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CL ^ V s- ^ " /■ ^ c^. ^ . ^x"' _^'' _ -^^^.'^ '■ ^ " ■ ^^' .V- ^\ V ^ ■■ • » ^^- v^ r^ '>^ % 'd'^ij ^- ».^ f^ >^'^^^." o?^' o o V / "=^^ \' -i G^ .o" c « ^ ^' >? ^ .-JS"^ x' . o. ^ li o T (^0 ■* ,^r^v *^ o 0^ c^ .^-^.^ , '^ .^^ ^.;. ^ c 0- c oo \ 'V V aX^' '^p ^c.. ^^, '\' d'o tl y LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER ROUND A CAMP-FIRE *' Their eyes were fixed on a brown Makololo warrior" LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER BY I BASIL MATHEWS Author of The Fascinated Child and The Splendid Quest WITH SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERNEST PRATER TWENTY-FOUR OTHER PICTURES AND PHOTOGRAPHS AND THREE MAPS I9I2 Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada New York ^t^^ COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY MISSIONARY EDUCATION MOVEMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA (gC!,A330732 CONTENTS Round a Forest Camp-fire I The Boy in the Mill II The Smoke of a Thousand Villages III Under the Lion's Paw IV The Queen of the Wagon V How the Children Saw the Lake VI The Pathfinder VII By Canoe and Forest Track . VIII ^'The Forest Perilous" . IX '^Sounding Smbke" . X Facing Poisoned Arrows XI The Smoke of Burning Villages XII On the Slave Trail . XIII Spears in the Bush . XIV The Last Trail In the Forest of Heroes PAGE 3 II 21 33 49 65 75 87 105 119 133 147 159 175 185 199 ILLUSTRATIONS Round a camp-fire Frontispiece PAGE The room in Blantyre where David Livingstone lived as a boy . . . . : 4- Ruins of the mill at Blantyre, where Livingstone worked as a boy . . . ir "He bought a Latin grammar with a part of his first week's wages" ........ i6 A steamer on the Clyde in Livingstone's day . . 21 "On the Broomielaw quay father and son said good- by" 28 A Bechuana village, South Africa 33 "The creaking wagon drawn by a long team of great oxen" 34 "He caught my shoulder as he sprang" ... 44 An African village stockade . . . . . -49 Preparing the feast in an African village ... 52 "The children came in sight of the lake which their father had discovered" 65 African boys holding elephant tusks .... 66 Teaching the teachers 70 "The procession winding its way along the path" . 75 Livingstone preaching to the Makololo .... 80 "The white pelican with his long beak and great pouch" 87 Part of Livingstone's own map of the union of the Chobe and Zambezi rivers ...... 8g An African fetish-image with basket of food ... 98 "Sinbad stumbled in a hole in the bed of the river" 100 "Where the crocodiles splash" 105 vii Vlll ILLUSTRATIONS The Forest Perilous ... . . . . A baby hippopotamus riding on his mother's back "Livingstone was the first white man who ever saw 'Sounding Smoke.' He named it Victoria Falls" "The mother-elephant placed herself between the men and her calf" . "He let them listen to the ticking of his watch" The Ma-Robert on the Zambezi *'He went to see Queen Victoria" . The Pioneer "Away she went like an arrow" "Grass that towered over their heads" Slavery The vastest and most mysterious country on Making furniture instead of breaking heads An African python — over ten feet in length "A large spear grazed Livingstone's back" "I read the whole Bible through four times whilst I was in Manyuema" .... Stanley finds Livingstone "Under the eaves of that roof in Ujiji " " He entered the hut" .... "Bearing him shoulder high" . The tombstone in Westminster Abbey . Westminster Abbey, London . A Christian setting a slave free at a mission station Livingstone's Journeys in Africa .... the earth PAGE IIO 119 120 124 128 133 134 147 152 159 162 167 168 175 178 180 182 185 192 194 196 199 200 End ROUND A FOREST CAMP-FIRE Beseeching all . . . that shall see and read in this said book and work, that they take the good and honest acts in their remembrance, and to follow the same. Wherein they shall find many joyous and pleasant stories and noble and renowned acts of humanity, gentle- ness, and chivalries. Caxton's Preface to Malory's Le MorteD' Arthur. ROUND A FOREST CAMP-FIRE The dancing flames of a camp-fire on the edge of an African forest threw leaping shadows of men on the dark background of trees. The silence of its depths was broken by the roar of a lion, the splash of a hippopotamus in the river close by, and the crash of falling trees in the path of an elephant. But the strange band of men around the night fire did not heed these noises. Their eyes were fixed on a brown Makololo warrior, who stood, with the firelight full on his face, telling them of the wonderful deeds of daring in war and of craft in hunting which the great fathers of his tribe had done in the old days. He told of a great Makololo chief who in battle with another tribe had fought on and slain a score of men, though covered with wounds from the spears of his enemies; and alone had slain a lion that ravaged the cattle of the tribe. As he finished the story the other Makololo braves clapped their hands and looked to their Great White Leader, who smiled to thank the tale-teller. One by one the Makololo men lay down under the little sheds that they had quickly made from the boughs of the trees. They rolled themselves 3 4 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER up in the skins of beasts and slept. But the White Leader, whom they had followed for a thousand miles along the rivers and through the forests, sat on, gazing into the red embers of the fire. His face was brown and strong, and no man had ever seen fear in his blue-gray eyes. His left arm hung stiffly by his side, and could not be lifted without pain, because of the shattered bone and the eleven great tooth-marks left there by a lion. As he sat there, thinking of the stories of hunting adventures and of tribal war told that night by his brown fellow-camper, the African forest, the gleam of the moon on the river, and the dark forms of his Makololo companions faded from his eyes. He saw another picture of other people sitting round a fire. These were his young brothers and his sisters, with himself — a raw, loose-limbed, mill- boy — all sitting round the hearth at home in Scot- land listening with wide-open eyes to their shaggy- haired grandfather, as with flashing eyes he told stories, strangely like these African tales; stories of the wild, fighting Highlanders, and the brave suf- ferings of the old Scottish covenanting heroes. Across the White Leader's memory there came pictures of the adventures and perils that lay between the days when he had heard, as a boy, the tales of his grandfather and this night when he listened — a strong and fearless man — to stories told in a strange tongue in the tangled forest in Africa. ROUND A FOREST CAMP-FIRE 5 He saw himself saying goocl-by to his father at Glasgow, to sail across thousands of miles of ocean, and trek in his ox-wagon over hundreds of miles of African soil. He remembered the building of three houses with his own hands on the African plains, the years of life under the blazing sun, healing black children who were ill, teaching their fathers to read, to worship God, and to dig canals that would carry water to their parched gardens. His right hand clenched as he saw again the fight with the lion, and the hunting of the ostrich, the antelope, and the buffalo for food. The White Man Who Would Go On remembered, between the far-off days in the Scottish home and this African camp-fire, tramping thousands of miles on foot, riding on ox-back and in ox-wagon, cross- ing the blistering, sandy stretches of the Kalahari desert, and reaching the shores of a lake which no white man had ever seen before. He had traveled in canoes hollowed by savages from the trunks of trees, and had sat on board a rough raft, while his African companions chanted quaint melodies, as they paddled along the steam- ing river. There the hippopotamus would suddenly thrust his back and nose like some volcanic island out of the water and glare at them with beady eyes. From his canoe and raft he had watched the banks fringed with dense masses of reeds, where birds '' jerked and wriggled . . . with splash, gug- 6 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER gle, jump, as if rare fun were going on in their uncouth haunts." On the banks he had seen gorgeous butterflies fluttering among the flowers of the purple convolvulus, and ^chattering monkeys swinging by hand and foot and tail from the creepers that, like giant serpents, twined round the trees and festooned the arches of the forest. He had trudged along under those tree-arches and across the plain, mile after mile for month after month, homeless and lonely, yet happy in every fresh strange sight that met him. He was often footsore and with clothes torn to shreds by the " wait-a-bit " thorns of the desert. He reveled in the sheer joy of walking, that toned his body to splendid trim and strengthened his muscles till they were like steel cable in their tireless strength. Again and again he had been in desperate peril from savage beasts and from wild men, who had always hated all people beyond their own tribe till they looked in his brave eyes. Nothing could stop the Pathfinder of Africa, the hero-scout, till he had ended his quest. Yes, without cheer of sister or of daughter, Yes, without stay of father or of son, — Lone on the land and homeless on the water — Pass I in patience till my work be done. He roused himself and cast some fresh wood on the fire. As it glowed, then caught and flickered ROUND A FOREST CAMP-FIRE 7 into flame, he opened a tin case and took from it a leather-bound book. Then he sat down again, and, by the light of the fire, read in the book. When he had read, this Hero-Pathfinder knelt down, as he always did when speaking with the Father for whom he was opening the path into Africa. Then he, too, rolled himself up in his camp- blanket and slept, while the camp-fire, gleaming in the dark like a great eye, frightened away the wild beasts that prowled and howled in the forest. The Makololo had told his companions around the camp-fire the legends of the mighty men of their tribe. The world has no greater hero than this dauntless and chivalrous pathfinder. We, too, are going to sit round our camp-fire and hear the story of this fearless scout on- his perilous and heroic quest. CHAPTER I THE BOY IN THE MILL A poor knight, Balin, called unto her and said, Damosel, I pray you suffer me as well to assay (to pull the sword out of the sheath) ; though I be so poorly clothed meseemeth in my heart to speed right well. The Dam.osel be- held the knight, but because of his poor clothes she thought he should be of no worship. Ah! fair Damosel, said Balin, worthi- ness and good qualities and good deeds are not only in clothes, but manhood and worship is hid within man's person, and many a wor- shipful knight is not known unto all people. Then Balin took the sword and drew it out easily. Malory, Le Morte U Arthur, Book ii, Ch. xi. 1 RUINS OF THE MILL AT BLANTYRE, WHERE LIVINGSTONE \VORKEI> AS A BOY CHAPTER I THE BOY IN THE MILL It was a wintry night in a village called Blantyre, in Lanarkshire, Scotland. The roar of water filled the darkness, as the River Clyde poured over the breakwater which guided a part of the swollen stream into the race that drove the machinery of the cotton-mill on its left bank. The river rolled on, under the blinking windows of the houses where the work-people lived, on its way toward Glasgow and the sea. Behind one of those windows, in a cozy little room, a group of boys and girls clustered round an old Highlander, their grandfather — the youngest on his knee. It was almost time for them to be in bed, but they clamored for a story. II 12 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER '' Tell us about great-grandfather and the fight," they cried. The father, Neil Livingstone, quietly reading a book, looked up as the children eagerly waited for the reply. *' Yes, tell the bairns," said their mother, Agnes, who, sitting at the fireside, with candle on the table, busy . . . wi' her needle and her shears, Gar'd auld claes look amaist as weel 's the new.^ The grandfather then started to tell for the fortieth time the tale of his father at Culloden. He told them — proudly, but sadly — how his father, fighting on the side of the ancient line of kings — had swung his deadly claymore in defense of Prince Charlie, and had helped to win one battle after another in the Highlands. But at last on Culloden Moor, one spring morning, the army of King George in all its force broke the ranks and spirit of the wild Highlanders, and slew these children's brave great-grandfather, who preferred death to flight. The mother would then tell them, with a smile and a shake of her head at their father, that her 1 Made old clothes look almost as good as new. Burns, "The Cotter's Saturday Night." When David Livingstone was in Africa he used to repeat this poem to himself to call back the picture of what his old home in Scotland was like. THE BOY IN THE MILL 13 grandfather was on the other side from his grand- father in the fierce struggle that made Scotland wretched in the old days. " Your father's people fought and harried my people," she would tell them, " but now we are all one family." So the children would sit around her and gaze into her face, which they ahvays believed was the most beautiful in the world. Then Mother would tell them about when she was a girl and the days long before that, when her grandfather was a young man. " Your great-grandfather's name," she would tell them, '' was Gavin Hunter, and he lived in the ' cruel, killing times ' of the Covenanters. These people, because they wished to be free to worship God in the way they thought best, were driven out on to the moors and the wild hills, and were killed or thrown into prison. They came together on those high moorlands, 'mang the heather, and often with snow on the ground and their hair blown in the wintry wind. " There they read and spoke and prayed as they worshiped God. Sometimes as they did so one of them, placed on the lookout, would see dragoons on horseback galloping across the brown or purple heather, who would charge among them, killing or carrying off to prison both men and women. That will never happen again in Scotland." 14 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER Sometimes, but not very often, the father would tell the children of their two uncles who, far away in Spain, had fought in the battles of Britain, and how the great battle of Waterloo had ended the fight '' two years after our little Davie was born." In the village it was thought a very wonderful thing that some of their very own people should have been in that war. How surprised they would have been to know that this boy Davie, now work- ing in their own cotton-mill, would, when he grew up, do alone mighty feats that would make more difference to the world than all the battles in which his uncles fought in Spain! Then grandfather would tell them how, in the rocky island of Ulva, out where the great Atlantic rollers boom and break on the rugged coasts of the Hebrides, he and his father and grandfathers for centuries had lived and farmed. Among the children in the little home (for there were three boys and two girls) the one who was best at games and liveliest at the table was David. He was born on March 19, 18 13. He had beau- tiful blue-gray eyes like his mother — but, unlike her, he had a very strong, healthy body. His father, Neil Livingstone, earned his living by selling tea. He was also a Sunday-school teacher, and was so fond of books that he was always reading in the evenings at home. David and his brothers and sisters would play THE BOY IN THE MILL 15 in the summer-time in the fields among " the happy hills of hay." And at the different times of year they played such games as " rounders," the old form of baseball, '' smugglers," " hide-and-seek," and '* bools," as marbles are called in Scotland. The father used to shut the door soon after sunset, and made a rule that all his children must be home from play before the door was closed. One evening, after it was bolted, little David, who had forgotten how late it was because he was enjoying his play so much, came home and found the door barred. He did not cry nor hammer at the door, but getting a piece of bread from a neighbor, sat down to go to sleep for the night on the doorstep. So when his mother began to look anxiously for David, she found him there. The day came when David grew to be ten years old. His father and mother were quite poor, so, at that early age, little David started the journeys of his life by buttoning up his jacket, putting on his Scotch bonnet, and trudging off in the gray dawn, to earn his living at the Blantyre cotton-mill, a boy not more than ten years old working among big, grown men. When David reached the mill each day at six in the morning, he went to the cotton-spinning frame that he had to watch. It had great whirling reels of cotton with the thread stretching from one part i6 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER of the machine to the other. Every now and then the cotton-threads would break, and David's work was to seize hold of the two ends of the cotton and tie them together again. This was a simple piece of work, and it was not very exciting, going on from six in the morning till eight at night. Few men have now so long a working day. David's brain itself was like a busy machine spinning threads. The work of his head was as thorough as that of his fingers. He never left any loose broken ends in his thought-threads. Those that he started when he was ten stretched on as he grew up and went with him into far lands. To give his brain some thread to work upon, he took a book with him when he went to the mill and propped it upon the top of the spinning-frame. As he walked from one end of the frame to the other he would snatch a moment to read a sentence, or take a look at, say, the Latin feminine first declension, and then think over it as he worked. You can imagine him at his work saying to himself mensa (a table), menscc, nieiisce, mensam, and so on; or amo, anias, amat, as he learned his Latin by heart. For he had bought a Latin grammar at a bookshop in Blantyre with a part of his very first week's wages. The rest of these wages he gave to his mother. When he had finished his day's work at the mill, he went at eight o'clock at night to school to work at his books with a teacher. Even after that "he bought a latin grammar with a part of his first week's wages" THE BOY IN THE MILL 17 he would sit at home glued to the book that he was reading, until his mother would jump up, some- times as late as midnight, shut up his books, blow out his candle, and pack him off to bed. On a holiday David with his brothers would go off on a long scouting ramble, clambering over rocks along the river bank to search for ferns and mosses, roaming over the fields and hillsides looking for beetles and butterflies, jumping down into quarries, collecting shells, or strolling along the riverside, bathing or fishing. One day when they had fished for quite a long time David caught a salmon. It was against the law to keep it. But he could not bring himself to throw it back into the river. So he slipped it down the leg of his brother Charlie's trousers. The vil- lagers of Blantyre were very sympathetic with the boy as he passed with his poor, swollen leg ! David and his brothers in this way enjoyed scouting all over the hills and valleys, streams and woods around Blantyre. The rambles helped to make him strong and able to walk a long way without getting tired. When he was eighteen years old his master took him away from the " piecing " work of joining the ends of broken thread and raised him to the full position of a spinner. This was very much harder work, but it was well-paid work, and he wanted to earn more money because he had begun to weave his i8 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER threads into a plan — a most difficult and fascinating plan. He had made up his mind to obey his great Hero- Leader and sail away to a far-off land on a won- derful quest. CHAPTER II THE SMOKE OF A THOUSAND VILLAGES Before a cross saw they a knight armed all in white. He said: Galahad, sir, ye have been long enough with your father. . . . Go where adventures shall lead thee in quest of the Holy Grail. Then he went to his father and kissed him sweetly, and said: Fair sweet father, I wot not when I shall see you more till I see the body of Jesu Christ. Malory, Le Morte D' Arthur, Book xvii, Ch. xiv. CHAPTER II THE SMOKE OF A THOUSAND VILLAGES A BOY or a girl, rambling with friends, jumping ditches and climbing trees, walking to school or work, has many more thoughts than grown- up people guess. ]\Iany of us have day-dreams — we im- agine ourselves to be pirates or nurses, princesses or railway conductors, explor- ers, or damsels in distress being res- cued by knights in shining armor. We wonder what we shall be when we grow up. While David was spinning cotton at the mill his busy brain was spinning wonder-threads, and weaving A STEAMER ON THE CLYDE IN LIV- INGSTONE'S DAY 21 22 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER from them a magic carpet that carried him over oceans and many strange lands. This wishing-carpet carried him in imagination to wonderful places. Some of them never, never were, nor ever will be. Other journeys made him the king of castles-in-the-air — all make-believe and magic. But the magic travel that he loved most and enjoyed oftenest was across Europe and Persia, the Himalayas and Burma, to the country of the '' Celestials," the yellow people who thought their land was the middle kingdom of the world — the Chinese. David had heard of a brave man with the strange name of Gutzlaff. Gutzlaff went to these yellow people, dressed like them in Chinese clothes, gave them books to read, healed the bodies of those who were sick or wounded, while he told them the story of the love of Jesus. So Gutzlaff, the doctor mis- sionary in China, became the hero of David, the boy in Scotland, now growing to be a young man as he worked at his spinning-frame. If David had been told by some wizard, ^' Ask what you would most of all wish in the world, and you shall have it," he would certainly have answered quite quickly, " To go to China and work with Dr. Gutzlaff and be like him." David Livingstone had already made a discovery. He found that Gutzlaff himself had a Hero, who had come to people as a healer and a missionary. SMOKE OF A THOUSAND VILLAGES 27, and who had led Gutzlaff out to China. David had been taught all about this great Physician. He had learned to say his name, even when a little boy, as he knelt at night by his mother's knee to speak to Jesus in his evening prayers. Now that he had become an older boy, soon to be a young man, David felt that the finest thing in the whole world for him was to follow in the same way and be a medical missionary. He said to himself : " The great God had an only Son, and he was sent to earth as a missionary physician. It is something to be a follower in the w^ake of a great teacher and the only model missionary that ever appeared among men." That was David's quest — that was his plan. But how could he, the spinner-youth, whose father and mother were poor, be what he wished ? Money was needed; for to be a physician meant passing through years of training. There was no good fairy to wave a wand and make everything come as he wished. David saw that he must be his own wizard. We shall see how he made his good wish come true. When he had made up his mind to go out to the strange far-off land to tell the story of the good Physician to those people who had never heard it, he did not at once tell everybody. He just talked about it with his father and mother and his minister. All three were glad. His mother's shining eyes 24 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER would show the pain and pride that mothers feel when their sons go far away from home for the first time to face perils. It was just as brave of her to be glad to give up her son as it was of him to set his face toward so great an adventure. Around the fire in the house at Blantyre, David talked over his plans with his father and mother. ^' I will work at the spinning all through the summer," he said, " and, if I save my wages care- fully, that will give me enough money to keep my- self in Glasgow in the winter, while I go to the lectures." One winter's day, when the snow lay white and crisp on the fields and hedges, Neil Livingstone, the father, and his son David left their Blantyre home and trudged along the frosty road to Glasgow. They walked together along the seven miles of road, sometimes silent, sometimes talking of how David would live as a student or of the price he must pay for the lodgings which they were now going to find. They found very cheap lodgings after much trudging and knocking at many doors, and the father walked back home leaving his young son alone. The next day David went out and paid the £i2 ^ that he had saved up as fees for the lectures, and at night wrote to one of his friends saying how very lonely he felt now his father had gone. But he 1 Nearly $60. SMOKE OF A THOUSAND VILLAGES 25 said, " I must put a stout heart to a stey brae." ^ One day the young student David stood in Glas- gow with a letter in his hand addressed to the London Missionary Society. In that letter he had written offering himself to the society for service in the foreign field. He posted it, and the answer came asking hiri to go up to London to see the directors. What excitement for the young student as for the first time, in 1838, he walked the streets of London and saw the wonderful sights ! He went on one of those days into the stately Abbey Church at Westminster, where great kings and knights and saints — the heroes of Britain — lie buried. He thought as he gazed at the many- colored windows and the marble monuments how splendid it would be to have done such deeds as theirs. He did not know, nor would any one have imagined, watching the dark-haired, sturdy-looking student as he stood there in the Abbey nave, that one day the whole vast place would be thronged in every corner with the greatest men in the land, while the world would mourn for Livingstone him- self, as his body was carried there to its last rest under that very roof. Livingstone was told by the directors of the London Missionary Society that they wished him to go through a course of training at a place called 1 A stiff hill. 26 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER Chipping Ongar, near London, and that if he went through that course well they would accept him as a missionary. While there he had the following little adventure, which showed the pluck which was afterwards to carry him over thousands of miles of land and water, through marsh and forest, desert and tempest. One foggy morning in November, before the sun had risen, he left the house at Ongar to walk all the way to London to see one of his father's rela- tives. In the dense mist and the pitchy darkness he left the road and fell into the ditch, which soiled his clothes. Picking himself up he started again to go on with his walk of twenty-seven miles to London. When he got there his relative took him about the streets to see the sights. Later in the day Livingstone, having already walked well over thirty miles, started to trudge the twenty-seven miles back to Ongar. He had not gone far on the Great North Road when he dis- covered on the roadside, near Edmonton, a lady lying faint. She had been thrown out of a gig as she drove along, and was stunned by the fall. With help Livingstone carried her to a house close by, he examined her as a doctor, and, already more than tired out, he restarted on his walk. Some miles farther on he missed his way in the darkness. Hardly able to drag one foot after the other, his whole being cried out for sleep, but he SMOKE OF A THOUSAND VILLAGES 27 knew he dare not lie down on the roadside on that raw November night. He staggered on, found a direction post, cHmbed it as if it were a tree, and by the hght of the stars managed to read the names on it and get back to the right road. He reached Ongar again at midnight, twenty-one hours after he had started, having walked sixty miles. He was dead tired, and as white as a sheet. After taking a basin of bread and milk made by his fellow student, who helped him into bed, he slept without moving for twelve hours. While at Ongar, Livingstone used to go for ram- bles with a boy called Isaac Taylor, who wrote, forty years later : " I remember his step, the characteristic forward- tread, firm, simple, resolute, neither fast nor slow, no hurry and no dawdle, but which evidently meant getting there." As another man who knew him at that time said, '' Fire, water, stone wall would not stop Living- stone." Suddenly, however, his path seemed to be stopped as by '' fire, water, and stone wall." At the very time he was ready to start, a horrible war broke out in China, the land to which he w^as to go. What should he do? At a missionary meeting he heard, and he after- wards met, a mighty man, tall and strong, with great flowing beard, firm face, and kindly piercing ^8 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER eyes-^Robert Moffat. Moffat had come back from the broad plains and hills of Africa — Africa, the vastest and most mysterious country on the earth, its heart then absolutely unknown. People used to think that the interior of Africa was a desert. And the African maps were one big blank in the middle, with no towns or mountains or rivers to learn about. In fact, in the old time, Geographers in Afric maps With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er unhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns, Moffat, speaking of Africa, said to Livingstone: " There is a vast plain to the north where I have sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been." Livingstone replied : " I will go at once to Africa." The directors of the London Missionary Society agreed. He traveled from London through the November days to Scotland — to Blantyre — home. He could spend only one night there before he sailed. " Let us sit up all night," said David. " No," said his mother, who had so often made him as a boy close his books at midnight and go to Led, " you must rest." At five o'clock on that next morning, November "ON THE BROOMIELAW QUAY FATHER AND SON SAID GOOD-BY" SMOKE OF A THOUSAND VILLAGES 29. 