of asking me to undertake the preparation of a new biography of David Livingstone, bringing up to date our knowledge of the great missionary ex- ; plorer’s life and the permanent effects of his work, I suggested that it might be better to assign the commission to some one more closely associated with the London Missionary Society by whose authority Livingstone had been originally trained and sent to Africa, and under whose supervision the first fifteen years of his career both as a missionary and a traveller had been spent. For various reasons into which there is no need to enter here the suggestion was not acted upon, but on my ultimately consenting to write the book, the London Missionary Society most generously placed the whole of its unpublished archives relating to Livingstone at my disposal. Not only so, but the managing editor of the Society, Mr. David Chamberlin, assumed the heavy and responsible task of sifting the great mass of material thus available and passing on to me whatever might prove to be of value. In addition to this, Mr. Chamberlin has kept in. close touch with me throughout, reading through the successive chapters as they were written and making important suggestions. He has also prepared the map which accompanies the book, and furnished some of the illustrations from the sources at his command. My debt to him and the great Society he so worthily represents is thus very considerable, and I gratefully acknowledge it.

I am also under obligation to the Rev. J. I. Macnair and the members of the Livingstone Memorial Committee at Blantyre for their kindly offer to allow me to consult the Livingstone MSS. in their possession. Unfortunately, the offer came too late for me to be able to make as full use of it as I could wish, but, as will be seen from the following pages, it has been helpful, particularly in regard to Livingstone’s relations with his family in the latter part of his life. Nor must Vii

Vili PREFACE

I omit to mention the courtesy of Dr. Hubert Wilson, Livingstone’s grandson, in furnishing to me through Mr. Chamberlin some interesting facts bearing upon the family origins and still more for lending and permitting me to examine at leisure the manuscript Journal and small diaries covering the period of the Zambesi expedition. The Journal of over eight hundred pages was locked, as all Livingstone’s larger Journals were, and the services of an expert had to be requisitioned before it could be opened and read. It is this bulky volume which is referred to occasionally herein as the locked Journal, to distinguish it from the smaller note-books which have no fastening; the lock appears to have been fixed by Livingstone rather for the sake of preserving the contents from damage than for privacy; there is less of a piquant character in the Journal than in the small diaries. Warm thanks are also due to Lady Hunt of Sudborough House, Northants, daughter of the Rev. Horace Waller, who edited Livingstone’s Last Journals, for allowing me to work through the letters written by Livingstone to her father, together with the latter’s private memoranda of his relations with the great explorer from 1862 onward. These have been to me a most interesting find, and have served to light up Livingstone’s personality for me as no published record of his work has ever done. To see the man through Horace Waller’s eyes is, I think, to see him as he was in his maturity, and to obtain a clearer insight into the greatness of his mind; the pardonable human foibles disclosed in the process but serve to make his personality the more real, and in some ways more attractive. Blaikie’s Life of David Livingstone, the fullest and most accurate account of its subject’s career which has yet appeared, is defective in one important respect: it ignores everything which might suggest that the great man had any of the faults and weaknesses of ordinary humanity; it inferentially represents him as flawlessly wise and good, never making a mistake, never descending from the loftiest pedestal of motive and conduct. Livingstone’s character can take care of itself; it needs no whitewashing. ‘ The massiveness of his personality stands out the plainer and nobler from the acerbity and unreasonableness into which he occasionally breaks in the Waller correspondence, and his sharp denunciations of

PREFACE 1X conduct of which he believes himself justified in complaining are not exactly models of Christian meekness; he has fixed prejudices, too, which nothing can overcome.

To the Rev. Andrew Forson of Motherwell, editor of the Scoztish Congregationalist, 1 am indebted for some particulars of Livingstone’s early life, and for putting me on the track of others. At Mr. Forson’s request the Rev. J. A. Lees, formerly minister of St. James’s Church, Hamilton, most kindly wrote out for me in his own hand the reminiscences of the connection of the Livingstone family with this church in the explorer’s boyhood, which are briefly referred to in the second chapter. These reminiscences constituted the bulk of an article by Mr. Lees which appeared in the Chronicle of the London Missionary Society for August, 1925.

