Across the Continent
CNX OME of Dr. Livingstone’s friends thought that he should have settled somewhere, “ preaching the simple gospel, and seeing conversions as the result of each sermon.” To his father and other friends he writes in September, 1853: “ The conversion of a few, however valuable their souls may be, can not be put into the scale against the knowledge of the truth spread over the whole country. InthisIdoandwillexult. As in India, we are doomed to perpetual disappointment; but the knowledge of Christ spreads over the masses. We are like voices crying in the wilderness; we prepare the way for the glorious future in which missionaries telling the same tale of love will convert by every sermon. I am trying now to establish the Lord’s kingdom in a region wider by far than Scotland. Fever seems to forbid, but I shall work for the glory of Christ’s kingdom—fever or no fever.” Having been completely baffled in his search fora healthful location for mission work, Livingstone now turns his thoughts to the second object he has had in view, and endeavors to find a highway to the sea, pushing forward to the west coast. The probability of his falling by the way is ever before him, but, as he often says, “ Cannot the love of Christ carry the missionary where the slave trade carries the trader?” So with a band of Makololo, the best natives with whom he ever travelled, he plunges boldly into the unknown country. Yet even the best natives Livingstone finds ready to suc LIFE OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE. el
cumb to every trouble, and weak and helpless except as he infuses his own strength and courage into them. Of physical strength he himself had but little. During this terrible journey of seven months, from November 1853 to June 1854, he had thirty-one attacks of intermittent fever. The story of incredible hardships, sickness, hunger, constant wading through swollen streams, tedious delays, and harassing exactions of hostile tribes has been thrillingly told in Livingstone’s first published Zravels which made his name a household word in England and America.;
When at last he reached the Portuguese settlement of St. Paul de Loanda on the coast, it was asa skeleton clothed in tatters, and he was soon prostrated by a long and distressing illness. But even this trial had its alleviations. He speaks of the delightful sensation of resting on a comfortable bed after so many months of lying upon the ground. The kind attentions of the Portuguese traders and others were also refreshing to the soul of the weary and lonely explorer.
When he had once more regained his strength he might have set sail immediately for England and his wife and children. The two years of absence had gone by, and great must have been the temptation to go to them at once. But he had promised the natives who had accompanied him that he would bring them back to their homes, and he knew that they were quite unable to perform that formidable journey without him. Besides, he had not yet accomplished his object. He had found no safe locality for a mission, nor any practicable highway to the sea. So once more he plunged into the wilderness, and with a repetition of his former hardships, and far more loss of time, brought his followers back to their homes.
It was his earnest desire to bring them ald safely home, and in point of fact the whole twenty-seven returned in good health, notwithstanding all the perils of the way, owing largely, doubtless, to his careful oversight. No wonder that his followers had an extraordinary regard for him. Once when crossing a river the ox he was riding threw him off into the water, and at once about twenty of his men made a simultaneous rush for his rescue, and their joy at his safety was very great.
On his way back to the Barotse country Livingstone had a severe attack of rheumatic fever. ‘I got it by sleeping in the wet,” he says. “There was no help for it. Every part of a plain was flooded ankle deep. We got soaked by going on, and sodden if we stood still.” The rain was often so drenching that he had to put his watch under his arm-pit to keep it dry. Tis bed was on the wet grass with only a horsecloth between to keep off a little of the dampness. “It is true that I suffered severely from fever,” he writes again, “but my experience cannot be taken as a fair criterion in the matter. Compelled to sleep on the damp ground month after month, exposed to drenching showers, and getting the lower extremities wetted two or three times every day, living on manioc roots and meal, and exposed during many hours each day to the direct rays of the sun with the thermometer standing above 96° in the shade—these constitute a more pitiful hygiene than any succeeding missionaries will have to endure.”