17, 1840, the family got up. His mother put the kettle on the fire and made coffee. David took the Book and read in the 121st Psalm, to cheer his mother and father as they would be thinking of him in Africa: The sun shall not smite thee by day, Nor the moon by night. . . . The Lord shall preserve thy going out and th)'' coming in From this time forth, and even for evermore. His sisters and his mother kissed him. His father, dressed in his best, started out and walked all the way to Glasgow with David. On the Broomielaw quay father and son said good-by. The father turned back to Blantyre: the son walked firmly up the gangway on board ship. They never saw each other again. CHAPTER III UNDER THE LION'S PAW When she saw Sir Percivale she said: Who brought you in this wilderness where ye be never like to pass hence, for ye shall die here of hunger? Damosel, said Sir Percivale, I serve Christ, the best Man in the world, and in his service he will not suffer me to die, for who that knocketh shall enter, and who that asketh shall have, and who that seeketh him he hideth not. Malory, Le Morte D' Arthur^ Book xiv, Ch. viii. A BECHUANA VILLAGE, SOUTH AFRICA CHAPTER III UNDER THE LION'S PAW It was midnight on board the George. The moon hung high in the clear sky over the tropical sea. The long roll of the Atlantic Ocean made the ship's masts swing to and fro across the moon's face. A cool night-breeze after the blazing heat of the day gave much gladness to two men who sat be- fore some strange-looking instruments. One was the master of the George, Captain Donaldson; the other was David Livingstone. David, who was like any boy for asking questions of captains, was find- ing out from Captain Donaldson how to work out exactly where his ship was on the pathless ocean, by looking at the moon and stars by means of those curious brass instruments and then working out sums. 33 34 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER " But do you need to know all this ? You are not going to be a sailor," Captain Donaldson might say to Livingstone, '' you are going to Africa to be a missionary — a man with a house and a garden and a church. The Africans with whom you live will tell you how to find your way." To such a question you can imagine Livingstone replying : " Moffat told me of a great plain where he saw the smoke of a thousand villages and no white man had been there — and north of that is desert, and north of the desert no man knows. It may be that I shall go where no white man has gone. I should be in that trackless desert and in the forest as a ship in the pathless sea, unless I know how to tell my path with such instruments as these — and those stars." So they sailed on always southward across the equator, Livingstone learning as he w^ent. " Algoa," cried the sailors on the George as the ship, after calling at Cape Town and rounding the Cape of Good Hope, came in view of Algoa Bay, where the Atlantic ends and the Indian Ocean be- gins. Here Livingstone landed and started inland. For three months he had rolled in the ship on the ocean. Now for seven hundred miles he was to jolt over the African veldt, in a great ox- wagon, or to ride on horseback. UNDER THE LION'S PAW 35 He enjoyed it all like a boy going on his first camping holiday, though it was full of unexpected difficulties and provoking accidents. The creaking wagon, drawn by a long team of great oxen, toiled up the highlands of South Africa, over rough mountains, where often they could hardly move along, and down to the Orange river. In the ford there the great wagon stuck fast; the oxen got into disorder, some with their heads to the wagon where their tails ought to have been, and others twisting and rolling as though they wanted to turn the wagon upside down. At last, after much shouting and cracking of whips, they straightened out, started again, and toiled up the opposite bank of the river. Sometimes they had to urge the tired oxen on to do an extra hour's hard pulling. For, whatever happened, they must trek each day across the rocky veldt far enough to reach some stream or water-pit. At last one would shout '' A vlei " (a large water pool), and the thirsty oxen w^ould hurry on as they sniffed the water. Then the order was given to outspan and go into camp for the night. The men rushed to the oxen to unyoke them. One went off among the bushes in search of dry wood, while another started a small fire on which the wood was thrown. The blaze leaped up and licked with its flame the great kettle of water which was slung over it. A piece of one 36 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER of the springboks (antelopes) that had been shot during the day was hung over the red, glowing sticks of the fire, and in less than half an hour, as the sun set and the cold African night followed the blazing day, the travelers were sipping hot coffee and quite ready for their evening meal. Yarns were told around the camp-fire, with talk of the adventures of the day that had gone and the plans for to-morrow; till, tired and sleepy, Living- stone and his companions lay down for the night — he on the kartel (bed) in the wagon and the men in their blankets on the ground. Early in the cool morning, after a hot pannikin (cup) of delicious coffee, the oxen were inspanned and the wagon rolled onward. For four or five hours the oxen would tug at the yokes, till, when the sun blazed in mid-sky, they all stopped for a rest. A meal, quickly cooked, was eaten in the shade of the wagon. Then they would start again and creak and jolt across the wide rolling veldt, till the cry " Wa- ter " was again the signal to outspan for the night. At last they rolled along to Kuruman, where Robert Moffat lived when in Africa. At this time he was still at home in England on furlough. Kuruman, once a lonely, bare, and scrubby spot, had been made a pleasant place with fruit trees, vines, and gardens. Two miles away, at the foot of a bare hillside, a fountain of water bursts out of the dry rock, pour- UNDER THE LION'S PAW 37 ing down a rough, narrow valley in a stream which flows through Kuruman. The missionaries had dug a trench the entire distance, to bring the water to their houses and help in watering their gardens. Moffat himself, before he became a missionary, had been a working gardener at High Leigh, in Chesh- ire, and he had used his skill as a gardener to make Kuruman more beautiful than ever. Livingstone only gave his tired oxen just suf- ficient time to rest after their tramp of seven hun- dred miles to Kuruman, which was then the pioneer station of the London Missionary Society in Africa. He could not get out of his mind '' the plain of a thousand villages." The Pathfinder wished to find a place for settling two hundred and fifty miles farther north than any missionary had ever worked. This was the first journey in which he had the experience of eating the tough flesh of the rhinoceros for supper. One morning on this journey, Livingstone, hav- ing left a large village, went some twelve miles on his day's course. He stopped the oxen for rest, and, looking back, saw a little African girl about eleven years old run up and sit down right under- neath the wagon. She had no father or mother or sisters, and had been taken by another family to be sold as a wife when she should grow old enough. She hated being a little slave, and had seen the strong, kind face of Dr. Livingstone as he had 38 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER healed men in the village where she lived. She had run away to him, and asked him to protect her. The missionary-doctor-traveler gave her some food, and was glad to see her happier. But soon he heard her sobbing as though her heart would break. A man had come after her with a gun. She snatched off her beads and held them out to the man, begging him to take them and go away ; while a young native convert, named Pomare, jumped up to help defend her. He was the son of a chief, and soon made the man with the gun go back home again. Livingstone took the little girl and hid her right away in the most secret corner of his wagon. And he said, "' Though fifty men came for her they would not have got her." The barbarous tribes who lived in the part of Africa where Livingstone was now traveling called themselves — like the boy scout patrols — by the names of animals. A scout may belong, say, to the Wolf Patrol. The. people at Lepelole, where Livingstone went from Kuruman, called themselves the Bakwena,^ or the People of the Crocodile. Chief Bubi ruled over them. Livingstone stayed in their village for six months without seeing any man who could speak English. 1 You will see other names in this chapter that begin with Ba. Ba always means people ; for example, Ba-kwena means People of the Crocodile. UNDER THE LION'S PAW 39 In this way he learned the language of the Bakwena perfectly, and got to know all about their lives in their huts. He saw how much the hard-working women had to do while the men were out hunting, and that they thought it shameful for even girls to cry. When he was taking a thorn out of a girl's foot, her mother said, " Now, you are a woman, and a woman does not cry." He saw the plump, brown, curly-headed younger ones tumbling and rolling in the sand at their play; or sitting round playing cat's-cradle, or out among the bushes setting bird-traps. The Bakwena were brave, but they were also cruel. He saw how much happier both the children and grown-up people would be if they would stop the cruel fighting of one tribe with another. They all lived in terror of the power of the witch- doctors. The '' doctors " were supposed to be able to smell out witchcraft, and could have any one whom they disliked killed by saying that he had bewitched some of the chief's cattle that had died. Livingstone saw that the best way to get them to give up fighting and to free them from the fear of the witch-doctor and of demons was to teach them that there was one Father — God, who wished them to be brothers. This village of Lepelole was not very far from the great Kalahari desert. Though there was a stream near the village they had very little rain. 40 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER The Bakwena witch-doctor, who called himself a rain-maker, tried to make the rain come — but he could not. Livingstone told the chief that he would bring water to their gardens. They had only one spade — and that was without a handle; but Livingstone and the men — including the rain-doctor! — all set to work and dug out a little canal, through which the water ran from the stream in and out among the gardens. Then the vegetables all began to grow. The witch-doctor laughed very much at the way the " foreigner's " cleverness had done what his own magic could not work. When Livingstone had dug the canal for the People of the Crocodile and had built a part of a new house, he took a long trip still farther north, across a part of the Kalahari desert. One day he walked into the village of a tribe, the Bakaa. He was told to be careful, for they had just murdered a traveling trader. Yet quite fear- lessly Livingstone went among these men, sat down with them, and ate part of their porridge, and then calmly lay down and slept in the very presence of these murderers. They did not lay a hand on him. As he traveled on this journey, Livingstone's ox-wagon was often besieged by blind, lame, and sick people asking the great, white doctor to heal them. Some had come over one hundred miles to be healed. Livingstone got his great power over UNDER THE LION'S PAW 41 the lives of the Africans, not by kicks or whips, as many white men have tried to do, but by being brave in danger, kind to them in sickness, and laugh- ing with them as he taught them to water their gardens, yet very firm and serious when he told them of the badness of their lives and the way that would lead them to be stronger and purer people. It made them mind, also, when they found how he could walk, ride, shoot game, and swim as well as and often better than themselves. One day he was trudging along with his black companions on this trip among the tribes on the edge of the Kala- hari desert. They were walking because the oxen were ill. He heard one of the men say to the others quietly : ''He is not strong; he is quite slim, and only looks stout because he puts himself into those bags^ He will soon give out." This roused Livingstone's Highland blood. All the old scouting walks on the Scottish hills helped him now, for he was able to walk the men at the top of their speed for day after day up the great hills and round the valleys of the Bakaa mountains, till his African companions marveled and begged to be allowed to go more slowly. While Livingstone was wandering among these tribes, a cruel and powerful African chief drove his old friends, the People of the Crocodile, right away from Lepelole, where, you remember, he had started 42 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER his mission house and dug his canal. He made up his mind that he must go to another people, the Bakhatla, or the People of the Monkey. When Livingstone asked the Bakhatla chief if he would like him to come and be his missionary, he threw up his hands in delight, saying: *' Oh, I shall dance if you do; I shall collect all my people to hoe a garden for you! " Before he settled down in the village of this chief, Livingstone took another journey, and traveled four hundred miles, riding, for the first time, on the back of a great ox. The skin of the pack-ox is very loose, and rolls about. The ox also has very long horns, which, when it swings its head to knock away the flies, is apt to punch into the waist of the rider. At night he would have his ox tied up, and sit with the people around the village fire listening to the hero-legends of the Africans. Then he too would tell the true story of his own Hero, the story of Jesus in Bethlehem and Galilee and upon the cross. One day, as he was walking down a steep pass among the mountains, he was so taken up with answering the questions which his African com- panions asked him that he stumbled and broke his finger against the rock. Some days later, when the finger was getting better, he was awakened in the middle of the night by the terrific roar of a lion. UNDER THE LION'S PAW 43 Looking out, he seized his revolver and fired it at the great beast. The Hon fled, but the recoil of the revolver broke Livingstone's finger again. His na- tive companions, seeing the blood flowing, said : " You have hurt yourself, but you have saved us. From this time we will be only yours." When Livingstone returned from this journey, he went with three English hunters to live, as he had promised, among the People of the Monkey. These Bakhatla lived among rivers and mountains, a fortnight's travel north of Kuruman. The place was called Mabotsa, which means '' marriage feast." It was in a lovely valley, with a semicircle of big hills behind. The night was often made terrible at ]\Iabotsa by the roar of lions, sounding among the hills like thunder. Livingstone was teaching the Bakhatla to dig canals for their gardens, when the work was stopped by the ferocious attacks of these lions. One of them had leaped among the herds in the open day, and had killed some cows. The excited and terrified villagers of Mabotsa gathered in groups to talk about the extraordinary thing. '' We are bewitched," they said ; '' who ever saw the lion, the lord of the night, kill our cattle by day?" They were so terrified that, although they marched out to kill the lions, they went shaking with fear. And, as cowards never conquer, so the !Ma- botsa people came back with not a single slain lion. 44 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER They were ashamed, yet trembled at the thought of trying again to kill the lions. Some days passed, and once more a lion, roaring with rage, sprang among the sheep, and slew nine in broad daylight on the hill opposite Livingstone's house. Livingstone was named David, after the shep- herd-boy who smote the lion that had done harm among his herds. He now lived up to the name. He knew that, if this one lion were killed, the rest would leave that part of the country. The lions were on a little hill, covered with trees. The People of the Monkey closed round this hill. Livingstone and a native schoolmaster, named Mebahve, waited with guns. They saw one of the lions sitting on a piece of rock. Mebalwe fired. The ball struck the rock, and the lion " bit at the spot struck, as a dog bites at a stick or stone thrown at him." Then leaping away, it broke through the circle of men and escaped unhurt. Two other lions escaped in this way. The Bakhatla, believing that they were bewitched, feared to throw their spears. So the people all started to go home. " In going round the end of the hill, however," Livingstone tells us, '' I saw one of the beasts sitting on a piece of rock as before, but this time he had a little bush in front. Being about thirty yards off, I took a good aim at his body through the bush, and fired both barrels into it. " The men then called out, ' He is shot ! he is HE CAUGHT MY SHOULDER AS HF. SPRANG UNDER THE LION'S PAW 45 shot!' ... I saw a lion's tail erected in anger behind the bush, and, turning to the people, said, ' Stop a little till I load again.' When in the act of ramming down the bullet, I heard a shout. Starting and looking half round, I saw the lion just in the act of springing upon me. I was upon a little height; he caught my shoulder as he sprang, and we both came to the ground below together. ^' Growling horribly close to my ear, he shook me as a terrier does a rat. The shock produced a stupor similar to that which seems to be felt by a mouse after the first shake of a cat. It caused a sort of dreaminess, in which there was no sense of pain, nor feeling of terror. '' Turning round to relieve myself of the weight, as he had one paw on the back of my head, I saw his eyes directed to Mebalwe, who was trying to shoot him, at a distance of ten or fifteen yards. His gun missed fire in both barrels; the lion im- mediately left me, and, attacking Mebalwe, bit his thigh. Another man, whose life I had saved before, after he had been tossed by a buffalo, attempted to spear the lion while he was biting Mebalwe. He left Mebalwe, and caught this man by the shoulder, but at that moment the bullets he had received took effect, and he fell down dead." The bone at the top of Livingstone's left arm was crunched into splinters, and there were eleven tooth- marks on his arm. The People of the Monkey 46 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER said that this was the largest Hon they had ever seen. They thought he had been charmed by a witch-doctor of another tribe, so that he could kill them. So they built a *eat bonfire over him to burn out the charm. CHAPTER IV THE QUEEN OF THE WAGON Right so departed Sir Launcelot with the gentlewoman and rode until he came into a forest and into a great valley. Malory, Le Morte U Arthur^ Book xiii, Ch. i. Teacher, tender, comrade, wife, A fellow-farer true through life, Heart-whole and soul-free, The august father gave to me. Robert Louis Stevenson. CHAPTER IV THE QUEEN OF THE WAGON All trembling with fear, a crowd of shining, naked Httle brown boys and girls came for the first time to school. They were afraid because they had been told by their mothers that the white man would bite them. The mothers were wrong, for the schoolmaster was as kind as he was strong. The school was at Ma- botsa, and the master was Livingstone. So the little brown brothers and sisters, with wide wondering eyes rolling with fright and curiosity, tried to hide behind one another when they saw their white schoolmaster with his wounded arm. The first day they would not have come to school, but the Bakhatla chief and Mebalwe had said that 49 AN AFRICAN VILLAGE STOCKADE 50 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER they must. The next day they wanted to come because they liked it. There were no desks, no ink-v/ells and no pic- tures. All the earth was a playground; but the boldest boy would not go far into the woods. For however nice it is to read of lion adventures, or see lions at the zoo, it is not so pleasant to know that one may be lurking unseen in a thicket ten yards away, crouching ready to spring, and with no bars between you and him. There was no lady at the school to be the teacher of the girls. One was needed, and this is how the lady teacher came. While his arm was healing, Livingstone traveled back to Kuruman and went one hundred and fifty miles farther to meet Robert Moffat, who was coming back from England to his work as a mis- sionary at Kuruman. When Livingstone rode up to the wagon, he saw, beside Mrs. Moffat, Mary, her eldest daughter. David and Mary soon began to love one another, and under the great almond tree at Kuruman which still throws out its blossoms, David and Mary plighted troth. They soon were married and went back together to live at Mabotsa — which, you re- member, means '' a marriage feast.'*' There Mary used to teach those little African children in the school. They lived in a little stone and brick house which THE QUEEN OF THE WAGON 51 Livingstone and his helpers had built with their own hands. Livingstone had to do most of the building himself, because the Bakhatla were so used to building little round huts that they could not lay the stones and bricks in straight lines ! He also had to make the bricks himself. The doors and the windows he and his helpers made from the trees standing in the forest. Livingstone says, " Every brick and every stick was put square by my own right hand." He and Mary together had to churn their own butter in a jar, mold their own candles, and make their own soap with the ash of plants, for the nearest store was hundreds of miles away. But they liked difficulties, and Livingstone said that when they made these things all by themselves he felt like Robinson Crusoe. " My wife is maid of all work and I am Jack of all trades," said Livingstone. As the sun in Africa is terribly hot in the middle of the day, they got up early in the morning and were having breakfast by six o'clock. At about eight they went to the school, where they would find men, women, and children waiting to be taught, for not even the grown-up Bakhatla knew how to read or write. School would be over by eleven o'clock, when Livingstone would dig in the garden or do some carpentry. Sometimes he worked with ham- mer and anvil as a blacksmith, making some tool 52 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER or mending a kitchen kettle for his wife who was at work in the house. After dinner and an hour's rest in the hottest part of the day, Mary went off to her school, where she would find a hundred children ready to cluster round her and be taught; — for they now loved her and the school very much. She would also teach the older girls how to sew. In the afternoon and evening Livingstone would be a doctor to those who were sick. As soon as the milking of the cows was over he would gather the men and women together and hold a service, under the stars, to worship God and speak about his love. Another missionary came to Mabotsa. And, after a while, Livingstone and his wife made up their minds to move still farther on into a place where no one was teaching the people about Jesus. The Bakhatla were very sorry. They came round the wagon when it was all ready to start and begged Livingstone not to leave them. They said : " Do stay, and we will build another house for you." But Livingstone, the Pathfinder, was always a pioneer, eager to push forward. So with Mrs. Liv- ingstone as '' Queen of the Wagon," the oxen strained at the yokes, the driver cracked his whip, and the great wagon rolled on away from the Bakhatla, the People of the Monkey, for forty miles northward. THE QUEEN OF THE WAGON 53 When they came to Chonuane (a village of the People of the Crocodile, the Bakwena) the chief, Sechele, welcomed them with delight. Livingstone at Chonuane built another house, and he and Mary began to teach the children in Sechele's village and to live very much as they had done at Mabotsa. Sechele had never seen any books, nor did he know how to read, but he was so bright that he learned the whole alphabet in one day. He wished all the people in his tribe to become Christians, and suggested to Livingstone that the best way would be for Sechele, as chief, to give orders for them all to be thrashed with great whips made of rhinoceros hide till they said they would worship Jesus. It took Livingstone some time to show Sechele that Jesus wants people to come to him — not through fear, but because they love him. One day these people in Chonuane, all smiles and wide-open eyes, were talking about something that they had never seen before in all their lives. It was a little white baby boy who had come to Mary and David Livingstone. The baby was named Robert, for his grandfather Robert Moffat. And — as the Africans call mothers after their sons — Mrs. Livingstone was called Ma-Robert. All the babies that they had ever seen before were brown, like chocolate. It seemed strange to them that a baby should be white. And if you were to meet an African child who had never seen 54 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER a white boy or girl before, he would be amused at your straight or wavy hair, so different from his nice, short, black curls. One day this white baby and all the other children in Chonuane found themselves being taken out of their homes and carried away by their mothers to new homes. This happened because the sun went on shining day after day, week after week, and month after month with not a drop of rain. It was so hot and blistering that if you put a beetle on the sand in the sun he was scorched to death in a few minutes. The people could not live without water, so Liv- ingstone had made up his mind to move on again, this time to the rocky land at Kolobeng by the side of a river. The very next day after he had told them that he must go, Livingstone found that all the people were rushing about, as busy as ants ; for they had made up their minds that they could not live without Livingstone, their white protector and teacher and friend. So they left their old vil- lage and went with him to build a new one at Kolobeng. The country round Kolobeng was full of wild beasts that even came into the village. Living- stone, standing at the front door of his own house, shot a rhinoceros and a buffalo. Livingstone helped them at Kolobeng to make the water run out of the river in little ditches THE QUEEN OF THE WAGON 55 through their gardens; and he and Ma-Robert taught the children of the natives in a school which Chief Sechele built. One evening, when the work of the day was done, and the people were getting ready for rest, a native came rushing into the village, panting for breath and with terror on his face. He ran to Living- stone and told him breathlessly how a party of hunters about ten miles away in the forest had suddenly been startled by a black rhinoceros. The beast rushed in a fury at the wagon and drove his horn — which can kill even an elephant — into the driver. The messenger had run every step of the way to fetch Dr. Livingstone. He at once started to harness his horse and ride with his medicine to help save the wounded man's life. " No, you must not go," said his friends. " The forest is full of danger; you know that there are the lion, the rhinoceros, and other wild beasts prowl- ing in it for prey at night." Livingstone felt he must — as a follower of Jesus who healed men, — go to help the wounded driver. He rode that night ten miles of perilous journey, at every step of which some beast might have sprung out upon him; and when he reached the spot the wagon had gone, the wounded man was dead, and he had to ride back home through the dark forest. 