Obviously in a work like the present it has been impossible to cover all the ground of Livingstone’s varied activities; a delimitation had to be made and adhered to. What has been aimed at is to give a clear,: connected narrative of the events of Livingstone’s life in their more specifically personal aspects, to portray him as a man with a sense of vocation and describe his method of discharging it, to show how his mind unfolded and his purpose correspondingly, to exhibit him as a Christian philanthropist even more than as a traveller with a quenchless passion for discovery. Necessarily, therefore, no attempt could be made herein to describe other than cursorily the important additions made by Livingstone to natural science in any or all of the several main departments to which he contributed. His own reports in this field are extant, and make fascinating reading; they are enough in themselves to establish their author’s reputation as a brilliant and patient observer, but any summary of them that would be worth the making would far exceed the space at my disposal. The same applies to the various sidelines Livingstone touched as his work developed—political, sociological, ecclesiastical, commercial. To deal with any one of them adequately would take us too far from our main track; they can but be mentioned severally as they impinge upon or deflect the course of the narrative without being traced further. Little that is new and nothing vital to an understanding of Livingstone’s policy in regard to them x PREFACE has been omitted; the bibliography contains the sources in which they can be more exhaustively studied by those wishful to do so.

The spelling of names is somewhat of a difficulty. Rarely has Livingstone’s phonetic reproduction of a native appellation been adopted by writers of the present day. He took no notice of such philological distinctions as “Ba” and “Ma” for a people prefixed to the real name of their tribe—Ba-Rotse or Ma-Rotse, Ma-Kololo, Ba-Mangwato, Ma- Tebele. Bechuana for a people and Sechuana or Sichuana for the language they spoke he did pay attention to, because he found it already marked at Kuruman, but he did not trouble much about consistency in his spelling of the names of individuals or localities. Still, on the whole, it has been deemed advisable to adhere to Livingstone’s usual spelling unless there is clear reason for discarding it in favour of another form in any given instance. It should be remarked that even his spelling of his own tongue is not always accurate, as his private correspondence sometimes surprisingly reveals—e.g., “seperate,” “watershead,” “revalation.” Such slips are not infrequent.

It will be seen that the new material included in this book from original sources and not hitherto made public is fairly large in amount and of considerable value. If it adds little to what is already generally known of the facts of Livingstone’s life and labours, it enhances its human interest and our understanding of the man himself.

The references to passages in Livingstone’s works are to the London editions.

Contents

ILLUSTRATIONS

David Livingstone Wes EMM ICSU HEL LG cers DAU MURA AM Barcats pride. FACING PAGE The birthplace of) David Livingstone at: Blantyre) 030 ey) 49 The room in which David Livingstone was born . . . . . 34 mera his ite cio ou log SS RAT a SUN BRS a Pages of Livingstone’s locked journal written on his journey to Loanda 138 David Livingstone in consular dress after 1855 . . . . . . 178 PG] oI SEY Rca fon Pe Apa ee means Crip Agee NDI LYNG (ay. LS eT UN nO aaa en AC es MCD CONSE yee David Livingstone and Anna Mary, his youngest daughter . . . 236 OUCH Ee Ae ea a CEMA EL a Ere DY 6 Inscription carved by the “Immortals” on the tree at Chitambo under which Livingstone’s heart was buried Ese Ont UE RRA mine RS MAPS reaver snitica explored Dy Livingstone: 3 ly ik a go Bove raise Sy RoUtCa A ING. Erste or UR Cah eS MC SOM WER onc Gi Be Ones AcOULE Ss, INON By) a GM ISAT See SM RU Tee it

