A Chapter of Accidents—and Loss

A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS—AND LOSS ⁵¹ Isn’t it interesting to get blamed for everything! ,!

(Livingstone to Moore, 1863.) FTER this affair with the slave hunters

Livingstone and his expedition set off to explore Lake Nyassa. A tremendous storm was raging on the lake, and he and his brother and Dr Kirk made a short inland voyage of discovery. Livingstone was feeling very anxious about his wife and the little baby that had been born just after he left her at Cape Town. She had returned to England, and no letters seemed to get through to him.

In one of his letters home he told his friend Mr Fitch how terribly cut off he felt from home news, and how often he longed to open Punch again—“ a sound divine,” as Livingstone described him. As a matter of fact, if he had seen Mr Punch at that moment he would have beheld several edifying references to himself, for everyone at home was talking of his wonderful travels.

Another and very annoying loss on that expedition was his wardrobe, for one Sunday some native thieves got into his tent while he

A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS 185 was away and stole most of his garments. Livingstone, in the depths of the wilds, was always an extraordinarily neat and tidy man, and took almost as much care of his clothes as the famous Captain Good in Allan Quatermain. So the holes in the knees of his only remaining pair of trousers gave him some humorous annoyance.

The people whom Livingstone came across in these districts were often very good-looking, but the women completely ruined their appearance by the pelele. A small hole is made in the upper lip, and is gradually widened till it is large enough to hold an ivory ring. This makes the lip stick out several inches beyond the nose, and gives a most grotesque appearance. When a ring-wearer happens to smile the result is almost alarming. By the action of the muscles of the cheeks the ring and lips are dragged back and thrown over the eyebrows, while a fleeting vision of a nose is seen through the ivory ring. As for the teeth of the smiler, they have been carefully sharpened to resemble a crocodile. It is quite possible that the hideous pelele may account for peculiarities in the language of the tribes which affect this fashion. A few years ago it was noticed by a traveller among certain African tribes that their pronunciation of labials, or lip-sounding words, was different from that commonly found amongst people not wearing the lipring. When one thinks of it one is certainly not surprised that it should be so.

Livingstone very much admired the Manyema people. The men were tall, strapping fellows, with very little of the negro about them. The women, especially far down the Lualaba River, were often very handsome, with large eyes and quite light-coloured skin. They were as different as could possibly be from the negroes of Zanzibar, “ whose faces,” Livingstone once said, “resembled the features of London doorknockers, which some atrocious iron-founder thought were like those of lions! ” He was never quite satisfied with the illustrations in his own books or other works on Africa, for he said they did not do the natives justice. When Oswell was correcting some of his “proofs” he wrote him a most amusing letter on the subject. “ I can’t get men to make blacks like their photographs,” he wrote. “ Take high cheek-bones, low foreheads, big lips, mouth from ear to ear, ears like achter wheels, mix ad sumend—that is the prescription of all artists except Angus”; and Angus himself did not satisfy Livingstone’s ideas of how his handsome Manyema friends should be drawn. Modern illustrations certainly succeed much better, and one does not so often see fine Central African tribesmen caricatured after the fashion of “ nigger minstrels.”

All along the shores of the great lake they

—AND LOSS 187 passed village after village, and the land seemed to Livingstone to be marvellously rich. The slave raiders had not begun their ravages on those unlucky villagers, but they saw an Arab slave dhow on the lake, and knew what it meant. Not very long afterwards there were nearly twenty thousand slaves a year passing from this lake region to the east coast of Africa.

The mosquitoes by the lake-side came not singly but in clouds. “ They struck upon the face like fine, drifting snow.” The natives actually collected and made them into mosquito cakes. Livingstone tasted one, and it was rather like caviare or salted locusts.

After a time they came to the northern part of the lake, or rather what Livingstone thought was its northern extremity, and there he found the people were being terrorised by Angoni Zulus, who swept down upon the villages and carried off their women and children. Presently the party was met by some young Zulu warriors, who at once put on a bullying air and tried to frighten these white men. Livingstone’s quiet sarcasm and perfect coolness as usual won this sort of battle, and it ended in the bumptious ones making off rather rapidly.