56 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER Time went on, and two more white babies came to the Httle family at Kolobeng. They kept Ma- Robert company while their father was away on long journeys. Livingstone had heard, already, of a great lake that lay across the Kalahari desert hundreds of miles northward. Chief Sechele had told him that no white man could possibly cross the desert. But Livingstone had made up his mind that the mis- sionaries must go on and on until the whole of mysterious Africa was opened up. Many people said that it was all one enormous desert from the Sahara on the north to the Kalahari on the south. He felt sure that it was not so. Just then a young chief named Lechulatebe, who lived by this unknown lake and had heard of Liv- ingstone, sent messengers right across the desert asking him to come to the lake. The messengers said that Lechulatebe was so great a chief that he made even his cattle-pens of elephant tusks. Livingstone, with two great travelers named Murray and Oswell, who wished to go with him, took ox-wagons and started north, over the wooded hills and down to the dried-up bed of an ancient river. Here the country was flat with thorny trees. Farther on, in a beautiful place of deep wells, they saw many lovely leaping antelopes, chattering monkeys, and cackling guinea-fowl. The land got drier and sandier till they struck THE. QUEEN OF THE WAGON 57 into the desert, where the wheels sank deep into the soft white sand, through which the thirsty oxen could hardly drag the wagons. In this desert coun- try, although there are few wells and no rivers, Livingstone saw great herds of swift-running ante- lopes and flocks of ostriches, while the lion roared in the deep grass and the hyena and the jackal howled under the moon among prickly shrubs. The plants in the desert live by sending roots deep down into the sand to the water underneath. The antelopes feed on the grass and on the wonder- ful big roots — like great turnips, as big as a boy's head, — which grow about two feet under the sur- face and are full of cool and delicious juice. It was evening-time one day on this journey and Livingstone and his party, burning with thirst, had come to a village of the little Bushmen living in the desert. They are a yellowish-brown hunting people, and their language is nearly all clicks. Some travelers, when they have come very thirsty to a Bushman village and can see no wells at all, have ordered the people to give them water. And when the Bushmen said '' We have no water," the travelers have become angry and threatened to kill the Bushmen. This has resulted in the Bush- men firing their little poisoned arrows at the trav- elers and killing them. Now Livingstone could never have done his won- derful feats of travel nor lived through his many 58 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER marvelous adventures if he had behaved in this way. When he reached the Bushman village he sat down quietly with his followers and showed the Bushmen how friendly he was and let them know that he was thirsty. Soon women came to him, bringing great ostrich egg-shells full of water. It had puzzled many people to understand how the Bushwomen got water into these egg-shells when there was no rain and no wells and no river, and how they hid the shells so that no one could find them even if they searched every hut in the village. This is the explanation. Deep down under the ancient dried-up river beds there flows through the sand a slow stream of water. The Bushwomen dig a deep hole, put a bunch of grass at the bottom, stand a hollow reed in the hole, and then fill it up with sand. They then suck the water up the reed (the grass at the bottom filtering it) and pour it into the empty ostrich egg-shells. When a shell is full they plug up the hole with grass, and when they have filled many shells they carry them back to the villages, dig a hole and bury the shells in the cool earth. They would some- times, when strangers were coming, light their vil- lage fire on the earth over the very spot where the water-shells were buried. Livingstone and his friends traveled on, day after THE QUEEN OF THE WAGON 59 day, in the glare of the bright sun in a cloudless sky, often going for days without finding water. They came to no lake, and wondered whether the stories that had been told to them were true. Sud- denly they saw, through a beautiful blue haze, dancing wavelets and the shadow of trees. Oswell, the hunter, threw his hat in the air and cheered; the animals rushed down to drink, but the Bush- woman who was then guiding them laughed. It was all a mirage, made by the dancing rays of the sun on the flat salt-covered sand of the dry desert. The lake was still three hundred miles away! It was not long, however, before they came to a slowly flowing river called the Zouga, with beau- tifully wooded banks. The oxen tugged the wagons along the banks till they came to a strange tribe who never fought their enemies. These Africans lived nearly all the time on the river in canoes, hollowed out of the trunks of single trees with an iron tool. If there was a bend in the tree, so there was in the canoe. They had fires in the canoes, and would sleep in them, saying : " On land you have the lions, serpents, hyenas, enemies — in your canoe in a bank of reeds you are safe." Livingstone liked these men very much, and en- joyed traveling most of the way in a swift canoe instead of in the ox- wagon, which jolted along the bank. As the Africans paddled along, with the 6o LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER waters of the Zouga rippling against the gliding sides of the canoes, they came to another river run- ning from the north into the Zouga. It is called the Tamunak'le. " Whence does that river come ? " asked Living- stone, as they paused and the water dripped from the paddles into the stream. " Oh," said the natives, " it flows from a country full of rivers — so many that no one can tell their number — and full of large trees ! " This answer made Livingstone quite excited. As you know, nearly everybody in England and Amer- ica then believed that most of Africa was sandy desert. But if what these natives said was true, then there was not much desert, but a wonderful forest and mountain country, with millions of people in it. It would be possible for missionaries to go among them in canoes along the many rivers. If Livingstone could find out this he would open the mightiest unknown land in the whole world. It is no wonder that he was excited and enthusiastic. A few days later, on August i, 1849, ^^ey saw the shining waters of Lake Ngami stretching far away beyond their sight. It had never been seen by white men before. Lake Ngami was Living- stone's first great discovery. But his brain was full of what lay beyond even those waters, — the country " full of rivers — so many that no one could tell their number — and full of large trees." THE QUEEN OF THE WAGON 6i Livingstone wanted immediately to go into the country north of the river Zouga. But Chief Lechulatebe, who had wanted him to come as far as the lake, did not want him to go away beyond. He would not help Livingstone, who therefore tried with all his might to bind together a raft in the river on which to cross with his wagon and oxen. But the wood was all rotten and would not make a raft. It gave Livingstone a cold shiver after- wards to find that the river in which he had been working waist-deep for hours was full of crocodiles. He went back across the fringes of the Kalahari desert home to Kolobeng. There was great excite- ment among his children, Robert, Agnes, and Thomas, when he said : '' You must all come with me next time." But we do not know what their mother thought about crossing the thirsty desert as Queen of the Wagon, with three little children. CHAPTER V HOW THE CHILDREN SAW THE LAKE These are the hills, these are the woods, These are my starry solitudes; And there the river by whose brink The roaring lions come to drink. Robert Louis Stevenson. THE CHILDREN CAME IN SIGHT OF THE LAKE WHICH THEIR FATHER HAD DISCOVERED " CHAPTER V HOW THE CHILDREN SAW THE LAKE In our games most of us have been Indian scouts and African explorers. We are like the boy in Robert Louis Stevenson's Land of Story-hooks, who used to crawl All in the dark along the wall, And follow round the forest track Away behind the sofa-back. It would be Splendid if suddenly our sport came true, and we really were African explorers. We can be sure that when the Livingstone children, young Robert, Agnes, and Thomas, saw their father start off exploring with Mr. Oswell, leaving Ma- Robert and themselves at home at Kolobeng, they too would play at being explorers, and w^ould be lions and elephants and father and natives. It was 65 66 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER strange and startling to them when he came back and said: " You too are to be explorers ; we will go all together in the ox-wagon, and we will cross the desert to the great lake." It all came true, for the next 3'ear he packed the three children into the wagon, with Ma-Robert, and they started on one of the most wonderful journeys that boys or girls have ever taken. They would look out of the wagon with wonder as they saw the antelopes galloping away through the bushes and grass, and the little Bushmen with their bows and arrows hunting the game. Their eyes would be dazzled by the sunlight on the yellow sand, and they would be sorry for the oxen as they strained at the yokes, trying to drag the great wagon across the desert. Day after day they went on, and saw as they drew near to the other side the zebras and the buffaloes running up from the wells as the wagons rolled nearer and nearer. At last they reached the great river Zouga, where the children pointed to the dark Bakoba paddling in their tree-trunk canoes, and Robert, as the eldest, wanted to go out on the river in one of them. The elephants, with mighty gurglings and splash- ings, came down to drink at the river. The chil- dren saw them draw the water up their trunks with a snort and then squirt it out in a fountain all over their great bodies, squealing with delight Photo by Bernard R. Turner AFRICAN BOYS HOLDING ELEPHANT TUSKS HOW THE CHILDREN SAW THE LAKE 67 as they felt the cool water splashing and running down their sides. Sometimes Ma-Robert and the children had a shock, when they saw an ox in the team suddenly fall through what looked like solid earth and dis- appear into a pit. These pits were dug by the Ba- koba to catch animals as they came down to drink. If a baby elephant fell into one of these pits his big mother would curl her trunk round him and pull him out. Often the Livingstones had to stop quite a long time in one place while the men cut down the trees in the path of the wagon. Then they had to go round by a way that Dr. Livingstone did not know, because on the banks of the river at certain places was the dreaded tsetse ^ fly, which kills oxen with its bite. At last, with shouts of joy, the children came in sight of the lake which their father had discovered. They were soon paddling and playing in it like ducklings. Livingstone and Ma-Robert stood by, laughing at their ov/n children paddling in their own big lake. Livingstone wished to press farther on, to see the powerful chief of the Makololo, whose name was Sebituane; but two of the children, with others of the party, took fever. He hurried back to the drier, ^The tsetse (tset'-se) fly is a little larger than the house fly, and while its bite does not injure mankind it is fatal to cattle and horses. 68 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER healthier air of the desert, and so home to Kolobeng. There a little baby sister was born, '' a sweet little girl with blue eyes; " but just at that time many of the little African children of Kolobeng were ill, and baby Livingstone caught the sickness and ended her little life when she was six weeks old, a little before Christmas in 1850. The children went again on the strange journey by the desert up to the country of forest and rivers the next April. Air. Oswell, their kind hunter friend, was with them this time, and he went on with his men in advance to dig wells, so that when Ma-Robert got there with her children she would find plenty of water for them. But they came to a part of the desert that was drier than it had been seen before, and there was no water even under the sand. It was so dry and lifeless that for three whole days they did not see a single insect or hear a bird chirp. Their faithful guide, a clever little Bushman named Shobo, lost his way. It would be hard to tell who suffered the most. For four awful days they were absolutely with- out water. One of the servants had spilled the water that had been kept in the wagons. The children moaned and cried with the burning thirst, and Livingstone felt how terrible it was that he had brought them to this suffering. He even wished that the Queen of the Wagon would blame him. HOW THE CHILDREN SAW THE LAKE 69 She did not say a word of blame; but it hurt him all the more to see the tears in her eyes, and to know the fears that filled her heart. On the afternoon of the fifth day one of their men who had gone ahead came back shouting and carrying with him some water from a spring that he had found. The children drank the cool water with gulps of delight, while the mother and father could look into one another's eyes again without seeing the dread that had been there. At last they had gone along the Zouga and up the Tamunak'le, which flows into it from the north. They came to the home of the great Sebituane, head of the Makololo, a warlike chief, who knew how to teach people to love him as well as to make his enemies fear him. Sebituane could run more swiftly than any man in his tribe. Before a battle, in order to make the cowards among his men more brave, he would take up his battle-ax and, feeling its edge with his thumb, shout out : '' Aha ! it is sharp, and whoever turns his back on the enemy will feel its edge." Sebituane became great friends with Livingstone at once. He promised to choose a place where Livingstone could build a house. But in only a few weeks Sebituane was taken ill, and got worse and worse, till it was clear that he could not get better. His last words were to tell them to take Living- 70 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER stone's young son to Maunku — one of Sebituane's wives — to give him some milk. His daughter — Mamochisane — ruled in his place^ and she too was friendly to Livingstone. Livingstone left his wife and children at the village, while he and Mr. Oswell went northeast, through the town of Linyanti, till on August 3, 1 85 1, they found a new, lovely river. It was so broad that when they crossed it the waves " made the canoe roll beautifully." They were so excited and delighted that all they could do was to say to one another, " How glorious ! how magnificent ! how beautiful ! " It was only afterwards that they dis- covered that this river was the great Zambezi, which flows over Victoria Falls out into the Indian Ocean. Livingstone felt he simply must find a path to the east or west coast of Africa along which the mis- sionaries and traders might come into Central Africa. Yet he knew now, as he saw his children taken ill again and again with fever, that he must not keep them traveling in this country. What was he to do? He decided that they must go home to England with their mother for two years, while he found the path to the coast. Then he could settle in some healthy spot, and they could all, he thought, come back again. So he took them back to their old home at Ko- lobeng. Imagine their surprise when they found that all the people, with Chief Sechele, had gone HOW THE CHILDREN SAW THE LAKE 71 away. The Boers had driven them off, shooting at them with guns, so as to stop Livingstone's plans. We must not say hard things about these Boers. There are many Anglo-Saxon people who have been cruel to the Africans. And to-day some of the great-grandchildren of the very Boers who op- posed Livingstone are themselves working hard as missionaries in South Africa. But the things that they did to Livingstone's African friends made it clearer than ever that he must find a way into the heart of Africa farther north where they could not spoil the work. He said: " I will go anywhere, provided it be forward." Dr. Livingstone, Ma-Robert, and the children now turned their faces back toward the Cape. They went to see their grandfather, Robert Moffat, at Kuruman, and then on and on to the very southern tip of Africa at the Cape of Good Hope. There the mother took her four children, Robert and Agnes, Thomas, and the new baby, William Oswell, on a ship which sailed away to England. How their father felt we can guess from this letter to little Agnes, who was then between four and five years old : Cape Tov/n, iSth May, 1852. My dear Agnes : — This is your own little letter. Mamma will read it to you and you will hear her just as if I were 72 LIVIXGSTOXE THE PATHFINDER speaking to you, for the words which I write are those which she will read. I am still at Cape Town. You know you left me there when you all went into the big ship and sailed away. W^ell, I shall leave Cape Town soon. ]\Ia- latsi has gone for the oxen, and then I shall go away back to Sebituane's country, and see Seipone and Meriye, who gave you the beads and fed you with milk and honey. I shall not see you again for a long time, and I am very sorry. I have no Nannie now. I have given you back to Jesus, your Friend — your Papa who is in heaven. He is above you, but he is always near you. When we ask things from him^ that is praying to him ; and if you do or say a naughty thing ask him to pardon you, and bless you, and make you one of his children. Love Jesus much, for he loves you and he came and died for you. Oh, how good Jesus is ! I love him, and I shall love him as long as I live. You must love him too, and you must love your brothers and Mamma, and never tease them or be naughty, for Jesus does not like to see naughtiness. Good-by,. my dear Nannie. D. LIVINGSTONE. CHAPTER VI THE PATHFINDER Then said Sir Bors: It is more than a year and a half that I have not lain ten times where men dwelled, but in wild forests and in moun- tains, but God was ever my comfort. Malory, Le Morte D' Arthur, Book xvii, Ch. xix. I will open a path through the country or — PERISH. Livingstone. THE PROCESSION WINDING ITS WAY ALONG THE PATH CHAPTER VI THE PATHFINDER Livingstone wrote to Ma-Robert as well as to Agnes. He said to his wife : My dearest Mary: — How I miss you now and the dear children! ... I see no face now to be compared with the sunburnt one which has so often greeted me with its kind looks. . . . Take the children all around you and kiss them for me. Tell them I have left them for the love of Jesus, and they must love him too, and avoid sin, for that displeases Jesus. I shall be delighted to hear of you all safe in England. . . . Feeling very lonely, he got into his ox-wagon and started back on the long trail again. When he got to Kuruman he heard from Moffat of the terrible thing that had happened at his home at Kolobeng while he was away. The Boers had come, had shot many of Sechele's people, and had driven the chief away. They had 75 76 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER ruined Livingstone's house, carried away all his furniture for themselves, and had torn up all the books in which he had told the story of his early travels and adventures. Sechele's wife had escaped, with her little baby, and she fled to Kuruman to tell i\Irs. Moffat. " How did you manage to get away without being captured ? " asked ]\Irs. Moffat. Then ]\Iasebele, the wife of Sechele, told of her hairbreadth escape. " I hid,'' she said, " in a cleft in the rock, with this little baby. And the Boers came closer and closer, shooting with their guns. They came till they were on the rock just over my head. I could see the muzzles of the guns above the cleft as they fired. The baby began to scream and I felt sure that they would hear and capture us, but I took off these armlets and gave them to baby to play with. That kept baby quiet and the Boers passed on with- out finding us." Livingstone was very sad and angry when he heard how his friends the People of the Crocodile at Kolobeng had been cruelly treated and robbed of their cattle, and how all his medicines with which he could heal people had been destroyed. But he bravely made jokes about his own house being destroyed and his furniture taken off. He said that it set him free for traveling. He wrote home to his wife : THE PATHFINDER yy " We shall move more easily now that we are lightened of our furniture. They have tal en away our sofa. I never had a good rest on it. Well, they can't have taken away all the stones. We shall have a seat in spite of them, and that too with a merry heart, which doeth good like a medicine. *' The Boers," he said, " have made up their minds to close the country. I am determined to open it. Time will show who will win. " I will open a path through the country, or — PERISH." Soon Livingstone was traveling over the Kala- hari desert again, on another of those hard wagon journeys that he enjoyed so much. He said that they were just one long picnic which all would enjoy who were not too dainty about food and who delighted in the open air. In this '' wild, healthful gipsy life," as he went north, he saw many wonders and had toils and adventures. He saw the flocks of ostriches with black, white, and brown feathers, who, when they were running in terror, took strides fourteen feet long. He heard the ostriches roaring in the day with a sound just like the lions roaring at night. He killed a huge serpent — a python which was twice as long as a man, as thick as a man's leg, and lifted its head five feet high. Again and again lions, with their tawny manes showing in the moonlight, came up close to the y^ LIVIXGSTOXE THE PATHFINDER camp at night, and would roar to frighten the oxen, but were afraid of the camp-fire. At last they reached a broad flowing river, across which the wagons could not go, for they had no raft. But in one wagon was a pontoon — a kind of small boat-raft. So, leaving the wagons, he paddled across to a plain ankle-deep in w^ater and knee-deep in grass. They shot a water-antelope, waded to a group of trees on drier ground and collected wood, made '' a glorious fire," cooked the antelope, and slept in safety. In the morning they climbed, like scouts, to the top of the highest trees. From the tree-tops they saw some islands in the river that looked as though they would make it possible to cross. So they climbed down again and tried to wade to the islands. A rough grass among the reeds cut their hands and clothes as they Avaded through the water. The climbing convolvulus bound the reeds together so that they could only get through by leaning against them till they all went flat. The knees of Livingstone's trousers were cut through, so he tore his handkerchief in two and bound his knees with that. They searched about till they found a spot where a hippopotamus had pushed a way through with his huge head. But the water, in which snakes and otters were swimming, was so deep that no one could walk across. They had to go back, tired out, and THE PATHFINDER 79 they lay down close to the reeds in an old hut, with mosquitoes buzzing and biting. It looked as though Livingstone would have either to turn back or leave his wagons. But he refused, now as always, to give up till he had tried again and again to push through obstacles. In the morn- ing they climbed an ant-hill, about thirty feet high, and saw from it a little tributary of this Chobe river. So they went back for the pontoon, and paddled on it across the deep river. In the middle of the river a huge hippopotamus suddenly came up close to them like a volcanic island. They had passed over him. The wave that he made rocked the pontoon and made it glide quickly away from him. They paddled on from noon