Part of Livingstone’s map of his experimental journey in Barotseland 115

Chapter I Africa And Livingstone

Tue Dark Continent, as it is so often termed, is at once the oldest and the newest great division of the earth’s surface in point of civilization. If the claim of Professor Elliot Smith and the experts who hold with him, that Egypt is the cradle of human culture, can be sustained, the world is Africa’s debtor to a greater extent than has ever yet been computed, and we are confronted with the paradoxical fact that Europe is returning to the centre and south of that vast area some of the stream of cultural development that originally proceeded from the north. W. J. Roome* draws attention to the strikingly suggestive fact that in A.D. 598 an appeal was addressed to Christian Africa on behalf of Pagan England. Pope Gregory wrote to Eubogius of Alexandria: “The English race, situated in the far corner of the world, has hitherto been in unbelief, worshipping stocks and stones. But, aided by your prayers, I sent a monk. Now letters have arrived telling me of his work. They show that he and those sent out with him shine amongst that nation with such miracles that they seem to imitate the mighty works of the apostles. At Christmas last more than ten thousand English people were baptized. I tell you this that you may know... what your prayers are doing at the world’s end; for your prayers are where you are not: your holy works are evident where you are.”

The fertilizing flow of thought and energy which, passing from Egypt through Greece, brought into being the entire civilization of the West, dried up on the northern shores of Africa itself, and never at any time succeeded in thrusting through the great natural barrier of the Sahara or penetrating below the sources of the Nile. Under Roman imperial rule, it is true, great things were done in the development of the resources of. the vast stretch of territory lying between the Red Sea

1 Can Africa be Won? p. 6.

I and the Atlantic, and including the principal part of modern Egypt, Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco, as the ruins of Timgad and Constantine remain to testify to this day. The Christian church of northern Africa, with its metropolitan centres in Alexandria and Carthage, was in the plenitude of its vigour no unworthy peer of the other ancient patriarchates of Christendom, and there is no more mysterious or melancholy fatality recorded in the annals of the rise and fall of religious movements than the disappearance of this great church before the hordes of Islam. The contrast between the obstinate barbaric fanaticism of the Mohammedan inhabitants of northern Africa to-day and the brilliance and splendour of the past is very painful. The church of Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine conferred benefits on mankind which will never be forgotten; but the efforts of Cardinal Lavigerie and the numerous Protestant missionary agencies of our time to recover the lost ground have not greatly prospered.

The Africa of the centre and south remained untouched by the dramatic vicissitudes of the north. Ethnologically, the continent falls naturally into three main divisions. The mixed white and brown races bordering on the Mediterranean and extending southwards to the desert represent the Africa that has played an important part in human history. The Bantu races, which cover the whole of tropical Africa and are found in considerable numbers well down into Cape Colony may hardly perhaps be classified as the indigenous Africans, but it is they who have the best title to be considered the typical Africans and the most fecund occupiers of its soil. On the southernmost fringe and the desert spaces adjoining are the Hottentot and Bushman strains, which are yielding to the pressure of the whites on the one side and their stronger black-skinned neighbours on the other. Of these three great sections, the various Bantu tribes are at the present moment, and will be for long to come, the portion of Africa’s inhabitants that presents to statesmanship and Christian evangelization the most serious problems and the most promising field for ameliorative endeavour. The Hottentot-Bushman type ‘gave great concern to the white settlers at the Cape and to the British administration in the first half of the nineteenth century, but of the far more vigorous Bantu

AFRICA AND LIVINGSTONE 3 stocks little was known until David Livingstone came on the scene. This is a generalization which requires to be qualified to the extent of saying that the slave trade had made us acquainted with the Bantu African as represented by the negroes of the west coast, who for centuries had been forcibly drawn upon by Europeans to furnish slave labour, especially for the plantations of northern and central America. Farther inland the inhabitants remained in their original state of savagery right through the period of recorded history. That they should have been able to do so may seem strange to modern observers —stranger still, perhaps, now that the truth is established of the spontaneous burgeoning of civilization in different portions of the globe and at different periods, apparently without stimulus from outside. This certainly appears to have been the case with the comparatively advanced cultures of the American continent before Europeans landed there. Recent excavations in Nevada and cognate archzological discoveries in Central America have virtually placed beyond doubt the fact that the aborigines of the western hemisphere are of Mongolian origin, and migrated from Asia from twenty-five to thirty thousand “years ago, bringing with them nothing above the level of primitive barbarism; the truly surprising heights of artistic and social development to which they attained with the lapse of time, and which are now proved to have been much greater than we have hitherto known, were entirely of native growth, and owed nothing to the example and influence of any superior race or social order. Why Bantu Africa should not have made similar progress no one can say with certitude, but the most probable explanation is twofold: The conformation of the continent cut off the people dwelling in the interior from intercourse with the rest of the world, and the tribal system permitted no excellence in anyone but the chief and kept the population divided into comparatively unstable warring communities of small size. Wide desert spaces to the north and south, high mountain ranges to east and west, combined with a dearth of water communications, kept the dwellers in this enormous region segregated from all other races, and in a state of ignorance little better than animalism. We have to remember, too, that if the central African knew nothing of the outer world, neither did the outer world know anything of him. Ignorance of what central Africa was really like, topographically and otherwise, was general up to the middle of the nineteenth century. Until Livingstone revealed the truth, the most fantastic notions were entertained concerning it, as a glance at the map of Africa previous to 1856 would prove.