As they near the home of most of his followers matters brighten, and he writes: “Our progress down the Barotse valley was quite an ovation; the people were wonderfully kind, and every village gave us an ox and sometimes two. I felt most deeply grateful, and tried to benefit them in the only way I could, by imparting the knowledge of that Savior who alone can comfort them in the time of need, and of that good Spirit who alone can instruct them, and lead them into his kingdom.” On arriving at their journey’s end, a day of thanksgiving was observed. (July 23d, 1855.)
After a few months of rest, months in which, however, he did not fail to work and pray for the salvation of those about him, Livingstone set out once more on his weary way, — this time to the east coast, which seemed to promise better than the west. He followed the course of the Zambesi river, discovering the wonderful Victoria Falls, like a second Niagara, but grander and more astonishing. Two subjects that occupied much of his thoughts on these long journeys were the configuration of the country, and the best way of conducting missions and bringing the Africans to Christ.
On this journey he was often in extreme danger from the natives, but his trust in the Lord never faltered. ‘“ Travelling from day to day among barbarians,” he himself says— and it is the universal testimony of those who have tried it —“exerts a most benumbing effect on the religious feelings of the soul,” but his private journals show that through all the obstacles and trials that beset him he stood firmly upon the Rock, Christ Jesus.
When in imminent peril at the confluence of the Zambesi and Loangwa, he writes in his journal January 14, 1856: “Thank God for His great mercies thus far. How soon I may be called to stand before Him, my righteous Judge, I know not. All hearts are in His hands, and merciful and gracious is the Lord our God. O Jesus, grant me resignation to Thy will, and entire reliance on Thy powerful hand. On Thy word alone I lean. But wilt Thou permit me to plead for Africa? The cause is Thine. What an impulse will be given to the idea that Africa is not open if I perish now! See, O Lord, how the heathen rise up against me as they did to Thy Son. I commit my way unto Thee; I trust also in Thee that Thou wilt direct my steps. Thou givest wisdom liberally to all who ask Thee — give it to me, my Father. My family is Thine. They are in the best hands. Oh! be gracious, and all our sins do Thou blot out.
‘A guilty, weak and helpless worm
On Thy kind arms I fall.’ Leave me not, forsake me not. I cast myself and all my cares down at Thy feet. Thou knowest all I need, for time and for eternity.”
At this time he had just made the discovery of two healthy ridges at the mouth of the Loangwa, which had given him new hope for missions and commerce; hence the special earnestness with which he pleads that if the Lord will he may be spared still longer to do his work. He was anxious that others should know of his success in at last finding a healthful locality, and cherished the earnest hope that the directors would establish a mission there.
When he finally reached Quilimane, another Portuguese settlement on the east coast, in May, 1856, a few days less than four years from the time of his leaving the Cape had elapsed. In this time he had crossed the entire continent —a feat never before accomplished by a European—and that amid hardships and dangers to which all but the bravest and most persevering would have inevitably succumbed. That his wonderful success as an explorer had not been unrecognized is shown in the fact that in May, 1855, the Geographical Society had awarded him their gold medal—the highest honor they had to bestow.
The Astronomer-royal at the Cape, Mr. Maclear, had said of him: “He has done that which few other travellers in Africa can boast of: he has fixed his geographical points with very great accuracy, and yet he is only a poor missionary.” But now as Dr. Livingstone once more emerges into civilized regions, he finds himself no longer the obscure missionary, but the world-renowned discoverer.
Let us not imagine, however, that he had lost anything of his missionary spirit in the zeal of the explorer. All through these journeys he had constantly preached the gospel to the various tribes through whose countries he passed. Even when tooill to hold his usual Sabbath services he would make use of a magic lantern, with pictures of Scripture scenes. He could thus convey important truths in a way particularly attractive to his rude audiences. Before he set out on this journey he wrote to his father: “I am a missionary, heart —and soul. God had an only Son, and he was a missionary and.a physician. A poor, poor imitation of Him I am, or wish to be. In this service I hope to live; in it I wish to die.” And a sentence penned toward the close of his journey shows with what spirit it had been carried through. “Viewed in relation to my calling,” he writes, “the end of the geographical feat is only the beginning of the enterprise.”