till sunset, but no opening could they find in the reeds; when, just before the swift African night came on, they dis- covered, on the north bank, a Makololo village, wath people in it whom Livingstone had met on his last journey. The Makololo looked at him with aston- ished eyes as though they had seen a ghost. They said: " He has dropped among us from the clouds, yet came riding on the back of a hippopotamus. We Makololo thought no one could cross the Chobe without our knowledge, but here he drops among us like a bird." 8o LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER Livingstone was now among good friends. The Makololo paddled him back across the Chobe in canoes, took his wagons to pieces and carried them across on the canoes tied together. They made the oxen swim across the river, *' diving among them more Hke alHgators than men." They then went on to Linyanti, the capital-village of the Makololo. All the six thousand Makololo in Linyanti rushed out to see Livingstone's wagons, for they had never seen such things before. The old herald leaped about with excitement at the sight of Livingstone, and roared at the top of his voice : ''Don't I see the comrade of Sebituane? Don't I see the father of Sekeletu? " Sebituane, the brave and swift-running, had, you remember, died; and Sekeletu, his son, who was only eighteen years old, was chief in his place — as Sekeletu's sister, Mamochisane, did not like being chief. Young Sekeletu began to be very fond of Livingstone, whom he called " My new father." " Your coffee," he said to Livingstone, " tastes nicer than that of the traders, because they like rhy ivory and you like me." One day Livingstone and Sekeletu, riding on oxen, started off from Linyanti, at the head of a long line of Makololo followers. The women and children stood watching the procession winding its way along the curving path. The strange head- dresses of the line of dark figures nodded as they LIVINGSTONE PREACHING TO THE MAKOLOLO 82 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER was displeased with them. So these fierce warriors at once obeyed him and put back the plundered pots and pans and clothes. Livingstone on this journey met some Arab slave- traders. These men would take a whole village — men, women, and children — into slavery. They would handcuff the slaves and tie them together with forked poles fastened to their necks. Hundreds of the people would die on the road, and those who lived would be set to work in plantations under the lash of an overseer. Livingstone hated this slave-trading with a great and burning hatred. He soon began to make it one great aim of his life to sweep slave-trading aw^ay from Africa. He told these Arabs how much better it was to let children grow up to comfort their own mothers than to carry them away and sell them to strange men across the sea. When Livingstone and his friends got back to Linyanti he thought of a daring plan. He wanted to stop these men from making slaves of the Africans, and to end the horrible fighting and killing that he saw going on in the villages among all the African people. His plan for helping to do away with all these evil things was to find a way from the center of Africa, where he now was, out to the coast. Up that new track, he thought, men could come to bring the story of the love of Jesus. Down that THE PATHFINDER 83 road the Africans could carry their ivory tusks, coffee, cotton, and other goods, so that true trade would take the place of the evil slave-trade. So Livingstone the Pathfinder set out once more on his quest. He had come to a decision from which nothing, whether beast, savage men, marsh, forest, fever, or the yearning for home, could turn him : — " I will open a path into the interior or perish/' CHAPTER VII BY CANOE AND FOREST TRACK He was in great peril, and so he laid him down and slept, and took the adventure that God would send him. Malory, Le Morte D' Arthur, Book xvii, Ch. xiii. CHAPTER VII BY CANOE AND FOREST TRACK When Living- stone told Sekeletu that he wished to find a way to the coast, the chief called a picho, which is like the North American Indian powwow, to decide whether they would help him. The chief men of the village gathered round, while Livingstone and Sekeletu sat in the center. " Where is the white doctor taking "the white pelican with his long you .^ askea one BEAK AND GREAT POUCH " qM maU. " Hc Is throwing you away. Your garments already smell of blood." 87 88 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER But the others were in favor of going with '' Nyaka," or '' the doctor," as they called Living- stone. They lent him twenty-seven men to bear the luggage and help him. If Livingstone had been obliged, like most explorers, to pay for all his car- riers, he could never have done his feats of ex- ploring — for he had very little money. But his wonderful power of making the African trust him helped him to get good and faithful bearers — just for love. So Livingstone and his twenty-seven African companions started off on their tremendous path- finding. He left his wagon in charge of the Ma- kololo at Linyanti. One man carried a tin box with some spare clothing in it, another bore his case of medicines, a third his books — one of which was his Bible — and a fourth his magic lantern. Others car- ried his small gipsy-tent, a sheepskin mantle, and a horse-rug, and some of the instruments which, you remember, he learned to use when sailing on the George from Britain. No man ever traveled so perilous and long a journey with so little pro- vision ; but Livingstone believed that '' brains and pluck " were the best traveling baggage. Chief Sekeletu took them as far as the Chobe, a branch of the Zambezi which was full of hippo- potami. Some of the lonely ones, called '' bach- elors," were very ferocious. Livingstone saw a canoe which had been smashed to pieces by one 90 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER " bachelor " hippopotamus, while another chased some of his men, but they escaped. Sekeletu turned back when he saw Livingstone and his men safely on board their canoes. How fond he was of Living- stone is shown by the fact that he lent him his very own canoe. And as they went along the river and called at the villages he found that Sekeletu had sent orders on ahead of them, saying: " Nyaka must not be allowed to become hungry." Their canoes glided swiftly down the Chobe to the place where it joins the great Zambezi. Pad- dling round to the left they worked now against the stream, for the Zambezi flows eastward across Africa, and Livingstone was searching for a way to the west coast. He soon came to a big village of the Makololo, called Sesheke. He stayed there for some days, and often preached to some six hundred of them on the high bank of the river under a camel-thorn tree. At one of these services, Mori- antsane, the chief, seeing some young fellows pre- paring to skin an animal instead of listening, stood up and hurled his staff at their heads to make them attend. After leaving Sesheke, they traveled many days up the Zambezi. We shall first go with them on the canoe for one day, and then hear the story of some of the strange things that happened on the long journey. We rise with Livingstone before five in the BY CANOE AXD FOREST TRACK 91 morning. We are up just before the sun. Over the water the white mist hangs. We hear the sound of crackHng sticks. One of the men has Hghted a wood fire and hung over it a kettle of water. In a few minutes we can smell the coffee that he has made, and all take a drink from the pannikin, or cup. The men quickly load the canoes and soon we take boat for the most pleasant part of the day. Along the river we notice birds of every kind. The tall fishing ibis is sitting on the end of an old tree- stump, shouting " Wa-wa-w^a " as we pass. The little green parrots, with yellow shoulders, shriek and chatter, while the kingfishers flash like light- ning over the water. There in the shallows a tall vermilion flamingo stands gazing down on the little fish and choosing the one that will best suit his taste. As the canoe skims swiftly round a corner, we hear the crocodiles splash from the bank into the water, while the quaint iguana reptiles, which have been sunning themselves on the branches over the stream, drop like stones into the water — but not before the Barotse man in the bow of the canoe has with a swift, sure aim of his light javelin speared one for supper. On our morning's travel we have been watching" all these things : but a man with far keener eyes, than ours has seen all these and a hundred more. 92 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER As he sits there in the canoe scanning the banks, nothing seems to escape Livingstone's bright, fear- less blue-gray eyes. He notes everything from the tall palmyra tree-tops, and the many-colored tangle of creeper and flower, to the kind of soil through which the river runs. He sees, from the color of the water in the river, the soil that it has already drained. He watches the habits of every creature from the huge hippopotamus down to a curious ant-eating insect that stands on its head to attract the ants and wags a feathery tail in which are hidden a pair of tweezers. He reckons the kind of crop that each part of the country could bear. He finds his direction and guides his travel on the vast trackless continent by the stars. And — living for a year among men who are by nature filthy-mouthed, quar- relsome, vain, and violent — he remains clean, strong, and most powerfully peaceful, guiding his walk and that of his wild companions by a book which he has consulted for years, and which is to him the Path- finder's manual — his Bible. As the sun rises higher the men, w^ho have been paddling all the morning, need rest. We land and €at up the remnants of last night's supper, with some biscuits spread with honey taken from the hollow^ of a tree w^here the wild bees hive. At noon, when the heat of the sun is beating down from a blue sky on to the perspiring men, we start again — BY CANOE AND FOREST TRACK 93 for, if we must not waste strength in hurry, we may not waste time by slackness. Looking out from under a great umbrella we again watch the river. We may get drowsy as the afternoon goes on and the steam rises from the tropical Zambezi. The strokes of the men who are paddling now grow slower : they are looking for a place for camp- ing. Tired and sleepy we land at our resting-place, boil the iguana which was speared, and eat our supper. The oxen, which have been trekking through the forest during the day, a little later come into camp. The men swiftly cut down branches and make little sheds by planting forked poles leaning toward one another with one at the top as the '' roof-tree." Then the branches are laid over the forked poles and tied, to the roof-tree with strips of bark, while long grass (as tall as a man) is laid on like thatch to keep out the rain. The sheds are arranged round the camp-fire in a horseshoe, with room for the oxen in the middle. Each shed is closed at the back, but open toward the camp-fire. In an hour it is all done. The men are under cover. We roll into our sleeping-blankets. And as we do so, we see our leader coming round in the clear, white moonlight to look at the sleeping forms of his companions and see that all is safe. He, too^ after writing up his journal and asking his Father 94 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER to protect the camp, creeps into his gipsy-tent and sleeps. Then Mashauana, Livingstone's faithful head boatman, makes his bed at the door of Living- stone's tent, and lies down. The man or beast who harms Livingstone on this journey must do it over the body of Mashauana. In days like that through which we have followed Livingstone the long journey went on, with every day bringing its adventure or difficulty that called out Livingstone's courage and clever inventive resource. They traveled up the Zambezi till its banks turned east. Then they left it and struck westward on to the Kassai river, then northwest across the Kwango river to the Lucalla river, a tributary of the Kwanza, and so — due west — to Loanda — the coast. The journey in the land that Sekeletu governed was not very difficult. But as they got farther on they found that the wonderful conquests of Sekeletu's father made the tribes beyond suspicious of them all. As they got nearer and nearer to the west coast they found that the Portuguese slave- trade had turned the natives into grasping wretches, who not only would refuse food to Livingstone, but would not let him through their country without gifts. '' Alan, ox, gun, or tusk, you must give me," each BY CANOE AND FOREST TRACK 95 chief would say, and threaten that if the gift was not at once forthcoming, Livingstone must go back — or die. '' Man," of course, he absolutely refused to give, for that meant giving a faithful friend into slavery; " ox " he could rarely give, for he had few and those were needed; " gun " he could not spare, — for how then could he get food for his followers ; " tusk " he had, but only a few. These tusks were from Sekeletu to make the beginning of trade between the Makololo of Linyanti and the Portuguese of Loanda. One adventure of this kind happened among the Chibokwe people. They reached the village of Njambi on Saturday, March 4, 1854 — just before Livingstone's forty-first birthday. Wishing to have a restful Sunday, they killed one of their riding oxen for food, and sent some of the food as a present to Njambi, the chief. On Sunday morning' a messenger came from the chief. " The chief," said the messenger impudently, " must have a man, an ox, a gun, powder, some cloth, or a shell. If not, you must go back." Livingstone refused. In the afternoon his men were thrown into great excitement by all the people of Njambi coming and surrounding their encamp- ment, the younger warriors drawing their swords and brandishing them in the face of the traveler with furious shouts. Some pointed their guns at 96 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER Livingstone — nodding to one another, as much as to say, " That is the way we shall do with him." Livingstone sat calmly on his camp-stool, with his double-barreled hunting gun across his knees. " Be seated," he said quietly to the chief, who — probably to his own surprise — found himself obey- ing. " Why do you ask me to pay to walk on the ground of God, our common Father? " said Living- stone. The chief could not answer this, for it was the custom of the African tribes to call the ground — except the gardens — common. But they still pressed him for a payment, and most of all for a man to be given up as a slave. Livingstone would rather have died than do this. He offered a shirt : they asked for more. He added beads and a large handkerchief, but the more he offered the more they demanded. The armed young men rushed round brandishing arms and shouting death. It was a perilous moment. A young man rushed at Livingstone to kill him. Livingstone quickly put the muzzle of his gun to the young man's mouth, — and the youth ran for his life. Livingstone said: *' We will not strike the first blow. If you do so, the guilt of blood is on your head." His men, armed with their hunting javelins, quickly surrounded the chief, Njambi. He, seeing that if his own men fired at Livingstone he himself BY CANOE AND FOREST TRACK 97 would at once be killed by the Makololo, decided on peace. Presents were exchanged, and Livingstone and his party went on. The real blame for all this hateful greed lay, not on the Africans, but on the slave-traders who had accustomed them to receiving a slave from every party that passed through the land. One day Livingstone offered a tribe an ox, as they asked for one in paymicnt for traveling through their land. '' No," they said, " we will not have it. Its tail has been cut and witchcraft medicine put in." This gave Livingstone a good idea, at which his followers roared with laughing. For he cut the tuft off the end of the tail of each of the other oxen — and they never had another request for an ox. He often showed his magic lantern at night and preached about the pictures. One- chief, named Shinte, was eager to see the magic lantern pictures. He gathered together all his people, including his many wives, for the grand sight. Livingstone showed first a picture of Abraham, with uplifted knife, about to sacrifice his son Isaac. The women listened silently while he explained it. But when he moved the slide to put in another, the picture of Abraham with his uplifted dagger moved toward them. " Mother, mother ! " they all shouted at once, and fled, helter-skelter, tumbling over one another, and 98 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER knocking down the fetish-huts in the dark. These are huts in which stand carved wooden figures, called fetishes, w^hich the people believe to be in- habited by a spirit, which must be fed to keep it good-tempered. Many of these people could not believe that Liv- ingstone was a man. They thought that he was of a people who lived under the sea. ''Is that hair?" they would say as he took off his hat. '' No. It is the mane of a lion and not hair at all." " Mine," Livingstone replied, '' is the real original hair; like yours was, before it became scorched and frizzled in the sun ! " Then he would open his shirt and show his white chest, comparing it with his face, which the sun had burned a dark brown, almost as dark as theirs. They agreed that, as they always went about nearly naked in the sun, they had been scorched a brown- black and that they and Livingstone might really be brothers after all. Livingstone's bad-tempered, broad-backed, riding ox, Sinbad, came into use on this journey, when they all left the Zambezi and the canoes. Living- stone rode him, although he w^as so vicious, because his back was softer than the other oxen, while his long horns were bent down and hung loosely, so that he could not hit his rider in the belt with them. Sinbad, however, would suddenly run off the track, Photo by Harry Johnson AN AFRICAN FETISH IMAGE WITH BASKET OF FOOD BY CANOE AND FOREST TRACK 99 and once ran just under a climber, which caught Livingstone and threw him off so that he struck on his head. While fording a stream one day, Sinbad stumbled in a hole in the bed of the river and flung Living- stone over his head into the water. One afternoon they came to a flooded stream called " Child of Loki," into which Sinbad dashed, sank, and threat- ened to turn over on Livingstone, who slipped off and struck out for the opposite bank. Thoroughly alarmed at this, twenty of his men rushed to his rescue — some in their eagerness leaping right in and letting their blankets float away down the stream. He reached the bank unaided, but there one seized his arm, another threw his arm round his body, anxious to help him out. They were surprised to find that he could swim — though he swam, as we do, like a frog, while they swam like dogs. But it made him very happy to see that they cared for him so much. That night, when Livingstone was turning himself round and round in front of the fire to dry his clothes, the men who belonged to the village to which they had come tried to frighten Livingstone's African friends by telling them of the rivers that lay in front of them. They rolled with laughter, their eyes and white teeth flashing in the firelight as they pointed to Liv- ingstone and said proudly : loo LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER " We can all swim ; who carried the white man across the river but himself ? " ' These streams were swollen and the valleys flooded because of the ceaseless falling of the rain during the latter part of the journey. The rain poured down, dripping from the trees in the forest, and soaked through their sleeping-blankets and skin-rugs, as well as Livingstone's day-clothes, which now became moldy. The rain also was bad for the guns, causing them to rust, and it rotted the gipsy-tent. Often the only place where he could keep his watch dry was under his armpit, for he would be up to his waist in flood and marsh, while the rain came down from above. The fever made Livingstone so weak that he could neither sit on the ox nor walk without support. Sometimes he just staggered on like one in a dream. But the White Man Who Would Go On refused to stop or turn back from his quest. " Your white leader is only taking you to the coast to sell you as slaves," whispered some of the African villagers in the ears of his followers. What were they to believe? And they began to doubt and despair and threaten to turn back and go home. " If you go back," said he to them, " still I shall go on." Sick at heart and disappointed, he went into his SINBAD STUMBLED IN A HOLE IN THE BED OF THE RIVER BY CAXOE AND FOREST TRACK loi little tent and felt that he was alone — with his Father. Looking up he saw the head of one of his fol- lowers peering in at the little tent-opening. It was IMohorisi, and the words he said were : *' We will never leave 3'ou." The others followed. " We are all your children/' they said. " We will die for you. AA'e spoke in bitterness of spirit. You will see what we can do ! " Livingstone was glad again. And at last, after traveling for over six months by canoe, on ox-back and on foot, through marsh and forest, through river and flood, in fever and hunger, in peril of savage men and wild beasts, for fifteen hundred miles which no white man had ever seen before, Liv- ingstone came out on a high plain in sight of the sea and Loanda — the goal of his journey. His companions, who had never before seen the sea — or really believed in its existence — looked with wonder on the limitless blue ocean, sparkling in the sun. '' \A"e marched along with our father," they said, '' believing that what the ancients had always told us was true, that the world has no end ; but all at once the world said to us, ' I am finished ; there is no more of me! ' " CHAPTER VIII " THE FOREST PERILOUS '^ He called his fellowship unto him, and asked them what they would do. Then they answered all wholly together with one voice, they would do as he would do. Malory, Le Morte D' Arthur^ Book xx, Ch. xvii. "WHERE THE CROCODILES SPLASH" CHAPTER VIII " THE FOREST PERILOUS " During this great pathfinding journey from the interior to the west coast, Livingstone suffered ter- ribly again and again from an awful fever which makes a man's head and all his body ache unbear- ably, and weakens him till he cannot stand without help. Now that he had reached Loanda,^ he greatly needed rest and medicine, and was glad to stop for a while in a civilized town. The Makololo were much interested in this strange, new place. They looked at the Loanda houses in astonishment. Livingstone had on the journey tried to explain what a house two or three stories high was like, but they said that there could be no such thing as a hut on a hut, for the stakes of the top hut would have nothing to stick into; and, beside, the roof of a hut was sloping: how 1 Formerly called St. Paul de Loanda, a Portuguese city on the west coast of Africa. 105 io6 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER could you put another on top of it? When they looked at a house for the first time they said : " Ah ! it is not a hut ; it is a mountain with caves in it." As they looked out to sea, they saw the gleaming sails of a ship that was steering toward the port. She was a British cruiser. When she came into port, the Makololo men were persuaded to go on board. They were amazed. " It is not a canoe," they said, " it is a town ! And what sort of a town is it that you must climb into with a rope ? " The jolly sailors on board chummed up with the Africans and gave them some of the bread and beef that they were having for dinner. The Africans got employment in unloading a coal-boat. They, could not understand how it held so much. *' We worked," they said, " from the rising till the setting sun for a moon and a half [six weeks] taking out stones that burn. We were tired, but there was still plenty left in the ship." The captain of the British ship was very kind to Livingstone. '' You are ill," he said, when he landed and saw Livingstone's worn limbs and fever- stricken body. '' You have worked and traveled without rest for fourteen years; all Britain will cheer to see you. Come home with us and rest — and see your wife and daughter and your sons again." '' THE FOREST PERILOUS " 107 111, tired, and lonely, the invitation tempted him, but not for one second did he hesitate. He looked at his Makololo companions who had risked life again and again and lived with him through all the perils of the pathfinding journey. He had brought them fifteen hundred miles from their homes. They called him their " father." They could not return alone. So he turned his back to the sea and Britain, resolved to be true to his word and take the men back home to Linyanti. In days of old it was the highest honor of knights to be true to their word — true to other knights and to the ladies for whom they fought. How much more splendid was the honor of this knight of the newer days. For, not in battle nor romantic heroism, but in ceaseless trudging over a thousand miles of blistering plain and tangled forest, he was true to his word to a group of poor and ignorant Africans. So Livingstone sent his journal home by ship, and the men started off on their tramp back to Lin- yanti. Many presents were given by the people of Loanda. There were a horse and brilliant colonel's uniform for Sekeletu, and two donkeys — as they, unlike the horses and oxen, are not killed by the tsetse fly. The men were very proud of new costumes of striped cloth and red caps which Mr. Gabriel, the British commissioner for suppressing the slave io8 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER traffic and the only Englishman then living in Lo- anda, had given them. Livingstone was glad to have also a good new tent presented to him by the officers of the British cruiser. Orders were sent along the route by the Portuguese commandant that men must help and not hinder the travelers. Some days after they had started back, they came to some wonderful rocks that stood up like gigantic cliffs, three hundred feet high. The place was called Pungo Andongo. Here Livingstone got the news that the ship in which his journals were placed had been wrecked in a storm and had gone to the bottom of the sea. Eager as he was to go on, Livingstone settled there for three months and steadily rewrote all those hundreds of pages. It took from October till Christmas, but he knew that the very future of all that country would be affected by the knowledge of the land that he alone among all white men in the world had now obtained. As Livingstone rode on Sinbad the ox from the heights of Pungo Andongo down among the date palms of the valley of Cassange, he came to the house of Captain Neves, a Portuguese, who lived at Cassange itself. While staying with him Living- stone found a child sick with fever, whom he wished to make well. But the African mother believed that her boy was bewitched and would not listen to Dr. Livingstone when he wished to give the child '' THE FOREST PERILOUS " 109 the proper food and medicine. As a result the child died. An African man also in Cassange village, who was ill, said that his wife's sister had bewitched him. The witch-doctor was going to put her through the ordeal of drinking poison to prove her