Nor had Europe’s contact with Africa hitherto been in the main a beneficent one; on the contrary, it had been more of a curse than a blessing. The slave trade, begun by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century, was carried on and increased by the English from the sixteenth to the eighteenth. It has been estimated by competent authorities that the traffic cost Africa no less than a hundred million lives, not to mention the appalling total of suffering and degradation associated therewith, and which have done more than anything else to keep Africa in a backward state. The African has unjustly been looked down upon by his white masters as an inferior type incapable of the advancement made by the nations that have subdued and exploited him. This mistaken view, against which Livingstone was among the first to protest, is at length giving way before the evidence of socio-

logical facts. The educated negro is showing himself able to do most that his white contemporary can do both intellectually and physically. As the present writer has frequently had occasion to observe in the United States and elsewhere, the very features of the coloured man tend to approximate to those of the European under the same cultural influences as are enjoyed by the latter.” There is no more groundless misapprehension than the common one that the descendant of negro slaves must speak pidgin English and behave like a child. It is sometimes startling to one unprepared for the phenomenon to see a European face and expression combined with a coal-black complexion, and to hear a refined and beautiful voice proceeding from the lips of the same person and discoursing intelligently on vital topics of the hour. Truly a miracle, when the generations of induced slave mentality that preceded it are taken into account.

2 Some sociologists question if this is necessarily to the advantage of either race.

AFRICA AND LIVINGSTONE 5

The four centuries during which Africa was regarded as a quarry for the supply of cheap labour inflicted immeasurable injury both upon — the native races and their oppressors, for no one will deny that slavery as an institution reacts unfavourably upon the whole population of any country where it prevails. In 1813, the year in which Livingstone was born, Great Britain and the United States took a joint stand against the traffic in human flesh which, until then, had been the staple of commercial intercourse between the African coast and the Englishspeaking communities of the new world, most of the human freight being carried in British ships for the enrichment of British mercantile houses. Six years earlier the traffic had been declared illegal in the British Empire, but it was not until 1833 that slavery as an institution ceased in British dominions. From that date onward British policy was directed to the suppression of the evil trade it had done so much to foster, but the comparative ill success attending the policy did not become generally known until Livingstone’s revelations broadcast it to the world. He set a mark upon Africa deeper than any empire builder has ever done; indeed, it may with truth be said that it was chiefly he who made possible the moral trusteeship of the advanced over the backward races which is now a principle of the League of Nations. Article twenty-two of the Covenant of the League is the explicit recognition of this principle and of the obligation that rests upon the stronger powers to conform to it. No nation has any longer an absolutely free hand in disposing of the lives and property of subject peoples; there is a court of international public opinion to which every mandatory power is in some sort responsible, and this is a newly created authority whose effective exercise is bound to increase. The British imperial Government has frankly admitted and applied the principle of trusteeship to all its dealings with the populations and resources of the extensive territories under its rule in Africa. As will be seen in the following pages, this was Livingstone’s vision; for this he wrought, and hoped, and suffered for the greater part of his mature life, and for this in the end he died.)