Farther up the lake they came upon the slave trade once more in full swing. An Arab dhow, crowded with slaves, ran regularly across the lake and supplied the slave markets at Iboe and Kilwa. The whole business filled Livingstone with horror. “ There truly,” he wrote, “ Satan has his seat.” Every thousand slaves meant at least five thousand dead bodies, for in the raid whole villages were destroyed, and men and women died in thousands, or perished by the way. Besides the horrible cruelty of it all, it was the most wasteful trade imaginable. It was killing the goose that might lay the golden egg; for the country could easily become one of the richest and most prosperous in the world if there were only men and women left to till it. But in that country the only money used was men and women, and soon there would be none left alive by the slave hunters.

A few weeks before Christmas, 1861, Livingstone and Bishop Mackenzie met once more at Tshibisa’s. The Bishop was in high feather, having taught the Yao slavers a lesson. He was one of those quiet and rather shy men who when roused by injustice are as brave as lions; and no one at Cambridge who had known the distinguished “ wrangler ” and quiet, selfeffacing don would have recognised him in this Bishop-chief of the Mananja. Indeed his letters home during this year read like pages out of King Solomon’s Mines. In one battle with the Yao slavers the Bishop and his men had fought for an hour, and had carried home a number of prisoners. On another occasion he had forded the River Ricania and pursued the slave

AND LOSS 189 hunters to their own quarters, burnt the village and, as he said, “ vindicated the British name.” Now, he told Livingstone, he must search for a healthier station for his mission, and proposed to explore the country between Magomero and the River Ruo.

Livingstone greatly liked this Bishop, and shared his righteous indignation against the slavers. “ To sit stilly he said, “ must be suffering martyrdom for our own folly! ” But he knew in his heart that the Bishop’s mission must fail if it were dragged into native warfare.

It goes without saying that Mackenzie’s action was misunderstood at home by many good people, and Livingstone himself got much of the blame. The Great War has made a difference in people’s attitude towards the soldier-parson. From the first all looked upon it as a crusade against the doctrine that “ Might is Right ”; and the clergy enlisted in numbers in Kitchener’s Army. In France thousands of priests have fought side by side with their fellow-soldiers, and among them are at least four bishops serving as officers in the army. So when we read of this gallant Bishop in Livingstone’s day fighting against the same savage doctrine, although its Yao warriors made no pretence at “ culture,” we feel he was acting a man’s part, and love him for it.

Livingstone promised to do his best later on to meet Mackenzie on the River Ruo, and set off himself in the Pioneer towards the mouth of the Zambesi. He had had splendid news at last. His wife was coming on H.M.S. Gorgon to meet him, and in the same ship he expected some more members of the mission, and his own little private ship in sections—the Lady Nyassa. The Pioneer did everything a ship should not do on that voyage. She stuck on every sandbank and drove Livingstone almost to desperation; but at last they reached Kongone, and not long afterwards the Gorgon hove in sight. “ Wife aboard,” went up the signal from the war-ship, and Mrs Livingstone saw her husband once more, standing with his gold-laced cap on the port paddle-box of the Pioneer.

Among the passengers on the Gorgon were the Bishop’s sister and a man who afterwards became one of the great missionary pioneers in Livingstone’s new Africa—Dr Stewart of Lovedale. Soon they were all embarked on the Pioneer, and in spite of horrible delay, owing to her provoking little engines going wrong on every possible occasion, Livingstone and his wife found themselves once more in an African house of their own at Shupanga.

Heartily glad was poor Ma Robert to be back again with Baba Daud in the wilds. She hated being at home in England, where she felt like a caged bird after her free African life. Like her husband, she was very unconventional.

—AND LOSS 191 and could not understand at all the “ cathedral city ” point of view. Besides, people were always misunderstanding her; and she knew as well as possible that some of her women acquaintances actually thought that Livingstone stayed so long in the wilds because he was not happy with his wife! No rumour was ever more absurdly untrue, but it rankled. She ought not to have travelled at all that year, for she was in wretched health, but that last horrible bit of gossip goaded her into leaving for Africa. Now at last she was in the Shupanga house with Livingstone, beside the great yellow African river, and was perfectly happy.