innocence, but Captain Neves stopped them, because the poison was very strong and would certainly have killed her. If she had died after submitting to the ordeal, they would have said, '' That is a proof that she was a witch." Livingstone found that in other parts of that valley of Cassange where Captain Neves could not stop them, hundreds of people were killed year after year by the witch-doctors through this ordeal of poison. For the witch-doctors, whenever any one was ill, would put on their hideous feathers and horns of poison and dance and call out, as they smelt for the one who, they said, had bewitched the sick man. Then they would make the accused man drink the poison and — of course he would die. Living- stone saw that these witch-doctors all over Central Africa killed — and they still do so to-day — as many people in a year as the slave-trade ever did. The people were also filled with dread of the demon- spirits of the dead, who would, they thought, do them harm. Livingstone thought what a pity it was that such cruel acts should be done in such a fine country, just no LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER because the people believed in witches and demons instead of a Father-God. Livingstone was thinking of these things one day in Cassange, when, looking up, he saw running to- ward the house a man from Loanda with letters and papers. They were papers all the way from England addressed to himself. He eagerly opened them and read in the Times of London about the Crimean AA'ar, w^hich was then being waged. There was the story of the dashing charge of the Light Brigade. To read this made him as excited as it does all people who admire daring. Livingstone himself did not carry lance and sword like a soldier ; and he was mounted — not on a dashing horse, but on a lumbering ox. In the very days, however, when he was reading in the Times of the brave soldiers, he was himself, like the Light Brigade, charging Into the valley of death, the valley of Cassange, to rescue the people there and in all Africa from the dread of the slave-gang, and witch-doctors, and demons. He pushed on eastward back towards Linyanti — which was '^ home " for his companions. One day the head man of a village came into Livingstone's camp and began quarreling. One of Livingstone's men lost his temper and gave him a blow on the mouth. This was the onlv time when THE FOREST PERILOUS *'THE FOREST PERILOUS" iii one of Livingstone's men lost his temper on the whole journey, and this man was the least brave of the whole company. They gave the head man a gun and five pieces of cloth to make it up; but he asked for more. Livingstone refused it. So they departed : but suddenly as Livingstone on his ox, followed by his men, wound along the path through the forest, they heard the crackling of branches and the sound of men rushing after them. The village men rushed out, hurled javelins, fired shots, and knocked burdens off the heads of some of Livingstone's carriers, hoping to make them fly and so to run off themselves with the plunder. Livingstone was very ill with fever, but he forgot his sickness in this moment of danger, turned, staggered down the path toward the enemy, drew his revolver, with which he never shot a man, and threatened the chief with it. Livingstone's fearless face, and the sight of six barrels aimed at him, made the chief shake with fright. " Oh ! I have only come to speak to you ; I wish peace only," he quavered. They examined the chief's gun and found that he had just fired at them! "We, too, wish peace," said Livingstone; *' if you do, also, then go home to your village." '' I am afraid that you will shoot me in the back," answered the chief. " If you are afraid of me, I am not afraid of 112 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER you," replied Livingstone, and calmly turned his back on the chief and mounted his ox. Livingstone's men were so delighted with the re- sult that they kept shouting to one another like boys, saying what wonderful deeds they would have done if Livingstone had not stopped the fight. Soon after this they met a man leading eight good-looking African women in a chain, taking them to be sold for ivory tusks. A poor little slave- girl who was ill and too tall and slender for her age, turned aside from the slave-party and was lost in the forest. Livingstone and his companions looked for her for a whole day, but they could not find her. She must have slept in the forest, and wakening have wandered on until she dropped. " Ga ha na pelii " (" They have no heart "), said Livingstone's Makololo men angrily of the slave- traders. They passed on, crossing rivers that ran north- ward into the Kongo, and walking through vast forests full of climbing plants, so tough that one man had to go in front with a hatchet to clear the way. The narrow path zigzagged through the forest, around the trunks of great trees that tow- ered above them making a green darkness, as though they were walking at the bottom of a deep sea. There were no large animals in this forest — no ante- lopes feeding beside dark buffaloes, but only mice and snakes. Livingstone longed to get back to " THE FOREST PERILOUS " 113 the banks of the Zambezi, where the animals abounded. When they came to within ten miles of the bank of the Kassai river — a large tributary of the Kongo — the chief, Kawawa, demanded an ox, gunpowder, a gun, and a robe — or a man as a slave. '' I shall stop you from crossing the river if you refuse," said Kawawa. '' I refuse," said Livingstone, who would not be bullied. Then the African subjects of Kawawa rushed away for their bows, arrows, and spears with which to kill Livingstone and his men. Livingstone's men wanted to fight, but he told them to take up their luggage and march. They obeyed and all the party moved off into the forest, the people of Kawawa gazing after them but not shooting. When they reached the Kassai river they found that four of Kawawa's men had rushed on and given orders to the ferrymen to refuse a passage. The ferry canoe was taken away : the river was a hundred yards broad and was deep. Livingstone thought of swimming over when the Kawawa people were gone. But after it was dark, Pitsane, one of Livingstone's men, went along the bank, found where the canoe was hidden, brought it along, ferried the party over, returned the canoe, with some beads in it for good-will, to its hiding- place, and swam back to Livingstone. They all 114 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER went into camp and slept — though the Africans could not go to sleep for some time because they kept roaring with laughter at the faces the Kawawa would make the next morning when they found what had happened. " Ah ! ye are bad ! " came a shout from the oppo- site side of the river in the morning from some of the Kawawa people, as they saw Livingstone's party starting off. " Ah ! ye are good," shouted Pitsane and the others. " We thank you for the loan of the canoe ! " They were rejoiced after many miles of dark forest to come out in sight of the waters of Lake Dilolo, with waves lashing its shore. Having said good-by to the Lord of Dilolo, a fat, jolly chief, they passed on, and were glad once more to be among the friendly tribes of the Zambezi. All the women of Libonta, the first village of Sekeletu to which they came, rushed out with loud luUiloos, dancing and waving sticks, as the party approached. The diviners of the tribe had long ago said that Livingstone and all his men were dead : yet here they were back again, and — in spite of all perils and fever — every one of the twenty-eight was alive. The Libonta people gave oxen, milk, meal, and butter to Livingstone and his men. Strangers flocked in from a distance. Livingstone held a thanksgiving service, at which his men dressed them- "THE FOREST PERILOUS" 115 selves up in their beautiful new suits with red caps which were given to them at Loanda. They tried to walk stiffly like the soldiers they had seen at Loanda, called themselves Livingstone's hatlahain, or " braves," and enjoyed being the center of ad- miration of all the women and children. At last they reached Linyanti, the home of the Makololo, in triumph. Livingstone was amused at the pride of his men as they strutted into the village with their new clothes, which they had carefully carried all the way from Loanda. He heard them boasting : " We went on till we had finished the whole world. We only turned when there was no more land!" CHAPTER IX '•' SOUNDING SMOKE " Still be on ours the diet the ground, Pioneers ! hard, and O Pioneers Walt the blanket 1 Whitman. A BABY HIPPOPOTAMUS RIDING ON HIS MOTHER'S BACK CHAPTER IX SOUNDING SMOKE" The Pathfinder had now discovered a way from the heart of Africa out to the Atlantic. He had brought back his men. But it was a hard and fever- stricken path. He wondered if there might not be a better way down the Zambezi to the east coast. Chief Sekeletu was proud of having helped Liv- ingstone. He now loved him more than ever. So Sekeletu gave Livingstone one hundred and twenty of his men to go with him down the Zambezi, and thirteen oxen for riding and for food. Once more they started out on "the long trail," this time going east instead of west. They came quickly to a patch of forest where the tsetse fly — so deadly to horses and oxen — lived. Men went on in advance to make a camp, while Livingstone with some younger men waited to take the animals through at night when the tsetse fly sleeps. 119 120 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER They started at night through the trees in pitch darkness, when flash after flash of a thunderstorm burst upon them. The Hghtning spread in eight or ten forks across the sky, while sheet Hghtning that made the whole country visible was followed by dense darkness and deafening thunder-claps that made the horses tremble. The young men were not afraid, but laughed as they bumped against one another in the darkness. The rain came rushing down and the night was cold after the heat of the day. All their bedding and the tent had gone on, yet they could never get through the storm to where the camp had settled. So they turned aside to a camp-fire which had been deserted by whoever had lighted it. Livingstone lay down in his wet clothes on the cold ground to try to sleep. He felt a touch, and looking up saw Sekeletu. " Here, my father, is my blanket," said the young chief. " You take it to keep you warm." Sekeletu would not be refused. He wrapped the blanket round Livingstone and went off to lie down uncovered on the cold, damp ground. They went on down the Chobe to the great Zambezi. Some paddled along the river in canoes, while others drove the oxen on the banks. One day Livingstone saw five strange columns of vapor rising in the air miles ahead, and he heard the sound of distant booming in the air. "SOUNDING SMOKE" 121 "It is Mosi-oa-timya" ("Sounding Smoke ")^ said the Makololo. The river rolled on more and more swiftly; slowly and carefully the Africans guided the canoe out of the rushing waters into the quieter eddies in the center of the stream, behind an island. Living- stone landed, crept to the very edge of the island and looked over. The mighty river, more than a mile wide, rolled over the edge of a precipice, dash- ing down four hundred feet, with the roar of many waters. It fell sheer into a narrow zigzag chasm, where it went seething and rushing between gigantic cliffs of rock. The spray rose in five great columns that hid the sun. In the spray hung a many-colored double rainbow, a beautiful bridge of quietness over the rage of the tumbling water. It was November, 1855. Livingstone was the first white man who ever saw " Sounding Smoke," which is much larger than the Niagara Falls in America. He named it the Victoria Falls. On the island at the brink of the falls, to which he was able to go, he carved his initials with his knife on the trunk of a tree, where they can be faintly seen to-day. He left the Zambezi, with its dark Africans who were almost black, and marched northeast to the higher ground, where the people were a light coffee color. He found this higher land healthier, and 122 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER hoped that it might be — as it is — a place where missionaries could work. From this country of gentle hills, the party began to march down the gradual slope that was to lead them to the east coast. They had now come into new dangers, for they were at the end of their own Makololo country, and had come where the Batlea lived. These men were rebels against Sekeletu's rule. Some of these savage men came up in the even- ing and tried to spear a young Makololo who had gone for water. One of them rushed at Livingstone with glaring eyes and foaming lips, howling hid- eously and swinging a battle-ax. Livingstone showed no fear, but looked the man steadily in the face. His own men obeyed his orders not to knock the frenzied savage on the head. But Sekwebu, a Makololo, held his spear ready to kill the man if he really struck at Livingstone. Livingstone simply asked one of the Batlea who was more friendly to take this madman away. He was obeyed. On the next day Livingstone went up on to the rocks with his instruments to work out the right direction for their journey. Looking through his glass he saw, two miles off, an elephant and her calf. The calf was rolling in the mud; its mother fanned herself with her great ears. A line of Livingstone's men were closing round the animals, who were quietly enjoying themselves, " SOUNDING SMOKE " 123 unsuspicious of danger. With spears in hand the men approached, and the elephants became aware of the danger. The calf ran forward, but the men turned it back, shouting and singing: " O chief ! chief ! we have come to kill you." The mother-elephant placed herself between the men and her calf and fled across the rivulet. The men came closer and hurled their javelins at her. Livingstone had sent orders that they were not to kill the calf, but before Sekwebu, the messenger, reached the rivulet the men had speared it. The elephant charged at them again and again, but they hid behind trees each time, till at last, wounded by many javelins, she sank slowly to her knees and died. A perilous adventure met Livingstone when he came to the place where the Loangwa river runs into the Zambezi on its north bank. Men, half Portuguese, half African, had some time before an- gered the chief, who now thought that Livingstone was of the same race. He threatened Livingstone, who opened his shirt, showed the chief his white skin where it had not been tanned by the sun, and said: '' Are the Bazinka like that ? " '' No," said the chief, '' they are not." Livingstone could see, however, that it was more than likely that the still suspicious chief would give orders for him to be knocked on the head and killed 124 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER on the following day, when he was to cross the river. Should he cross secretly by night, he asked him- self, and so escape? He felt no fear for himself, only that it would be a pity for all the discoveries that he had made for the opening up of this country to be utterly lost. He opened his tin box, took from it his Bible, and in the flickering light read : " Go ye therefore and teach all nations, and lo, I am with you always." " It is," he told himself, '' the word of a Gentle- man of the most sacred and strictest honor. I will not cross furtively by night as I intended. It would appear as flight, and should such a man as I flee? Nay, verily, I shall take observations for latitude and longitude to-night, though they may be the last." In the morning the threatening natives came, all armed with spears, and gathered around Livingstone and his men as they went to the banks of the river to cross in the one canoe that was lent to them. It looked as though they would let some of the party go across, and slay the others. First the Makololo carried their burdens over in the big canoe, then the oxen. The men followed. Livingstone stayed till the last. But while the canoe was going to and fro he took out his watch, his magnifying lens, and other things from his pocket. He showed these armed and threatening savage THE MOTHER-ELEPHANT PLACED HERSELF BETWEEN THE MEN AND HER calf" " SOUNDING SMOKE " 125 Africans how to burn with the lens by focusing the sun's rays through it. He let them listen to the ticking of his watch, while he explained how it told the time. They came close round him listening, looking, and asking questions. When his companions had crossed, Livingstone thanked the armed natives for lending the canoe to him. " I wish you peace," said Livingstone, and, enter- ing the canoe, was paddled across the river. No man raised a spear to harm him. Most of the people in the villages on this journey had been kind to them and given them food. As there were one hundred and fourteen in Living- stone's party, this meant that the people had been very generous. " Did I not tell you," said Sekwebu, Livingstone's head man, "that these people have hearts?" " Yes," answered some of his companions. " Look ! although we have been so long away from home, not one of us has become lean." As they got nearer and nearer to the Portuguese on the east coast, however, they found the dark trail of the slave-trade. The minds of the people there were poisoned against them, because they had seen men with smooth hair and brown faces — like Livingstone — carry off their children into slavery. Livingstone wished to cross to the south bank of the Zambezi because of a war that had been going on 126 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER between the Portuguese and the natives on the north bank. He came toward the village of Mpende, who sent him no messengers — a sign that he was an enemy. At sunrise a party of Mpende's people, waving red rags and shouting with hideous screams, came toward Livingstone's camp and lighted a fire, into which they threw magic charms. They be- lieved that these charms would harm Livingstone's party. They then turned and disappeared toward their village. Armed men were now collecting from all quarters toward Livingstone's camp. His own men were in fighting fettle and desired nothing more than to put their javelins into Mpende. " You have seen us with elephants," said some of the hot-headed young men to Livingstone, as they shook their spears in the direction of the village, " but you don't know yet what we can do with men." Livingstone, as he always did, sternly forbade them to strike at all, except in defense of them- selves. Mpende sent spies to watch them. To two of these spies Livingstone gave the leg of an ox, saying : *' Take this to Mpende. I wish peace." Soon after this two gray-haired, wrinkled men came from Mpende, and looking out with curious eyes at Livingstone asked : *^Who are you?" ** I am a Lekoa " (an Englishman), he replied. " SOUNDING SMOKE " 127 " We do not know that tribe," they said. " We suppose that you are a Mozunga " (a Portuguese), '' the tribe with which we have been fighting." Livingstone showed them the white skin of his chest and asked : *' Have they skin Hke that ? " " No," said the old men of Mpende's village ; '' we never saw skin so white as that." Then, after a pause, they added, " Ah ! you must be one of that tribe that has heart to [loves] the black men." '' Yes, indeed," said Livingstone, '' that is my tribe," glad to think that even in the heart of Africa the people had heard that white men of the Anglo-Saxon race " had heart to " them. Sekwebu, Livingstone's head man, went to talk to Mpende, who, when he had made up his mind not to fight him, but to be friendly, said : " Well, the white man ought to cross to the other side of the river. This bank is hilly and rough, and the way to Tette is shorter on the other side." " But who will take us across ? " asked Sekwebu. " You shall cross," said Mpende, by which he meant that he was now real " friends " with them, and would lend the canoes. They all crossed to the south bank of the Zambezi in large canoes, leaving the whole of Mpende's tribe, which had been so threatening when they came, full of friendliness and good-will, as Livingstone always tried to do. 128 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER His own men made Livingstone their hero more and more after this. For they saw what power he had to win men to his way, and they heard — both from free men and from slaves whom they met — that the white men of Livingstone's tribe were as brothers and not as slave-drivers among the Africans. One day, going along the bank of the Zambezi, they met some native traders carrying bundles of calico. Livingstone produced two small elephant tusks and offered them to the traders in return for some clothing for his men, many of whom were now naked. He found that the calico had come all the way from America, for it was stamped " Law- rence Mills, Lowell." Soon after this the men chased and slew an elephant for food. There was too much for them, to eat then, and it would not keep good in the heat. Hyenas gathered round and kept up a loud laughter for two whole nights. " What are the hyenas laughing at ? " asked Liv- ingstone of his men. '' They are laughing," the Makololo replied, '' be- cause we cannot eat it all and shall have to leave plenty for them ! " As they went on Livingstone enjoyed watching all the animals that roamed over the country, from the elephant and the fierce black rhinoceros to the tiniest insects all happy at their work. For instance, "Ilii LET THEM LISTEN TO THE lICKINd OV HIS WATCH " " SOUNDING SMOKE " 129 when he was waiting by the side of this dead ele- phant, he saw insects hke grains of sand running about on his tin box. He took his magnifying glass and saw one insect all green and gold tidying its tiny wings, another as clear as a piece of crystal, a third a brilliant red, while another was jet-black. Every- where he found something to wonder over. In the forest he listened to the hum of the insects flying and the singing of the birds. Their voices were, he said, like English birds singing in a foreign language. Some were like the lark, two like the thrush; others brought the chaffinch, the robin, and the startled blackbird to his mind. One bird would sound a note like the twanging of a violin string, another said slowly '' Peek, pak, pok." The turtle- doves murmured '' Pumpura, pumpura," while the honey-guide — which would lead Livingstone to the hives of the wild bees — said " Chicken, chik, churr, churr." Near the villages the cheeky mocking-bird would make them laugh by imitating the roosters and hens. On March 2, 1856, Livingstone, who was worn with travel and lack of food, could go no farther. He lay down to rest about eight miles from Tette on the Zambezi, where a Portuguese commandant lived. He sent messages on to the commandant. About two o'clock in the morning the Makololo were frightened by the sudden appearance of a company of soldiers with two officers. I30 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER " We are captured," they cried as they woke Livingstone. But the soldiers had come bringing a fine break- fast, which Livingstone said was the most refresh- ing that he had ever eaten in his Hf e ! He eagerly walked the last eight rough miles to Tette. After resting there, he went on in a large canoe to Quili- mane, the port from which he was to sail to Britain, which he had not seen for sixteen years. Nor had he spoken a word of English for three and a half years. The time came for him to sail and leave his Makololo men. He settled most of them at Tette on plantations. Some went with him to Quilimane. They said that they would go on with him to Britain and find Ma-Robert and her children. Livingstone told them that they must wait in Africa for his return. He could not pay for their passage on the steamer to England. " Nothing but death will prevent my return," he said. "Nay, father," they replied, '^ you will not die; you will return to take us back to Sekeletu." One man stayed with him to the end, pleading with Livingstone to take him on board ship. " You will die," said Livingstone, " if you go to such a cold country as mine." '' That is nothing," said the African, '' let me die at your feet." CHAPTER X FACING POISONED ARROWS Sir Gawaine asked the knight if he knew any adventures in that country. I shall show you some to-morn, said the old knight, and that marvelous. So, on the morn they rode into the forest of adventures. Malory, Le Morte D' Arthur^ Book iv, Ch. xix. '^}S^ "'?