He gave to the world a new view of the African—of his educability, industry, and capacity for moral improvement. This is a fact which, as Professor Sedgwick said a generation ago,’ should be classed amongst the most valuable of Livingstone’s contributions to the world’s

knowledge and moral health.) Earlier missionaries, like Philip and Moffat, on African soil, and Aheds among the African slave stocks of the West Indies, had proclaimed that the African was endowed with potentialities of intelligence and character far beyond what he was usually given credit for; but Livingstone forced the fact upon universal attention because of the greater scale upon which his work was done, and the multitudes of hitherto untouched independent populations” he was the means of introducing to civilization. “Let no one say that Africa labours under a natural incapacity for civilization,” cried William Pitt in his speech in support of the abolition of slavery in 1792. “. .. We were once . . . as savage in our manners, as degraded in our understandings. Some of us may live to behold the natives of Africa engaged in the calm occupations of industry, in the pursuit of a just and legitimate commerce. We may behold the beams of science and philosophy breaking in upon their land ... and joining their influence with that of pure religion. . . . Then may we hope that even Africa, though last of all the quarters of the globe, shall enjoy at length, in the evening of her days, those blessings which have descended so plentifully upon us.” This notable utterance exactly expresses what Livingstone believed and unweariedly preached both by example and testimony, and he succeeded in doing what neither statesman nor philanthropist had succeeded in doing before him: he broke down stubborn barriers of prejudice and stupidity, and let in a flood of new light upon a problem of a magnitude hitherto unguessed by the leaders of mankind.

He was but just in time. As G. M. Trevelyan penetratingly points out,* had slavery not been abolished as detrimental to the physical and - moral welfare of civilized peoples—or at least solemnly repudiated as inconsistent with the jus gentium—before the rush for the partition of Africa among the great European powers in the latter part of the nine-

3 Cambridge Lectures, p. 125. 4 History of the Nineteenth Century.

AFRICA AND LIVINGSTONE y teenth century, there might have been established a number of new slave states on the African continent with inconceivably evil reactions upon ordered human society everywhere. It is not too much to say that the intensity of the moral ardour aroused by Livingstone made such a sinister eventuality impossible. Africa would have been thrown open by someone else sooner or later if he had not done it; but on the character of that someone else would have depended the nature of the results to follow. Is it likely that the mere head of a military expedition or even the members of a company engaged in scientific exploration would have produced the effect that Livingstone did by going alone and unsupported except by natives through strange and turbulent lands? ‘To this day the path he took is marked by a greater respect for the white man than other routes; he was the first representative of the white race that the inhabitants of inner Africa had seen, and the impression he made remains. Commissioner Unsworth, of the Salvation Army, who has crossed and recrossed Africa at various points in the discharge of his duty, remarked to the present writer that it was his experience that wherever Livingstone had gone the natives had learnt to look for good at the hands of the European and be receptive to it, but that where others had fought their way through it was not so; in the latter case the white man’s motives were suspect and aloofness was maintained. Obviously the atmosphere that Livingstone carried with him and the new sympathy and respect for the African that he awakened in Europe and America, a sympathy and respect whose tokens were quickly apparent in the kind of help they furnished to Africa, did much to counteract beforehand the mischiefs that were certain to accrue from the sudden mingling of entirely different ethnic strains at widely different stages of historic and cultural development.

The chief reason for Livingstone’s lasting influence on the unsophisticated African soul was his character. This he knew, and frequently took occasion to warn other travellers that they would be judged by their behaviour.” Primitive and rude the native might be, irrational and at times loathsome in his ways, but he possessed an unerring eye for what was better than himself; in fact there was no surer sign that he was worth helping than his instinctive capacity for distinguishing between good and evil in the examples presented to his observation; and when he saw, as he could not avoid seeing, the inconsistency between precept and practice, only too apt to prevail where the white man set his foot, he would be repelled instead of attracted thereby.) Subsequent history has only too fully justified the reiterated warning. It was so with the Portuguese and the Boers, and when the tide of French, Belgian, German, and British enterprise began to flow strongly over the newly opened territories it gained in force. The greatest asset that the reputation of Great Britain has ever possessed in Africa is the respect felt by natives of every grade for the manhood of David Livingstone. No less important and abiding has been the same influence upon the minds and hearts of his own countrymen and upon millions of others to the remotest corners of the globe.