There never was a man more regardless of precautions in travelling than Bishop Mackenzie. Full of enthusiasm, he and his fellow-explorer, Mr Burrup, simply never thought of themselves at all on their journey through that dangerous country. They seldom had dry clothes on their backs, and were careless what they ate or where they camped. Their journey on the Shire was one long chapter of accidents, and, worst of all, they lost their precious quinine when the canoe capsized in a whirlpool of the river. At the place where they had counted upon finding Livingstone they arrived too late, with literally “ nothing to keep them going.” On Malo island, on the last day of the year, Bishop Mackenzie, worn out with fatigue and fever, passed away in a reed hut outside the native village, and in a few weeks his fellow-traveller died of fever at Tshibisa’s.

Miss Mackenzie and Mr Burrup’s wife had been rowed up the river in the captain’s gig of H.M.S. Gorgon. When they heard the terrible news from a native messenger, “ Bishop wa fra ” (“The Bishop has passed”), the two plucky women set off at once for Malo, and were rowed across to the solitary island where Mackenzie had died. A wilder, more desolate place could not be imagined. Crocodiles lay under the banks in great numbers, and as they went forward the tall reeds drooped and met over their heads. At last they reached a sort of tunnel in the reedy tangle, and a native pointed to a spot at the end of the run-way. “ There is the grave,” he said in a whisper. Miss Mackenzie placed over it a little wooden cross.

Two years afterwards Livingstone visited the spot and planted a tall cross over the grave of his friend. It was the symbol of that life of self-sacrifice and love that the first pioneer bishop in Africa gave so cheerfully to the work that called him.

Livingstone was broken-hearted at the loss of the Bishop. And it seemed to everyone a terrible set-back to all their cherished schemes. But in the spring the final blow fell upon Livingstone at Shupanga. His wife fell ill, and all her husband’s love and nursing could not save her in that wild place. On 27th April

—AND LOSS 198 Mary Livingstone died, telling her husband how grateful she was they should have been allowed to spend those few happy months together. The natives, who loved Ma Robert with an extraordinary loyalty, mounted guard over her body till the grave under the great baobab-tree had been digged and made ready. From it the traveller to-day, in a very different Shupanga, can see the blue Morumballa Mountains, over the flat, reedy plain of Livingstone’s Africa.

After her death Livingstone set his shoulders doggedly, and faced what he had still to do in Nyassaland. By June all the bits of the Lady Nyassa steamer were put together. But in the meantime Livingstone sailed one hundred and sixty miles up the Rovuma River in the old Pioneer. Then they came back and took his own new vessel in tow up the Zambesi into the Shire, and so on to the Murchison Falls. There Livingstone seemed to collapse altogether. The last few weeks had been too much for even his strength, and it was only Dr Kirk’s careful nursing that pulled him through that bout of fever and dysentery.

In July the last link in a perfect chain of disasters seemed to be forged for poor David Livingstone. Earl Russell sent him a dispatch ordering the withdrawal of his expedition. The Ministry at home thought the whole affair was too costly, and recalled Consul Livingstone.

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He knew he must go, of course; but he gamely determined to have one last try at reaching Lake Nyassa. The run of ill luck continued. He lost his boat and all his provisions; but he reached Kota-Kota on the shores of the great lake. He was burning to go on to Lake Bangweolo, and did get part of the way, but inexorable Fate, in the shape of Lord Russell, forced him to return to the Pioneer, and back they sailed to the mouth of the Zambesi.

The Lady Nyassa behaved well, but was badly knocked about by one of the worst storms Livingstone remembered. She was towed by H.M.S. Orestes to Mo9ambique, and from there Livingstone sailed her to Zanzibar.

Everything seemed to have failed—except Livingstone’s spirit. It was hard to row against wind and tide, but he belonged to a race that does not know when it is beaten, and so wins through at last.