|"H;PvIfFT[T[h THE "MA-ROBERT ON THE ZAMBEZI CHAPTER X FACING POISONED ARROWS Livingstone reached home in time to have a merry Christmas with his three boys and Agnes in 1856. He had such games with them as they had never had in their lives, for when they were quite small'in Africa he seemed to have no time for play- ing with his children. When the spring came the British flowers and birds made him quite excited; he had not seen them for so long. " We have," he said joyfully, " seen daisies, prim- roses, hawthorns, and robin redbreasts." Lions and elephants seemed quite dull compared with robins ! He used to take the children for walks in the summer in the Barnet woods, near London, and would suddenly run off, plunge in among the ferns and shrubs, and hide, while they would search for him like red Indians; then he would startle 133 134 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER them by coming out just where they did not expect him. Ma-Robert hardly knew what to do for joy at seeing him after so many years. She wrote a Httle poem to him when he was on his way home, and when he at last came to her he read it. This is one verse : A hundred thousand welcomes ! how my heart is gushing o'er With the love and joy and wonder thus to see your face once more. How did I live without you these long, long years of wo? It seems as if 'twould kill me to be parted from you now. He went to see his own mother. His father, who had seen him off from the quay at Glasgow sixteen years before, had died just before Livingstone reached home. This traveler, w^ho had faced lions and the spears of savages without a tremor of weak- ness, broke down and burst into tears when he saw his father's empty chair. He had so looked forward to talking over his adventures with his father. Ma-Robert and the children could not have him all to themselves, however, even at home in Britain, for he was now one of the most famous men in all the land. He was obliged to go to scientific so- cieties, to big meetings, and to the great universities, to make speeches — which he disliked very much — ■ and to receive medals of honor. They also made him write a book about his adventures. It is called Missionary Travels. "he went to see queen victoria" FACING POISONED ARROWS 135 One day he went to see the boys and girls of Queen Victoria, the eldest of whom afterwards be- came King Edward VII. They liked to hear the adventures of this strong brown-faced traveler. On another day he went to see Queen Victoria. She laughed very much when, after telling her how glad he was that now he could tell the Africans that he had really seen his chief, he said : *' The first question they will ask will be, * How many cows has she got? ' " The Africans, having no money, he explained, reckoned their wealth chiefly by cattle, though some also by tusks. One day he went to Glasgow to be made a Doctor of Laws, because of his great- discoveries. The undergraduates came, as usual at times like that, armed with pea-shooters, trumpets, and noisy rattles, all ready to stamp and shout and make fun in the gallery. Livingstone walked in with his strong, resolute " forward-tread," his face burned brown by the African sun and seamed with the lines of pain through many fevers. His left arm hung limp. The students remembered the lion-bite and all the thou- sand perils this plain, sunburnt man had faced. The rattles and the trumpets were silent; no pea- shooter was used, not a foot stamped. They lis- tened in perfect silence to this man whom they felt to be the greatest hero they had seen. 136 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER He told them about some of his perils and adven- tures. Then he asked : '' Shall I tell you what sustained me amidst the toil, the hardship, and loneliness of my exiled life? It was the promise, ' Lo, I am with you always^ even unto the end.' " He was happiest when he was enjoying himself among friends rather than when speaking at big meetings. He liked boys especially. One day he went to see a boy w^ho was ill in bed. He told the boy with his own lips the lion-adventure story that you have read, and then he took off his coat, turned up his shirt-sleeve, and showed the boy the very tooth-marks that the lion had made in his arm. A boy in his first week in the geography class to-day can learn more about African lakes, rivers, and mountains than the wisest men knew before Livingstone came back to Britain. They had said, '' Africa is a great desert." Livingstone showed them for the first time that it is full of great rivers and lakes. They had said, ''The Africans are all cruel, fighting savages." Livingstone showed the people that, when treated kindly, the Africans were good, faithful friends, like his Makololo, Livingstone, however, wanted to find out still more. He wished to discover some high, healthy place in Central Africa where white men could train African teachers and preachers. He planned to FACING POISONED ARROWS 137 open up paths through the jungles, and explore the rivers so thoroughly that they should become the highways of the nations. He believed that the com- ing of white settlers and European trade to Cen- tral Africa would hinder the slavers in their cruel business. To strike the death-blow of the slave- trade was growing to be a great purpose of his life. To be quite free to go anywhere as he thought best he gave up his position under the London Mis- sionary Society. The government gave him the powers of a British consul. In the early spring of 1858 a government ship, the Pearl, steamed out from the quay at Liverpool with Livingstone, Ma- Rcbert and their youngest boy Oswell, waving hand- kerchiefs to the friends who had come to say good-by. When the Pearl reached Cape Town they met grandfather Moffat. Mrs. Livingstone stayed with her father and mother, while Living- stone steamed up the east coast to where the many mouths of the Zambezi ran through steaming man- grove swamps and jungle into the sea. Strange steel plates, engines, and a funnel were hoisted out from the hold of the Pearl. When screwed together they made a little steam launch, which was christened the Ma-Robert, after Mrs. Livingstone. The Pearl and the Ma-Robert then steamed up the Kongone, the deepest mouth of the Zambezi. Great palms stood up like church spires on the 138 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER banks; bright yellow hibiscus flowers flamed along the bank; wild date-palms and huge ferns waved their fronds as the boats passed. Bright kingfishers shot along like streaks of light and settled down again to watch them from a tree-stump. The dig- nified fish-hawk sailed away on his great wings, while the shining ibis rose and flew off, shrieking " Ha, ha, ha ! " Along the river they saw, half -hidden among the banana and cocoa-palms, Africans scampering down the ladders in front of their native huts, which were built on legs above the marshy ground. These sw^amp-dwellers opened their eyes, astonished, at the puffing steamers. '' It is a village," said one old man as he stood on the deck of the Pearl. '' Is it made out of one tree like our canoes? " They paddled along behind the steamer in their swift canoes shouting, Malonda {" things for sale "), and holding up fowls and baskets of rice. At last the Pearl and Ma-Robert steamed out of the Kongone into the main stream of the broad Zambezi. The river here was too shallow for the Pearl, so they put her stores on shore at Shupanga, a Portuguese settlement, and the Ma-Robert launch went on alone. She snorted and puffed, yet for all her fussy noise went very slowly. Her furnaces burnt wood only, and it took three days to cut enough wood to drive her for two days. She was FACING POISONED ARROWS 139 a great disappointment to Livingstone, who nick- named her the " Asthmatic," because she was so wheezy. At last, however, she paddled up to Tette, where Dr. Livingstone had left his Makololo friends. He went ashore, and at once they rushed down and shouted with joy at seeing him. " They said that you would not come back," cried the Africans, '* but we trusted you." Some were so overjoyed that they ran to put their arms round him, but the others scolded them, saying : *' Don't touch him, you will spoil his new clothes ! " The I^Iakololo climbed aboard the '' Asthmatic " and the party went on up the river. They came to a place where the Zambezi tumbled over rocks and swirled round boulders through miles of shallow rapids. Here Livingstone, his friend Dr. Kirk, and some Makololo left the launch. They waded along the shallow stream and scrambled over the boulders till, with much difficulty, they reached the other end of the rapids. Right up in front of them stood a great moun-^ tain, at the foot of which the Zambezi flowed. Their guide said, " The river is all smooth above here. I have hunted there. I know." So they turned back, thinking these rapids I40 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER exhausted all the difficulties of steaming up the river. That night, as they sat in camp around their fire, two Africans came and said : '' The guide has told you wrong. It is not all smooth water above. There is a cataract called Morumhwaf' Livingstone turned to the guide ask- ing if this w^as so. " I will not take you there," said the guide. '' No man can reach it — nor could an elephant, a hippo- potamus, or a crocodile." Livingstone determined to go. The mountains rose three thousand feet high on either side of the river like a huge trough, all black rock and thornbush. They jumped from crag to boulder and crawled round the edges of a cliff where a false step would have hurled the whole party into boiling eddies of the river. The sun beat down on the black rock till it was so hot that they could not bear to put their hands on it. The bare feet of the Makololo were blistered. Livingstone heard their grumbling. " We thought he had a heart. He has none. No one can walk here and live. He has gone mad." At last they heard the roar of waters and came to the Morumbwa Cataract, where the mile-wide river, caught at a bend in the mountains, was jammed in a space fifty yards wide and poured down in one boiling flood. FACING POISONED ARROWS 141 The cataract was beautiful, but it meant a barrier against Livingstone's aim, for he wished to find a way for trade to go by water up into the heart of Africa. He found that the cataract could be passed by a powerful steamer when the river was in full flood, but the '' Asthmatic " was useless for this, and the river was now low. " Let us turn off from the Zambezi and travel up the unexplored tributary, the Shire," said Living- stone when they got back to Shupanga. " It is impossible," replied the Portuguese and the natives, explaining that the river was choked with duckweed and that the natives would shoot them with poisoned arrows. Livingstone, however, spent his whole life doing things that men said were impossible. So they turned the bow of the steam launch up the Shire, on which no white man had ever traveled before. As they looked out at the banks they saw natives, with bows and arrows, dodging behind trees and taking aim at them. Five hundred armed Africans gathered on the bank at a village over which Chief Tingane ruled. He had never allowed any Portuguese to go up, nor any Africans to come down, the river. He was a gray-haired man over six feet tall. The fierce savages all shouted to the steamer to go back and threatened to kill the travelers with their poisoned arrows. Taking his life in his hands, Livingstone, unarmed 142 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER and unprotected, went ashore — alone among this horde of warlike, angry savages. The very daring of his calm, smiling approach to a terrible death seemed to awe them. '' I am come," he said, '' in peace. I will not make slaves. I am English. I wish to find a path so that we may come and buy cotton from you. There is one Father above all, whose children we all are, whether brown or white. He is displeased if we sell or buy our brothers." Tingane thought this was good and made friends at once. The steamer was allowed to go on up the river. They went on for two hundred miles of river till they came to six foaming cataracts, which they called the Murchison Falls. They could go no farther by water with the Ma-Robert. The " Asthmatic " now leaked in a thousand places, so the cabin was always wet, and therefore full of mosquitoes. But she snorted her way back down the Shire and up the Zambezi to Tette, and then again on a second voyage to these Shire cata- racts. Wonderful sights met Livingstone at every bend of the river. There were pineapple and orange and lemon trees; monkeys swung from the creepers, hawks swooped down for fish, and antelopes fled among the trees. In one great marsh he counted eight hundred elephants and captured a little one. He told his FACING POISONED ARROWS 143 son Tom about this in a letter to England. It was, he said, " about the size of the largest dog you ever saw, but one of the Makololo, in a state of excite- ment, cut its trunk so that it bled very much and died in two days. Had it lived, we should have sent it to the Queen, as no African elephant was ever seen in England." One day they shot two enormous pythons — ser- pents — ten feet long. From the masthead of the steamer Livingstone watched the long-necked cormorant birds take '' headers " into the stream, while big-pouched pelicans swam on the water and long-legged herons stared into the water for fish. Little weaver birds — ■ all red and yellow — chattered to their mates in their hanging nests among the grass. Pretty little haw^ks darted after glittering dragon-flies. Landing, they marched — forty-two in all — north- east along the bank of a flowing stream. They then started to climb the Manganja hills, looking back from the height to the silver stream, the green forests, and the distant blue mountains. The air was cool and they slept under the trees, as they were now above the damp river land where the mosquitoes live. They found the beautiful Lake Shirwa. Later on their path followed the Shire above the Murchison Cataracts, until at last, just before midday on September 16, 1859, the waters of Lake Nyassa 144 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER gleamed before them, stretching a\yay beyond the hmits of sight. Livingstone was the first white man who ever saw Lake Nyassa. They slept that night at the foot of a giant banyan tree, where four could lie between two of the enormous serpent roots. Dealers came to them there offering boys and girls for sale as slaves. When Livingstone said that they were Anglo-Saxons the men were afraid. They decamped and ran oft" during the night, for they knew that the British were trying to stop this horrible wrong to Africa. The Alakololo grasped their spears. Their hands twitched and their eyes gleamed with anger as they saw their brother Africans being carried off into slavery. " Oh ! " they said to Livingstone, their voices hoarse with w-rath, '' why won't you let us choke them?" CHAPTER XI THE SMOKE OF BURNING VILLAGES And there was a fair town full of people; and all the people, men and women, cried at once : Welcome, Sir Launcelot du Lake, for by thee all we shall be holpen out of danger. And then they marveled what knight he was . . . delivered all these prisoners. Have ye no marvel, said the damosel, for the best knight in the world was here and did this journey. Malory, Le Morte D' Arthii.7\ Book ix, Ch. vii. THE " PIONEER CHAPTER XI THE SMOKE OF BURNING VILLAGES Livingstone sat down and wrote long letters home to Britain, saying : " Come out and found a colony here : send missionaries, farmers, workers." Newly captured slaves were being carried across Lake Nyassa packed in rakish Arab dhows/ He saw that a single British steamer on that lake could stop its slave traffic. He looked on its lovely shores and the green hillsides and imagined those paths no longer threaded by wretched slave gangs, but alive with a missionary colony of British and American people. While waiting for an answer to his letters, he sailed back down the Shire and Zambezi to Tette in the snorting " Asthmatic," which now leaked at 1 The dhow is a swift sailing ship used on the east coast of Africa and in the Indian Ocean. 147 148 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER every joint, while her engines clanked and groaned at every stroke. He landed at Tette, and then carried out his old promise and led his Makololo back to their own land, which they had left years before. They struggled back along the old trail, past the Victoria Falls to Linyanti. It made him sad to see that all the missionaries who had gone to teach the Makololo had died, and poor Sekeletu was ill. He was glad to see his friend, the young chief, again. He watched the Makololo girls and boys playing their games. One game was that of carrying a little girl on the shoulders of two others, who walked about with her, while all the others clapped their hands. The children stopped before each hut and sang pretty airs, beating time with stamping of feet and clapping of hands. Most of their play was " Let's pretend." The girls " made believe " to be mothers, building little huts, making small pots, hoeing tiny gardens, cook- ing and pounding corn. The boys flung spears made of reed and pointed with wood and carried small shields, or shot at trees with small bows and arrows ; or they made little cattle-pens, into which they drove cows which they had made of clay — even to the quaintly curved horns. The people watched him. One Makololo woman — Tselane — seeing Dr. Livingstone making scientific THE SMOKE OF BURNING VILLAGES 149 observations with his thermometers, laughed and said roguishly : . '* Poor thing! playing like a little child." He traveled back down to the Zambezi again, some of his Makololo friends still keeping with him. The old " Asthmatic," that mosquito-haunted, groaning, wheezing steamer, ran aground on a sand-bank and sank to the bottom of the river. In answer to Livingstone's letters, however, a new vessel was on its way out — the splendid little steamer Pioneer, which had only qne drawback : she drew five feet of water instead of three, with the result that she was always running aground on sand-banks. A group of men waved their hands to Living- stone from the deck of the Pioneer as she steamed into the Zambezi. They were Bishop Mackenzie and a band of missionaries sent out by Oxford and Cambridge universities, in England, to work in the Shire Valley. They steamed with him up the Shire to the Murchison Cataracts, and then walked up to the highlands near Lake Nyassa. In front of them a cruel gang of Portuguese had gone, saying: " We are the children of the Doctor." The natives for love of Livingstone had wel- comed them, and then had found themselves in the grip of the slave-trader. Round the corner of a hill came a long line of I50 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER men, women, and children, chained and roped to one another, with slave-sticks riveted round the necks of the men. African slave-drivers, with muskets on their shoulders, swaggered along in triumph, beating the captives and blowing with pride on long tin horns. Their leader caught sight -of Livingstone. His face changed. He gave the alarm. In a moment the jaunty bullies were flying like mad into the forest. The soles of their coward-feet and their red caps were all that could be seen. With joyful eagerness Livingstone and his friends drew their knives and cut the bonds of the women and children. Then he took a saw and cut through the slave-sticks that were round the necks of the men. With the slave-sticks they made a jolly bon- fire to boil breakfast for all the starving company of freed slaves. A little boy — a slave ten minutes before, but now free — came up to Livingstone and his men and said : " The others tied and starved us, you cut the ropes and tell us to eat. What sort of people are you? Where did you come from? " These freed slaves were the beginning of the Bishop's mission church. The smoke of burning villages, the shouts of triumphant warriors and wail of Manganja women met them two days later. Round the hillside came Ajawa warriors with their Manganja captives. THE SMOKE OF BURNING VILLAGES 151 Taunting words to the Ajawa from some savages who were standing behind Livingstone angered the Ajawa, who began to shoot poisoned arrows. On they came, dancing hideously. Livingstone's party were obHged to fire off their rifles to frighten the Ajawa away. It was the first time he had ever failed to make peace, and that was because of the savages who had, from his side, shouted to the others. Livingstone left the Bishop to found his mission at Magomero, on Lake Nyassa. Then he turned back and traveled down the Shire again. He was quite excited. Ma-Robert — whom he had not seen since he left her at Cape Town — had given birth to a little daughter when staying with her mother at Kuruman, had gone home to Britain to see the other children, and now was coming out to join him again. As her ship steamed down the mouth of the Zambezi, she saw her husband stand- ing on the paddle-box of the Pioneer as it put out to meet her. Yet only a few weeks later, at Shupanga on the Zambezi, the fever struck her down. The Doctor, with his new friend Dr. Stewart, who had brought her to him from Britain, nursed her with tenderest care. But slowly she sank. Her death filled the brave Pathfinder with a sadness that went with him ever after in all his travels. With an aching heart he left the Zambezi. The 152 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER weeks and months that followed were sad and dis- couraging for Livingstone. He longed to go home to comfort his motherless children. He often wished for rest. But the Pathfinder could not rest till his work was done. He kept bravely on, trying to finish his explorations. He attempted to find a shorter way to Lake Nyassa by the Rovuma river. Failing in this, he turned back down to the sea, along the coast, and up the Zambezi and Shire again. This time he tugged behind the Pioneer the little Lady Nyassa, a steamer built for the Nyassa lake. All up the valley were burnt-out villages, the skeletons of starved and slaughtered Africans, the hideous trail of the slave-trade. A letter from England from the government called Livingstone home : but he could not return at once as it was the dry season and the Pioneer could not float down till some months later, when the rainy season would fill the river. While he was waiting, he started once more for Lake Nyassa with a boat borne by bearers past the Cataracts. They had passed all the rapids save the last. The Makololo put the boat into smooth, swift-running water between these rapids, and towed it up till they came near to the last rapid, when they pulled it to the bank. " We will show you how to manage a boat," shouted some of the Zambezi men. They took the "away she went like ax arrow THE SMOKE OE BURNING VILLAGES 153 rope from the hands of the Makololo. Three of them jumped into the boat: two hauled at the rope. The rapids caught her bow, twisted her round, and snatched the rope from the hands of the Zambezi men. She turned bottom upward, and swung round in an eddy. Then away she went like an arrow down the Cataracts. The crestfallen Zambezi men came to shore, bowed at Livingstone's feet, and asked forgiveness. Annoyed as he was, he did not like '' crying over spilt milk; " so he just sent them back to th^ Pioneer to carry up food, cloth, and beads to replace those lost in the boat, and walked on. He marched on with one white friend and a few Makololo companions round to the west of Lake Nyassa northward till he came within ten days' march of another lake, Bangweolo. He turned back before he reached it, for the rainy season was on them, and he would now be able to steam the Pioneer and Lady Nyassa down the Zambezi and so go home to Britain. He thought that he might sell the useful Lady Nyassa to some sea-faring trader at Zanzibar. A government cruiser — the Ariel — took in tow the ''Lady of the Lake," as Livingstone loved to call his little steamer, and towed her up the coast to Mozambique. Suddenly, out of the north, there swept a fearful 154 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER hurricane that lashed the ocean to fury and drove the Ariel back in her tracks. She swept down on the Nyassa stern foremost. The hawser becoming entangled with the screw stopped her engines. It seemed that nothing could save Livingstone, for the great vessel loomed overhead and seemed about to crush the little steamer. But the Ariel just scraped past the bow of the Lady Nyassa without harming her. In the rolling ocean it was hard and dangerous work to get another hawser from the man-of-war to Livingstone's steamer so that the Ariel could go on towing her up the coast. A cask was hurled into the sea from the Ariel with a hawser attached : then one of Livingstone's Kroomen, with another cable, jumped overboard into the boiling sea, tied the cable to the cask, and the Ariel hawser was thus drawn on board and secured. Then the Ariel drove ahead and towed the Lady Nyassa in the teeth of the storm to Mozambique. When Livingstone had cleaned his steamer at Mozambique he went on to Zanzibar. He made inquiries and found that he could not sell her there, for the only men who would buy wanted her for carrying slaves! Yet he had spent all the money that he had in building the " Lady of the Lake." What was he to do? He would rather see her at the bottom of the Indian Ocean than in the slaver's hands. So he THE SMOKE OF BURNING VILLAGES 155, formed a plan — the most dangerous of all the ad- ventures of his life. For in that little vessel Livingstone, with a crew of men who had never been to sea and with only fourteen tons of coal on board, started to cross the wide Indian Ocean. The men soon learned to climb along a boom, reef a rope through the block at the end, take the end of the rope in their teeth and climb back — each pitch of the boat dipping them in the sea. Day after day Livingstone stood at the helm under the sweltering sun guiding his little vessel over the ocean by the knowledge that the captain of the George had given him, thirty years before, as a young man on his first voyage out. The wind dropped. He had to save his coal for steaming down the coast of India to Bombay. He lay becalmed in the Indian Ocean, with sails flapping on the rolling mast and the blistering sun- shine beating upon their heads, watching the cruel sharks, the sporting dolphins, and the flying-fish, as they chased and fled from one another in the still sea. The sky changed, the wind moaned, the tempest broke. The little Lady Nyassa was tossed on the boundless sea, with the gale whistling through her rigging, and her captain, still undaunted, clin,eing to the wheel and gazing out into the storm. The hissing breakers swept past with crests curling as 156 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER though they would swallow her or dash her to the bottom of the ocean. But she swam from trough to crest of the waves, first her nose and then her stern in the air, as she plowed through the seas. The boat seemed alive with the dauntless spirit of her captain. She shook off the waves from her streaming deck and drove on through the storm, till at last she crept unnoticed into Bombay harbor. Livingstone took ship home from India. Britain rose, with flags waving and surging cheers, to wel- come the hero-scout of Africa. Many men now living remember seeing the smallish sturdy man with the " forward-tread," the face of a warrior, and eyes that looked right through you — keen and gentle. He lectured and spoke all over the land, stirring the country against the slave traffic; he wrote a book, The Zambezi and Its Tributaries, full of stories of those broken-hearted African children driven from their burning villages; till the heart of Britain itself burned to free Africa. Then he took ship once more — for Africa. He stood in the stern to take his last look at the shores of England and the sad row of fluttering hand- Icerchiefs that waved farewell. He never saw Britain again. CHAPTER XII ON THE SLAVE TRAIL Ah, fair knight, said she, I flee for dread of my life, for here followeth me Sir Breuse the Pityless to slay me. Hold you nigh me, said Sir Launcelot. Then when Sir Launcelot saw Sir Breuse the Pityless, Sir Launcelot cried unto him, and said : False knight, destroyer of ladies and damosels, now thy last days be come. Malory, Le Morte D' Arthur^ Bk. ix, Ch. xxxv. CHAPTER XII ON THE SLAVE TRAIL ^ GRASS THAT TOWERED OVER THEIR HEADS " The fierce African sun beat down upon the white walls of Zanzibar as it looked out from its island over the glittering sea to Africa. Livingstone walked along the evil - smelling streets into an open square. The shouts of angry mas- ters, the hum of bargain- ing, and the snarling of many dogs filled the air. He saw herded there hundreds of Africans — naked boys with flash- ing teeth, young women who hung their heads with 1 If this book is being read aloud to young children, parts of this chapter and the next should be left out. The story of the slave trail has been told here with restraint for boys and girls of twelve and upward, but is too- haunting for younger minds. 