That influence is not lessening; rather it grows with the years. Everyone now admits that the work which Livingstone accomplished for the benefit of Africa deserved all the laudation it received from contemporaries, but with the lapse of time its proportions expand. The greatness of the man stands out in clearer perspective. What he advocated and what he did are seen to have been more significant and fruitful than even he could have anticipated. The tale of his achievements increases day by day, and the desire to know more of the manner of man he was and of the way in which his life was spent is as keen and general as when, fifty years ago, the news of his passing in the African wild caused universal sorrow. It is in the endeavour to meet this, desire and to estimate the worth of the direct outcome of deeds which thrilled an earlier generation, when performed unaided by a humble — missionary of the Christian Gospel, that the following story is told.

Chapter II Livingstone’s Origin And Early Years

Davi LivinesTonE came of Scottish Highland stock on the father’s side. On the mother’s he derived from a no less virile but widely different race, that of the Lowlanders of Strathclyde, with their tenacious democratic traditions and stern Calvinistic faith. It was to the blend of these two that he owed the qualities that chiefly distinguished him throughout life. This is a fact which needs emphasis, for it has not always received due recognition. Mrs. K. W. Grant, an authority of deservedly high reputation on the subject of Gaelic lore, says in her Myth, Tradition, and Story from Western Argyll: “There were traits in the character of David Livingstone that puzzled his biographers—Lowland Scot, Englishman, and American alike—and that they could not account for. There are no enigma to his Highland countrymen. He has been held up to admiration as an example of ‘the highest type of Anglo-Saxon race’ by those who persistently ignore the old race to which the British Empire to-day owes so much. Yet so typically Scottish Highland was he, even in personal appearance, that on one occasion a Livingstone of Bachuill and on another a member of the Achnacree family was greeted as ‘Dr. Livingstone’ by visitors from London who had seen the great explorer. One lady caused much amusement to the bystanders by insisting on kissing the hand of the plain, honest farmer whom she mistook for his illustrious relative, whom she had seen and spoken to.” The point thus tellingly made is one of considerable interest, but fails to take account of the fact that the Lowland strain in Livingstone was at least equally marked —the patience, doggedness, perseverance, and strength of will that’ carried him through so many difficulties and dangers. Heredity does not explain everything in a great man; certainly it does not do so in Livingstone’s case. But it explains much, and in any estimate we make 9 of the factors that went to the forming of one of the most notable personages of the nineteenth century we must allow full weight, both to the keen imagination and high spirit of his Gaelic ancestry, and to the moral strength of the Covenanting stock of his maternal grandsire.

Livingstone’s own brief sketch of his family history, prefixed to his Misstonary Travels and Researches in South Africa, hardly takes us back far enough, and the information it supplies is but meagre. It is said to have been written at the request of the publishers in order to satisfy public curiosity in regard to his antecedents. We are told therein that his paternal great-grandfather fell at Culloden fighting on the side of the Young Pretender; that his grandfather, Neil Livingstone, a small farmer in Ulva, was compelled by poverty to move to Blantyre, near Glasgow, where he and his sons became employees in the cotton factory of Monteith and Co.; that all these sons but one, David’s father, subsequently took service either in the army or navy. The son who remained at home, Neil Livingstone the younger, became a small tea dealer, married in the same modest social rank to which he himself belonged, and brought up his children in the fear of God. The picture painted by Livingstone of his early home life is an attractive one. He pays reverent tribute to the influence and example of both his parents, comparing his father with the description given by Robert Burns of the head of a poor respectable family in The Cotter’s Saturday Night. Upon his own youthful experiences he dwells with cheerful retrospect. Not only did he count it no disadvantage to have had to undergo the discipline of privation and struggle, but testifies: “Looking back now on that life of toil, I cannot but feel thankful that it formed such a material part of my early education; and, were it possible, I should like to begin life over again in the same lowly style, and to pass through the same hardy training.”