159 i6o LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER burning shame, fathers whose eyes shone with hate and loathing, mothers who wept because their children had been taken from them. Among the Africans swaggered tall, thick-lipped, cruel-eyed Arabs. Here one stopped to make a girl open her mouth to see if her teeth were good, and felt her arm as farmers do sheep in a cattle market ; there another made a slave run across the open space — as if he were a pony — just to show his paces. It was the Zanzibar slave-market. As Living- stone watched the traffic in human lives, a slave- dhow, carrying another three hundred captured Africans, sailed into the port. And he knew that for every one that had come alive to Zanzibar, eight or nine had died rather than be captured, or had perished on the voyage. He ground his teeth with anger at the awful cruelties of the slave-traders. And in his heart he grieved for '' poor, despised, downtrodden Africa." He was starting on his last long trail — the trail of the slave-trade. He climbed on board the dhow that he had hired. For four days the ship sailed southward till they made the mouth of the Rovuma, which runs from the highlands of Central Africa out to the east coast. Finding no landing-place they sailed a little way off to Mikindany Bay, where with much shouting, pushing, and pulling, the six camels, three ON THE SLAVE TRAIL i6i buffaloes, two mules, and four donkeys which were to carry their provisions were landed from the dhow, by the thirty-six East Indians and Afri- can men who were Livingstone's companions. Chitane, the dog who was with them, helped by barking. They set out marching along a narrow path, through grass that towered over their heads, while the sun beat down fiercely. There was no breeze. They had to cut their way through miles of dense jungle, and hired some " jolly young Makonde " natives to clear the bamboos and creepers with hatchets. The air was steamy and smothering in the valleys, but clearer on the hills. From a hilltop they saw the Rovuma gleaming like a ribbon of silver along the winding valley. They walked — Indian file — up hill and down again into valleys from village to village along the narrow native furrow-paths. The Indian companions, who were a nuisance and a trouble to Livingstone all the time — though he was always kind to them — beat the donkeys about the head, stuck pointed sticks into the camels, killed the buffalo-calf, and were always lazy. One night, as he sat in the doorway of a hut, he saw two men pass with two women chained — the man behind carrying a gun. The horrors of the slave-trade were beginning to come upon him again. They met a woman with a heavy slave- i62 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER taming stick on her neck — a stick made from the trunk of a young tree. The woman's neck had been placed in the fork of the tree and tied there. She was forced to go about bearing this weight with her. Livingstone bought her from her captor, made her free, and led her back to her people. Village after village they passed, empty — with all the gardens deserted. The people who had sown the seeds and tilled those gardens, the children who had laughed and played among the village huts, were all gone — taken as slaves. Again and again they came on an Arab slave encampment, with pens in which the slaves were herded like animals. But if the Arabs heard that Livingstone was coming, they fled away, for they knew he was a British man who lived to destroy their wicked trade. Livingstone pushed on and on, often nearly star^^ed where once there had been happy, con- tented villages. Yet he reveled in walking over the hills and along the valleys. His muscles became again " as hard as a board; " his face was bronzed; his quick eyes noted the tracks of animals or the loveliness of flower and palm and creeper. Then at night he slept soundly after the long day's walk- ing, though sometimes a chorus of roaring lions would wake him. At last, after getting higher and higher among the uplands east of Lake Nyassa, one day he saw again the gleam of the blue waters of the bright SLAVERY ON THE SLAVE TRAIL 163 lake which he had discovered years before. He ran down to the beach, threw off his clothes, and rushed into the waves that broke upon the shore. " It was pleasant," he said, '' to bathe in the delicious waters again, hear the roar of the sea, and dash in the rollers." While here — wanting more ink to write with — he invented some good blue ink out of the juice of a berry mixed with a chemical. Livingstone wanted to cross the lake. There were two dhows on the lake, both used for carrying slaves; but the slave-trading Arabs refused to let him hire one of them, for they feared that he might burn it. Livingstone therefore started to walk down the eastern shore around the south end of Lake Nyassa. As he marched along the sultry path he saw the skulls and bones of abandoned slaves whitening in the sun. He waded through many brooks and over hills until they came to the south end of that narrow lake, which stretched north like a gigantic cater- pillar, three hundred miles long. Walking in Mpende's village there, Livingstone came to a pen of herded slaves, waiting to be driven to the coast to be sold. Most of them were boys, about ten years old. Sick at the thought of these lads having been torn from their fathers and mothers, he longed to go straight off and shake the dust of the village from his feet. Yet he stayed i64 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER on to give medicine to the sick child of the chief. The boy quickly got better, and the Doctor marched on northward up the west shore of the lake. Soon after he had started, an Arab slaver, in the village of a chief called Marenga, drew Musa, one of Livingstone's nien, aside to tell him a crafty story that he hoped would stop Livingstone from going on. " There is," said the Arab to Musa, '' a savage Mazitu chief on the path on which the Doctor is leading you. He is slaying everybody who goes through his land. He will kill you all." Musa, terrified at this, told the other bearers secretly. Nine of them, with Musa, fled under cover of the night, deserting the great Pathfinder who had led them so far. They went down to the coast and sent home to Britain the story that Liv- ingstone had been killed in a fight. Many people believed this story. A few said that it was not true. An Englishman named Young, who had known Musa years before, disbelieved every word of it, and set out to Africa to discover the truth. He swiftly made his way up the Zambezi and the Shire, found that the story was not true, heard how Livingstone had trudged on northward, and returned to Britain to rejoice the people's hearts with the news that Livingstone was alive. Livingstone did not know about this search or the lies that Musa had told. He only thought of ON THE SLAVE TRAIL 165 the faithful Makololo of his earlier journeys, and wished that they were with him now. He was glad that some of the bearers were still faithful; and went on, with them, undaunted. Their dog, Chitane, would run from end to end of the line of march, barking at the stragglers, then running forward to his master. Chitane slept at night at the doorway of Livingstone's tent, ready to spring at any man or animal which should come to hurt his master. But one day they had to wade across a marsh a mile wide — waist-deep. Chitane bravely started to swim across the marsh, though his master thought that he was being carried. The brave dog struggled on, getting weaker and weaker, till at last he sank. Livingstone was very sad at losing this plucky companion. The slave-raiders had left the land like a desert, so he could get nothing but African maize to eat. He soaked it in the milk of the goats that he had brought with him. Then the goats were stolen from him in the night. He had to eat the hard maize without milk, and one by one his teeth were loosened and fell out. " I took my belt up three holes to relieve hunger," wrote Livingstone in his private journal. He dreamed at night about splendid dinners and good food, but woke to find himself hungrier than ever. i66 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER Among the faithful bearers was a young African named Baraka, who, because he was careful, was allowed to carry the medicine-box. In that box was the quinine which helped Livingstone to fight against the fever. One day another bearer offered to help Baraka by carrying his burden for a stage. This bearer, who had been freed from slavery by Livingstone, returned this goodness by fleeing with the burden into the dense forest, where it was impos- sible for them to track him down. The medicine- box was gone — stolen. Livingstone had now no weapon against fever. " This loss," said Livingstone, " gnaws at my heart terribly. I feel as if I had now received sen- tence of death." Yet he wrote pages in his private journal, saying that, after all, the thief of the box could not be called so blameable, because he was a rescued slave who had been brought up badly. A mere skeleton of his sturdy self, sick and lonely, robbed of his goats and his medicine, hungry, stricken with fever, deserted by his com- panions, having lost even his dog, Livingstone tramped on to the village of Chitapangwa, a great chief, who received him with some of his men beat- ing drums furiously arid others keeping time with rattles. After leaving here, he marched on through lovely valleys and high wooded hills, up to a ridge from ON THE SLAVE TRAIL 167 OlSquareMiles SCOTLAND 30,405' quare Miles LES 7,445 Scjua.Te Miles Porto Kico and Philippine Islands (total area, 131,459 square miles) placed in Madagascar. COMPARATIVE AREAS "the vastest and most mysterious country on the earth" The countries named in the map make a total area of 10,289,199 square miles. The total area of Africa, including^ Madagascar, is 11,835,155 square miles, so there is still left room for another China proper, of 1,532,420 square miles, plus Massachusetts and Connecticut, together making 13,231 square miles, plus a further remainder of 305 square miles. i68 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER which he could see, still and peaceful in the morning light, the blue waters of Lake Tanganyika. He was so ill with fever that he tottered as he walked, and was plagued with a singing in the head. He grew worse, floundered outside his tent in his delirium, and fell down insensible, striking his head against a box. His few remaining faithful com- panions carried him into his hut. The trail had led the Pathfinder to the very center of the lake country of Africa. The natives, as he got better, told him stories of wonderful rivers running through lakes as large as seas. You will see on the map at the end of the book that, walking up from Lake Nyassa, he had reached the south end of Lake Tanganyika. He longed to get on to Ujiji, on the east shore of Tanganyika, where there was an Arab settlement. For there he hoped to find letters from his children. Yet he did not go to Ujiji. This is the reason: He had heard that a mighty river ran out of a mysterious lake to the west of him. Ever since the days when the Pyramids were built in Egypt, long centuries ago, men had wondered where the river Nile rose. Yet no one had ever discovered the place. Livingstone wondered whether he had, at last, come near to that very spot. This made him turn aside and begin his march afresh, although he was tired, fever-stricken, and had not seen a single letter from home for three years. Zi 1- ON THE SLAVE TRAIL 169 At last, in November, 1867, he discovered the lake he sought, and slept there in the hut of an African fisherman. He sailed on Lake Mweru in fishing canoes, and walked its shores till he found that a wide river called the Lualaba flowed out to the north. The river that flows into Lake Mweru on the south is called the Luapula. The heart of the scout and pathfinder was as lively in Livingstone now that he was fifty-four years old in the highlands of Africa as it was when he was fourteen on the hills of Scotland. So he could not rest till he knew whence the river Luapula came. The Africans said that it flowed from a great lake farther south. He said, " I will go and discover that lake.'^ But all his followers, save five, egged on by an Arab trader, refused to march. This is the kind of reason that they gave : '' No, we have had enough marching. When you have found one lake you say, ' I must find another.' We are tired. We want to go to Ujiji to rest. We will not go on this other journey." " I will not swerve a hairbreadth from my work while life is spared," Livingstone had declared long before. He stood firm to this now, and said that he would go on, whoever lagged behind. He set his face steadfastly south, with his five companions, who included two faithful fellows who would have given their lives for him — Susi and I70 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER Chumah. On the way they passed a slave caravan. The men, yoked together with chains and slave- sticks, were singing. '' Why do they sing when they are in chains ? " asked Livingstone. '' They are singing revenge," was the reply. '' They sing, ' When we die the yoke will be off. Our spirits will come back. We will haunt and kill those who have sold us.' " Then in grim and awful chorus the voices of the slaves rose and fell in unison as they named the men who had sold them, singing, '' We will haunt . . . we will kill ..." At one village called Kazembe's, on the way, Liv- ingstone met an Arab trader, named Mohammed Bogharib, who straightway became a friend to the Pathfinder. Mohammed fed him with vermicelli, and cakes, honey, and good coffee, cheering him on his lonely journey. So Livingstone tramped on until he discovered Lake Bangweolo, which is over a hundred miles wide. Green islands stood up out of the blue water. He set sail upon the lake and landed at these islands, where the natives crowded round this strange thing that they had never seen before — a white man. Turning from broad Lake Bangweolo, Living- stone tramped back northward to Kazembe's village, where he found Mohammed Bogharib, the Arab who had been so kind to him, just waiting to start ON THE SLAVE TRAIL 171 for Ujiji, on the shore of Tanganyika. There Liv- ingstone expected to find letters, medicine, fresh clothes, and all the news from England, for he had asked that these things should be sent there. Mohammed set his slave caravan in motion. He was as cruel to the slaves as he was kind to Living- stone, who, stricken with fever and with pneumonia, could not walk, and was carried for six weeks on a litter up steep ravines, along forest tracks, across streams, and down the hillsides of Tanganyika to the canoes on the shore of the lake. The wind was high and gusty, and the waves boomed upon the beach. The canoes could never cross the lake and live. So they hugged the shores of the deep bays of the lake till at last they could cross, and Livingstone was landed in Ujiji. Cloth and beads had been sent for Livingstone to give to his Africans, and letters, medicine, and papers for himself; but nearly all the stores and every letter except one had been stolen or burned by the Arab slave-traders. When he wrote forty letters home and paid carriers to take them to the coast, the servants of the Arabs destroyed every one. With cruel spite and fiendish cleverness they tried to cut him off from all touch with Britain. For they knew that the story of the horrors of the slave-trade, which Livingstone alone of all men living was able to tell the British, would do more 172 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER to raise the world against their trade and sweep it away than anything else on earth. The old Lion was at bay. He was surrounded by a ring of snarling foes, who dared not slay him, yet hoped to hold him powerless as in a net. CHAPTER XIII SPEARS IN THE BUSH He said : Ye be welcome. And he answered and saluted him again . . . And there was great joy between them., for there is no tongue can tell the joy that they made either of other, and many a friendly word spoken . . . And there every each told other of their adventures and marvels that had befallen them. Truly, said Launcelot, never knew I of so high adventures done, and so marvelous and strange. Malory, Le Moj-te D' Arthur^ Book xvii, Ch. xiii. AN AFRICAN PYTHON — OVER TEN FEET IN LENGTH CHAPTER XIII SPEARS IN THE BUSH With a proud Arab at its head, a band of Africans, carr3ang guns and shackles, marched out from Ujiji village. Lying in the shade of the veranda of his little house, the Pathfinder, slowly winning back his health, watched them sadly as they passed by on their slave-raiding. His face was furrowed with the pain of a hun- dred fevers and tanned wnth the African sun. His mouth was set in grim determination that — when health came back — he would go on with his work, whoever might oppose. Yet his strong face warmed into a smile as his faithful Chumah came to bring a cup of tea to refresh the beloved Bwana (master). At nightfall the sound of harsh commands and the crack of whips was heard. It was another Arab, returning from a raid, with scores of misera- 175 176 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER ble slaves being driven into the village. Living- stone sat on, brooding over the wrongs of Africa — slowly planning to go west into the unknown Man- yuema country to find whether the Lualaba, which, you remember, runs out of the north end of the newly discovered Lake Mweru, was indeed the Kongo or the Nile. He heard dim rumors of a great chief who ruled the country on the river, and deter- mined to set out to find him. He knew that if he found the hidden sources of the Nile the whole world would listen to him. And he wanted to tell the world the story of the slave-trade. He roused himself, still weak with fever, and with his followers took boat across Lake Tangan- yika. All night they rowed, and in the morning landed on an island, made a fire, cooked breakfast, and took to the boats again. At last, after staying at another islet, they reached the west shore, landed and marched through open forest, fording rivers knee-deep. They came upon hunting parties of Manyuema people, shooting their poisoned arrows — large ones for elephants and buffaloes, but small ones, made of strong grass stalks, for smaller animals. He stayed among these people in their villages among the mountains. The strangest creature of this lovely land of great mountains, gigantic trees, and deep dells was the soko — a wild human-looking ape that beats on his SPEARS IN THE BUSH 177 breast as on a drum, lives on bananas, makes nests in the trees, kidnaps children, and carries them to its nest, crushes men in its awful grip, and, as Livingstone saw, bites off their fingers and toes when fighting for its life. A young soko was given to Livingstone, and soon learned to love him, giving him a cry of wel- come when she saw him, crying if he would not carry her. She was like a child, covering herself with a mat to sleep, and wiping her face with a leaf for a napkin. He found the Manyuema all kind to him, except where the Arabs or their slaves had been. Yet they were always fighting — one tribe against another. For the first time in his thousands of miles of tramping, the Pathfinder's feet failed him. Awful sores came upon them and prevented him from walking. This kept him at one place eighty days in a hut. All his companions had left him, save three — Susi, Chumah, and Gardner. Yet he could enjoy sitting under a tree with his umbrella up in drenching rain, drinking rain-water to quench his thirst, and listening to a tiny green tree-frog that sat by him on a leaf and sang like a bird. As he went on and reached Bambarre, a village near the Luama, a tributary of the river Lualaba, he met slave gangs who had been captured on the other side of the river. 178 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER Children would march along, captives, with wonderful strength, till the sound of dancing and drumming would fall on their ears as they passed some village. It reminded them of home. Then they would sob, and slowly waste away with broken hearts. " I am heartsore," Livingstone confides to his journal, " and sick of human blood." It was a bright sultry morning on the banks of the Luapula at Nyangwe market. The river was dotted with canoes laden with Manyuema women, bringing to the market their baskets of fruit and fowl, flour and vegetables, salt and pepper. They came by river and forest path till fifteen hundred of them were busily and happily buying and selling, surrounded by their children and friends. Little girls ran about selling cups of water to the thirsty bargainers. Livingstone walked among them, enjoying the sight and even the noise, with the cocks crowing, the pigs squealing, and the children laughing. He was just strolling away when a shot and a scream broke on his ear. He turned, and saw three servants of the slave-trader firing right into the thick of the people. The laughter was changed to shouts of terror as the women threw down their goods and dashed to the canoes. Men and women, wounded with shot, leaped into the boats and into the river to swim for SPEARS IN THE BUSH 179 the opposite bank, which was nearly three miles off, for the Luapula was very wide. But, one after another, the heads that dotted the river sank. Livingstone, in burning anger, clutched his pistol to fire at these murderers. But he held his hand. Had he fired he would have been killed. He did not fear that, but he did a greater thing. Livingstone wrote down the story of that morning, and, when it reached England, it roused the world more than anything else had ever done to sweep away this monstrous slave traffic from under the sun. Next morning, just before starting back eastward to Ujiji, he stood on a height and counted seventeen villages in flames, fired by these ruffians. He and his men, on the way back, were passing one day along a narrow path, wath dense bush brushing their elbows on either side. Suddenly there was a rustle among the leaves, a large spear shot through the bush, grazed Livingstone's back, and stuck quivering in the earth. Another spear, hurled from behind a tree by an invisible hand, stabbed the earth a foot in front of him. Manyuema savages, thinking that Livingstone was a slave-trader who had slain men and burned villages, were out in ambush, set on killing the best friend that they had in the world. Livingstone marched on, and saw in front of him a gigantic tree. It was growing on an ant-hill that was itself twenty feet high. Fire was burning at its i8o LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER roots, weakening the trunk. He heard a crack, saw the tree shiver and sway in the wind, and then fall toward himself. He turned and rushed back. With a crashing of branches the enormous trunk fell with a thud to the earth, a yard behind Living- stone's back, covering him with a cloud of dust. It was the third hairbreadth escape in that one day. " Peace ! peace ! " cried his scattered attendants as they came back to him. " You will finish all your work in spite of these people and in spite of everything ! " " We had," said Livingstone, '' five hours of run- ning the gauntlet, waylaid by spearmen, who all felt that if they killed me they would be revenging the death of relatives. From each hole in the tangled mass we looked for a spear; and each moment ex- pected to hear the rustle w^hich told of deadly weapons hurled at us. " I became weary with the constant strain of danger, and — as I suppose happens Avith soldiers on the field of battle — not courageous, but perfectly indifferent whether I were killed or not." Livingstone now fell very ill, but struggled over the mountain range, through dense bush, across running rivers, and then through open forest, till he and his men came within sound of the waves breaking on Tanganyika's beach. He had left the Manyuema country. I READ THE WHOLE BIBLE THROUGH FOUR TIMES WHILST I WAS IN MANYUEMA" SPEARS IN THE BUSH i8i " I read," he says, " the whole Bible through four times whilst I was in Manyuema." He reached Ujiji starved and ill, only '' a ruckle of bones," to find that all the stores which he had ordered to be sent there had been sold and the pro- ceeds taken by Shereef, a miserable Moslem tailor of the place. '' I felt in my destitution as if I were the man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves. I could not hope for priest, Levite, or Good Samaritan to come by on either side. . . . But when my spirits were at their lowest ebb, the Good Samaritan was close at hand." There was the sound of guns being fired into the air outside Ujiji. Susi rushed to Livingstone at the top of his speed. Pausing for a moment, he gasped out : ^' An Englishman! I see him!" and darted off to meet the stranger. Toward the village there strode a white man at the head of a caravan of African followers. By his side walked a gigantic negro bearing unfurled the flag of the United States of America. The white man had traveled many thousand miles in search of Livingstone, for news of whom the whole world had now waited for years. The American was excited beyond words. " What would I not have given," he said afterward, *' for a bit of friendly wilderness where I might i82 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER vent my joy in some mad freak — turning a somer- sault or slashing at trees ! My heart beat fast." As he walked toward the village, he saw the man for whom he had searched — Livingstone the Pathfinder. '' As I advanced toward him I noticed he was pale, that he looked wearied and wan, that he had gray whiskers and mustache, that he wore a bluish cloth cap with a faded gold band on a red ground round it, and that he had on a red, sleeved waist- coat and a pair of gray tweed trousers." Henry Morton Stanley, the young American, yearned to embrace Livingstone, yet held himself in, and walking deliberately to him, took off his hat and said : ''Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" " Yes," said he, with a kind smile, lifting his cap. He had not seen a white face for five years. They grasped hands — America and Britain in the heart of Central Africa. Under the eaves of Livingstone's little house Stanley handed him a bag of letters from England — the first that he had received for years. Living- stone chose out one or two by the handwriting on the envelope, letting documents from statesmen and scholars fall back unopened into the bag. His face beamed as he read them. They were letters from his children. STANLEY FJNDS LIVINGSTONE CHAPTER XIV THE LAST TRAIL There is no one alive, Christian nor heathen, that can find such another knight, to speak of his prowess, and of his hands, and his truth withal. For yet could there never creature say of him dishonor and make it good. Of all knights in the world I loved him most, and had most joy of him, and all was for his noble deeds. Malory, Le Morte U Arthur, Book ix, Ch. xiv; Book viii, Ch. xxxvi. For four months and four days I lived with Livingstone in the same house, or in the same boat, or in the same tent, and I never found a fault in him . . . Each day's life with him added to my admiration for him. His gentle- ness never forsakes him ; his hopefulness never deserts him. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman, the enduring reso- lution of the Anglo-Saxon. The man has conquered me. H. M. Stanley. UNDER THE EAVES OF THAT ROOF IN UJIJI CHAPTER XIV THE LAST TRAIL Sitting side by side under the eaves of that roof in Ujiji the men talked. '' You have brought me new Hfe," Livingstone repeated again and again. He had been eating two tiny meals a day : now he ate four good ones. He laughed, '' with a laugh of the whole man from head to heel," sly fun peeped out of the corners of his eyes as he told Stanley quaint and moving stories of his adventures. Then they rose, as the sun slowly sank behind the mountains across the lake, and walked up and down the shore, breathing the cool breezes that moved on the water and watching the waves beating on the smooth white beach. There Stanley told Living- stone how' he had been suddenly telegraphed for by iSs- i86 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, and told to go to Central Africa, to spare no ex- pense, but at all costs to find Livingstone if he were alive. They laughed and chatted again in the market- place of Ujiji, telling their adventures as they looked out over the broad silver lake. A cloud of dust showed where a flock of bleating goats and a herd of lowing cattle were being driven in to the market; while up from the boats along the beach came fishermen to sell their catches. Stacks of ivory tusks, baskets of beads, salt and fruit were sold there by gossiping old African women, the men standing by, leaning on their spears, while children ran in and out, wrestling, playing, and eating bananas. They launched on the lake one day in a large canoe, carved from a great mvula tree, with sixteen rowers, and plenty of cloth and beads for money. In the calm green depths of the lake the hippo- potami lurked, coming up to breathe and blow close to the canoe, and then ducking again, " as if they were playing hide-and-seek." At night Livingstone and Stanley landed, set up their tents and slept, striking tent again at day- break as the sun called the white mists from the ;surface of the lake. In the lovely bays of Tanganyika they saw Africans fishing from their boats in front of their THE LAST TRAIL 187' cozy villages, with the neat gardens and grainfields behind under the shadow of the beautiful hills. On the beach the brown children splashed and paddled fearlessly, with their mothers looking on. Stones were hurled at them at one place where, they wished to land. Stanley wished to fire at the savage people to frighten them. But Livingstone showed that he did not wish this, telling Stanley how often he himself had suffered from such treat- ment as this, and had found it always due to the cruel treatment of Arab traders. They landed farther along on a spit of sand and made supper. But while they ate it in the fading evening light, they saw parties of savages creeping up from all sides. Hurriedly they took their seats with the rowers in the canoe and pushed off, but not a moment too soon. For in the dusk they saw dark forms creeping over the rocks to the sandy place that they had just left. On they went northward. Fever struck Stanley down, and Livingstone laid his cool hands on his friend's hot forehead and nursed him back to health. When Stanley was sleeping during the heat of the day he was awakened by shouts of : '' Master, master, get up, quick ! Here is a fight going to begin ! " He sprang up, buckling on his revolver belt. A crowd of angry natives and a drunken youth i88 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER were threatening to kill the party, thinking that they were Arabs, and wishing to revenge a murder committed by Arabs on their tribe. Dr. Livingstone, who had gone off with his com- pass, just then came in sight over the brow of a hill, with Susi and Chumah. A fight seemed unavoid- able. But Livingstone, smiling and baring his arm to show the white skin, said : '' See, I am not an Arab, but a white man." In this way he gently quieted the fierce and passionate natives, who let him and Stanley depart in peace. After going down the lake to Ujiji and spending Christmas there, they started away again in two canoes for Unyanyembe, where Livingstone was to wait while Stanley went to the coast and sent up stores and good bearers for the Pathfinder's last journey. " Come home with me to England," Stanley had said again and again. '' Your family would like to see you, oh so much ! " " I must finish my task," Livingstone answered; and he wrote in his journal the words that his daughter Agnes had written in her last letter to him. : '' Much as I wish you to come home, I would rather that you finished your work to your own satisfaction than return merely to gratify me." '' Rightly and nobly said, my darling Nannie," writes her father, his eyes glowing with pride. THE LAST TRAIL . 189 *' Vanity whispers pretty loudly, ' She is a chip of the old block.' My blessing on her and all the rest." At Ujiji all was bustle and excitement as the canoes started, Livingstone ahead, with the British flag flying on a great bamboo at the stern of his boat, while Stanley followed with '' the ever beau- tiful Stars and Stripes " waving and rustling from a still taller flagstaff. Livingstone, in joke, vowed to cut down the tallest palm he could find so that he should fly the flag of Great Britain higher than that of the States. " I cannot look at the flags," says Stanley, " with- out pride that the two Anglo-Saxon nations are represented this day on this great inland sea, in the face of wild nature and barbarism." The boatmen were excited too. They raced and spurted, shouted and sang, perspired and laughed, groaned and puffed. Stanley had mapped out a way to Unyanyembe that would avoid the dangerous tribes that he had met on the way up. So the boatmen as they rowed sang to celebrate this : We have given the Waka the slip ! ha ! ha ! The Wavinza will trouble us no more ! ho ! ho ! Miorivu can get no more cloth from us ! hy ! hy ! And Kiala will see us no more — nevermore ! he I he ! They then burst into laughter and pulled with such tremendous power at the oars that the canoes quivered from stem to stern. And while they sped down the lake their land party on the bank, with 190 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER goats, sheep, and donkeys, shared the joy and joined in the song. The land party met them again at a river delta where they left the lake and struck eastward to Unyanyembe, seeing on the journey herds of grace- ful giraffes, some seventeen feet high, grazing on the leaves of trees. At last they reached the village. The time had come for parting. " We had a sad breakfast together," said Stanley, afterward. '' I could not eat, my heart was too full ; neither did my companion seem to have an appetite. We found something to do which kept us longer together. At eight o'clock I was not gone, and I had thought to have been off at 5 a.m." At last they grasped hands and said farewell. Stanley, tough traveler as he was, could not keep back his tears. Stanley turned to take his last look at the old hero in his gray clothes. Livingstone, with bent head and slow resolute step, turned back to finish his lonely task. Livingstone was never seen by a white man again. He waited at Unyanyembe till Stanley's prom- ised stores and bearers should come. Day after day passed, and no news came. Livingstone watched the whydah ^ birds feeding 1 Pronounced whid'-ah. THE LAST TRAIL 191 their young. " Each Httle one puts his head on one side as the male bird inserts his bill, chirruping and playing with him. The young ones lift up a feather as a child would a doll, and invite others to do the same, as if saying: 'Come, let us play at making little houses.' " He also enjoyed seeing the African boys playing with their little bows and arrows. They shot at locusts which settled on the ground. They made play-guns of reed, which went off with a trigger and spring, with a cloud of ashes for smoke. Some- times they made double-barreled guns of clay, with cotton-fluff for smoke. Livingstone wrote in that five months of waiting a letter to the New York Herald, in which he said of the slave-trade those words that stung awake the heart of the world : '' All I can say in my loneliness is, may Heaven's rich blessing come down on every one — American, Englishman, Turk — who will help to heal this open sore of the world." One day he stood up with eagerness in his face as he saw a line of Africans coming toward him. They were the porters hired by Stanley and sent to Livingstone. His weary waiting was over. With shouting of men and lowing of cattle they started off on the last long trail, to find the river Luapula, and to discover whether, after all, it was the source of the Nile or the Kongo. They went west to Tanganyika, the herds of zebra galloping 192 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER off as they passed, while now and again the roar of lions filled the bush. Southward they went, and, after Christmas, 1872, plunged through the dark and awful marshes round Lake Bangweolo. The ceaseless rain beat upon their heads. Livingstone suffered agonies of pain through illness, and grew weaker day by day. He became, at last, too feeble to wade, and often would be lifted from the shoulders of Susi to those of Chumah and other bearers as they crossed the swollen rivers, wading chin-deep in the water. Then his strength left him so that he could not even sit up. His faithful bearers made him a kitanda — a kind of hammock slung on a pole borne on the shoulders of men. With tender care — for each jolt of the kitanda sent pain through him — those sturdy Africans, Susi, Chumah, and Jacob Wainwright, carried Living- stone, splashing through marsh, and walking in the narrow path between the tall grasses. At last in his journal we find the words: " Knocked up quite, and remain — recover — sent to buy milch goats. We are on the banks of the Molilamo." These are the last words he ever wrote. They crossed the Molilamo river, and slowly, with many rests, paced the way to Chitambo's village of Ilala. ** Stop, put me down," came the feeble voice from "he entered the hut THE LAST TRAIL 193 the kitanda again and again, as Chumah bent down to listen to the beloved Bwana's wish. They put him down under the broad eaves of a native hut till the new hut which they were build- ing for him was ready. Villagers came, and leaning upon their bows and spears gazed at the stricken Pathfinder. They had heard of him in other years, from men who had told them : " He is good. He does not beat his bearers. He has no slaves." The hut was finished. They carried him in and, supported by Susi and Chumah, he entered the hut. They laid him down. '' Susi, bring my watch," came the voice. Susi held the watch in his master's palm while Livingstone slowly turned the key and wound it up. The night fell. A fire burning outside the door cast its glare within the hut. Just after eleven Susi was called. Livingstone's mind was wandering to the great river that he had set out to reach. '' Is this the Luapula? " he asked. " No," said Susi, gently, " we are in Chitambo's village near the Molilamo." There was silence. Then the faint voice came : " How many days is it to the Luapula?" The Pathfinder was still eager for the river of his quest. 194 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER " I think it is three days, master," repHed Susi. He sighed. Susi went back to his own hut. A boy, Majwara, stayed with Livingstone to watch. An hour later the boy called Susi, who, holding a candle and the medicine-chest near to Livingstone, helped him to select some medicine. " All right; you can go now," murmured Living- stone. Just before dawn Majwara called to Susi : '' Come to Bwana [Master] ; I am afraid." Susi called Chumah and three others. They' entered the hut. By the dim light of the flickering candle they saw the bowed form of their master kneeling by the bedside, his head buried in his hands on the pillow. They waited, thinking that he prayed. But the prayer was ended. The Pathfinder had found his Quest. He had crossed the River. Standing about the dying watchfire, as the cock crew and the dawn broke, the men in whispers planned what they must do. Their love for him made them plan an act of daring and heroic faithfulness. They took his heart and buried it under a mvula tree near Chitambo's village. They embalmed his body, wrapped him in swathes, bound the burden to a pole, and bearing him shoulder high, carried BEARING HBI SHOULDER HIGH " THE LAST TRAIL 195 their leader, now no longer able to guide them, about thirteen hundred miles to the east coast. Livingstone had made his last march; yet after his death he went the most wonderful of all his journeys. Let the names of those five immortal brown companions who had been with him since he started from Zanzibar eight years before be written here : Susi and Chumah, Amoda, Abram and Mabruki. With them is the faithful Jacob Wainwright. They bore him through marsh and river, forest and jungle, over mountain ridges and along the valley paths. They crossed the Luapula where it is four miles wide. They faced hunger and thirst, the spear and gun of enemies, for his sake. They found as they neared the east coast that the natives all along the path were set on stopping them from carrying the body through their land. So they wrapped it up so that it would look like a travelings bale of cotton, and made another package out of fagots of wood to look about like their original burden. Six men then marched off as if to Unyanyembe with the fagot bundle. The villagers thought that Livingstone was being carried back to the interior, and so allowed the party to go to the coast with its '' bale of cotton," which was really their precious charge. At last they reached the coast. The body was 196 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER carried to a cruiser, and so borne to England, while all the world mourned his death. Livingstone had stood thirty-five years before in the silence of the great nave of the Abbey Church of Westminster, a dark-haired student, with bared head before the monuments of the heroes and kings, soldiers and saints, of the Anglo-Saxon race. There, on April 18, 1874, he himself, among the greatest of the ''race of hero spirits," -was laid to rest. 23 - gROUCHT 8Y FAITHFUL HANDS OVEt IMU® AH© S€A WEHI HESTS DAVID LiVJNCSTONE, r^ Ml*'; 3 10 NARY, ft TRAVELLER, a< PHILANTHROPIST Sg 80RII MARCH ^9.F8I3, *< o ^ o < ED MAY 1.1873, h^ AT sLamtyre, Lanarkshire; AT C H ITAM so S VILLAGE, OLAL A. is f^R 30 YEARS MiS LfFE WAS SPE NT ^^ «« — • <1 W AN yNWEARfED EFFORT g^ > < TO EVANCEUZ^ THE NATIVE RACES, CC a "^n EXPLORE THE UNDISCOVERED SECRETS, O = ' ABOLISH THE DESOLATING SLAVE TRADE, -^ 3 5*^ OF CENTRAL AFRICA, S^ 5 3 ^" * ^ ^ WHERE WITH HIS LAST WORDS HE WROTE, « < t ? 'ALL 1 CAN ADD IH WY SOLiTUDEJS, .*" ^ f^, MAY heaven's rich BLESSiNC COME DOWN ON EVERY ONE, AMERICAN,EMCLISH,OR TURK, WHO WILL HELP TO HEAL THiS OPEN SORE OF THE WORLD*' THE TOMBSTONE IX WESTMINSTER A15BEY IN THE FOREST OF HEROES I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity; do you carry out the work which I have begun. I LEAVE IT WITH YOU. Livingstone. . . . We must bear the brunt of danger, We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! On and on the compact ranks. Through the battle, through defeat, moving yet and never stopping. Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! Whitman. IN THE FOREST OF HEROES It is a gray day at the beginning of May. The Thames runs down on a falling tide, swirling under the arches of Westminster Bridge. We walk out of the rain into the mysteri- ous twilight between the pillars of the Abbey. High up in the dim air the tall gray - brown trunks throw out their branches of stone that meet above our heads. It is '' the forest of WESTMINSTER ABBEY, LONDON stOUC " whcre thc heroes of our race sleep side by side. We stand there gazing down on the slab with its letters of brass that begin BROUGHT BY FAITHFUL HANDS OVER LAND AND SEA HERE RESTS DAVID LIVINGSTONE 199 200 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER He rests here. Yet, as we stand looking up the aisle of the Abbey, that stretches in front of us like a forest glade, and dreaming of this hero-scout, we see an endless pageant of strange scenes. We see the dauntless Pathfinder, still at work in the lives of those who follow after. Outside the Abbey the river runs as it ran fifteen hundred years ago, when fair-haired boys were seized and shackled here and shipped in galleys over the seas by the slave-traders of ancient Rome. We close our eyes and see that other slave-market under the blazing sun of Zanzibar as Livingstone saw and hated it. The slaves and their Arab mas- ters melt from the sight, and in their place there rises — stone on stately stone, laid by the hands of free Africans — a beautiful cathedral.^ From within this new " forest of stone " come the voices of African boys singing in their own tongue : He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, To preach deliverance to the captives. And we hear an African from the lectern read : I am the voice of one crying, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, Make his paths straight. The Pathfinder's spirit marches on. 1 Zanzibar Cathedral stands on the spot where the old slave- market which Livingstone visited was held. Pliuto by TlatTij Johnsun BROKEN FETTERS The kneeling; African is a Christian, who is setting a slave free at a mission station by taking the shackles off his legs IN THE FOREST OF HEROES 201 A team of horses is straining at the plow across a field on a Scottish hillside. A sturdy boy grips the plow-handles. He drives a straight furrow, though his mind is full of broader fields — still unplowed. The tired horses stop to rest half-way across the field. The boy pauses there, wondering about the days in front of him — as all boys do. ''Can I not plow a longer furrow than this?" James Stewart asks himself. Then he says, " God helping me, I will be a missionary." The Pathfinder's Missionary Travels stirs him with the story of that heroic adventure, Living- stone's first great journey. At last young Dr. Stewart sails to Africa. He walks in the path that the great Doctor had already made there. To-day an old, old African, gray-haired and wrinkled, walks among the huts at Molepolole in South Africa. His name is Lishokwani. Over seventy years ago a white man, with kindly, piercing eyes and the face of a warrior, walked into the village. At night, when the men had come from hunting and the women had ceased to grind, the people of the village came together to listen to the White Doctor, who told them strange new things about one Jesus. A boy listened — Lishokwani — . . . and he re- membered. Years ago, after Livingstone had been carried to 202 LIVINGSTONE THE PATHFINDER his rest in the Abbey, another missionary at this village of Alolepolole called for volunteers for hard service. '' Those who go on this journey," he said, " must face thirst and hunger in the Kalahari desert, and wild beasts in the woods, to preach to those beyond. Who will go ? " The young men held back — afraid. Then came the voice of old Lishokwani : " I will go; and you young men who are afraid shall come and find my body by the way and bury it. You will know that I died trying to do the work to which Christ had called you, but which you had left undone." Lishokwani remembered the hero-pioneer whom he had heard as a boy. He went across the Kalahari desert. He returned worn and weary, so that they thought he could not live. Now the young men go where Lishokwani led, and are teaching others of the true way. It is the spirit of Livingstone the Pathfinder. The pioneer with his '' forward-tread " still leads men out to the service of Christ in the forests and villages of Africa and the world. The hero-scout sounds his reveille to our slumbering camps : With the sound of trumpet, Far, far off the daybreak call — hark ! how loud and clear I hear it sound. Swift ! to the head of the army ! — swift spring to your places. Pioneers ! O Pioneers ! INDEX INDEX Abram, 195 Adventures, 135, 136 Africa, 28; area, 167; Cen- tral, 70, 109, 136, 160, 182; Livingstone's field, 28; made known by Living- stone, 136; path to east coast, 70, 1 19-127; path to west coast, 70, 90-119; South, 35, 71, 201 African, animals, 3, 5-7, s^, 42-57, 112, 128, 142, 176; birds, 5, 57, 91, 129, 138, 142, 143, 190, 191; boys, 144, 148, 150, 159, 163., 191, 200; children, see Children of Africa; deserts, see Desert; fever, see Fever, African; flowers, 6, 92, 138; food, see Food; girls, 2,7, 39, 52, 144, 148, 159, 160, 178; hero-legends, 3, 42; insects, 6, 92, 129, 143; maps, changed by Living- stone's work, 28; men, 51, 59, 151, 161, see also Makololo; native workers, 136; plain described by Moffat, 28; reptiles, 61, yj, 91, 112, 142; slaves, see Slaves; whips, 53; women, see Women of Africa Africans, good qualities of, shown by Livingstone, 136 ; and by his bearers, 194-196 Ajawa, the, 150, 151 Algoa, town and bay, 34 America. See United States American, the, 181 Amoda, 195 Anglo-Saxon, regard for Africans, 127, 144; unity in civilizing work, 189 Animals. See African animals Antelopes, 5, 36, 56, 57, 142 Ant-hill, a huge, 79 Arab, settlement, 168 ; slave- traders, 82, 160-163, 171, 175, 188 4riel, the, 153, 154 A.rm, Livingstone's, crushed by lion, 45 *' Asthmatic," the, 139-149 Atlantic Ocean, ZZ, 34, lOi B Babies, brown and white, 53, 54, 56, 76; one of Living- stone's that died, 68 Bakaa, the, 40, 41 Bakhatla, the, 42-44, 51, 52 Bakoba, the, 66 Bakwena, the, 38, 53 Bambarre, 177 Bananas, 138, 186 Bangweolo, Lake, 153, 170, 192 Banyan tree, 144 Baraka, 166 Barotse, the, 81, 91 Batlea, the, 122 Battle-ax, 69, 122 Bazinka, the, name for Port- uguese, 123 Beads, 38, 96, 113, I53, 171, 186 Bearers or carriers, 88, 165, 190, 191-195 Bennett, James Gordon, 186 Bible, 29, 88; Livingstone's love of, 7, 92, 136, 181 205 2o6 INDEX Birds. See African birds Blacksmith and carpenter, Livingstone as, 51 Blantyre, Scotland, 11, 15-17, 24, 28, 29 Boers, the, 70, 75-77 Bombay, 155, 156 Bonfires, 46, 150 Bows and arrows, 66, 113, 191 Boy scout names of patrols, 38 Britain, 151, 164, 182; Liv- ingstone's return visits to, 130-137, 156 British, commissioner, 107 ; cruiser and captain at Loanda, 106-108; consul, Livingstone a, 137 Bubi, Chief, 38 Buffaloes, 5, 54, 66, 176 Burns, Robert, 12 Bushmen, the, 57, 58, 66 Bwana or master, 193, 194 CaHco from Lawrence Mills, Lowell, 128 Cambridge University, 149 Camp-fire and camping scenes, 3-7, 35, 36, 77, 91, 93, 94, 120 Canals for irrigation, 5, 40, 43, 54 Canoes, 5, 59, 60. 66, 80, 81, 90, 120-127, 130, 171, 178, 186-189 Cape of Good Hope, 34, 71 Cape Town, 34, 72, 137, 151 Cassange, 108-110 Cat's-cradle, 39 Charlie, Prince, 12 Charms, 126 Chibokwe, the, 95 " Child of Loki," a stream, 99 Children of Africa, 39, 49-53, 80, 115, 144, 162, 178, 187 China, Livmgstone's first choice as a field, 22, 27 Chipping Ongar, 26, 27 Chitambo, Chief, 192 Chitane, a dog, 161, 165 Chitapangwa, Chief, 166 Chobe river, 79, 88-90 Chonuane, 53, 54 Christ. See Jesus Christ Christmas, 108, 133, 188, 192 Chumah, 170, 177, 188, 192- ?95 Clicks in Bushman language, 57 Cloth for trading, no, 128, 153, 171, 186 Clothes given men at Loanda, 107, 114 Clyde river, 11 Coffee, 83, 91 Convolvulus, the, 6, 7S Cooking, 35, 36 Cotton cloth and goods, 83, 128 Cotton-mill in which Living- stone worked, 11, 15, 16 Courage of natives, 39 Covenanters, 13 Cowardice of natives, 43 Cows or cattle, wealth in, 135 Crimean War, no Crocodiles, 61, 91 Crops, as a future prospect, 92 Cruelty of barbarous natives, 39 Crying overcome by African girls, 39 Culloden, 12 D Deserters, 164 Deserts, 56, 60. See also INDEX 207 Kalahari desert, and Sa- hara desert Dhows, 160, 161, 163 Dilolo, Lake, 114; Lord of. Discoveries. See Living- stone, discoveries Doctor-missionary treat- ments, 39, 40, 52 Doctor of Laws, 135 Donaldson, Captain, 33, 34 Donkeys, 107 Dragoons, in Scottish perse- cution, 13 Flamingo, a vermilion, 91 Flowers. See African Uowers Food, of Livingstone and his company, 36, 52, 77, 78, 92, 93, 114, 125, 129, 138, 165, 170, 192; of natives, 95, 126, 178, 186 Fording streams, 35 Forests and trees, 60, 92, 93, 108, 112 113, 137, 138, 142- 144, 180, 186 Fowls, 138, 178 Freeing of slaves, 38, 150, 162, 166 East coast, 119, 130, i37, i53, 195 Edward VII, King, 135 Elephants, 66, 67, 122, 123, 128, 142, 143, 176; tusks of. See Tusks of elephants England, 36, 70, 130, 143, 171, 182 English, hunters, 43 ; lan- guage, 38, 130 European trade as a benefit to Africa, 137 Explorations, 152. See also Journeys of Livingstone in Africa Fear of witchcraft and demon-spirits, 43, 97, 109 Ferry canoe, 113 Fetish-huts, 98 Fetishes, 98 Fever, African, 67, 70, 100, 105. 151, 187 Fighting between tribes, 39, 177 Fishing, 186 Flags of Great Britain and the United States, 181, 189 Gabriel, Mr., 107 Games and play of children, 39, 65, 133, 148, 191 Gardens, 5, 36, 37, 43, 51, 55, 162 Gardner, an attendant, 177 George, King, 12 George, the, 33, 34, 155 Gipsy-tent, 88, 94, 100 Giraffes, 190 Glasgow, II, 24, 25, 29, 135 God, as Father, 39, 93, 96, loi, no, 142; worship of, 13, 52 Great Britain, 14, 25 Great White Leader, 3 Guinea-fowl, 56 Guns and revolver used by Livingstone, 42-46, 96, 100, III, 151; by natives, 94, 95, III, 150, 161, 178 Gutzlaff, 22 H Hair of African and of white people, 54, 98 Head-dresses, 80, 81 Highland ancestry of Liv- ingstone, II, 12 208 INDEX Hippopotami, 3, 5, 78, 79, 88- 90, 92, 186 Houses built by Livingstone, 40, 50-53 Hunter, Gavin, 13 Hunters, 43, 55, 81 Hurricane, a, 154 Hut built for Livingstone, 193 Hyenas, 57, 128 Ibises, 91, 138 Iguana, the, 91, 93 Ilala, place of Livingstone's death, 192 India, 155, 156 Indian Ocean, 34, 70, 155 Indians, East, 161 ; red, 133 Insects. See African insects Ivory, 80, 83, 112, 186. See also Tusks of elephants Jackals, 57 Javelins, 91, iii, 123, 126 Jesus Christ, 72, 75, 124, 202; as a hero, 42 ; as a mis- sionary physician, 23 ; as one who loves, 53 ; Living- stone's allegiance to, 18, 23, 72, 124 Journeys of Livingstone in Africa, 34-36, 40-43, 56-61, 66-71-80, 88-101, 107-115, 1 19-130, 140-148, 148-152, 160-172, 176-181, 191-194; a typical day, 90-94 K Kalahari desert, 5, 39-41, 56-58, 61, 77, 202 Kassai river, 94, 113 Kaw^awa, chief and people, 113. 114 Kazembe, 170 Kitanda or hammock, 192 Kolobeng, 54, 61, 70, 75, 76 Kongo river, 112, 113, 176, 191 Kongone, the, mouth of Zam- bezi, 137, 138 Kroomen, the, 154 Kuruman, 36-38, 43, 50, 71, 75, 76, 151 Kwango river, 94 Kwanza river, 94 Lady Nyassa, the, 152-156 "Lady of the Lake," 153 Latin studied by Livingstone, 16, 17 Laughter of natives, 99, 114, 189 Lawrence Mills, Lowell, 128 Lechulatebe, Chief, 56, 61 Lekoa, a (an Englishman), 126 Lemon trees, 142 Lepelole, 38, 39, 4i Letters, of Livingstone, 71- 75, 142, 147, 171, 191; to Livingstone, no, 171, 182, 188 Libonta, 114 Light Brigade, charge, no Linyanti, 70, 80, 88, 95, 97, 143 Lions, 3, 5, 42-44. 57, 77, 162, 192 ; one attacking Living- stone, 4,. 43-46, 136 Lishokwani, 201, 202 Liverpool, 137 Livingstone, Agnes, David's mother, 12, 13-16, 23, 24, 28, 29, 134; his daughter, 56, 61, 65-72, 133, 188 Livingstone, David, arm crushed by lion, 4; Bible interest, 7, 29, 181 ; birth, INDEX 209 14; body carried to coast and taken to England, 194- 196; boyhood, 4; brothers, 4, 14, 17; building houses, 5, 40; courage, fortitude, and patience in work and meeting trials, 42, 43, 55, 83, 94-97, 105, 107, no, 124, 142, 152, 165, 177; death, 194; decision for mission- ary life-work, 23 ; destroy- ing the slave-traffic, 161, 172, 176, 179; devotion to books and study, 16, 17, 76, 88; digging canals, 5, 40, 43, 54, 55; discoveries, 60, 70, 121, 135, 144, . 168, 169, 170, 178; educational work, 49-53 ; efforts against slavery and slave-trading, 82, 83 ; enhsts as mission- ary, 25 ; evangelistic work, 39, 41, 52, 53, 92 ; faithful- ness to African friends, 107, 139; father, see Lw- ingstone, Neil; found and relieved by Stanley, 182- 191; games played, 15, 133; grandfather and great- grandfather, 4, II, 12-14; healthy, strong body, 14; heart buried in Ilala, 194; home. 4, II, 12, 28, 29; honors in Great Britain, 134, 135, 156; house de- stroyed, 76 ; hunger, 165 ; industrial work, 40, 50-53 ; journals, 76, 107, 108, 188; journeys, see Journeys of Livingstone in Africa; learning to take observa- tions, Z3, 34; love of boys, 136 ; marriage, 50 ; medical and surgical work, 39, 52, 55, 164; missionary work, 42, see also educational, evangelistic, industrial, and medical and surgical work; mother, see Livingstone, Agnes; opening paths to coasts, 70, 90-115, 1 19-127; patience, 15, 76, yy, 166; perils, 6, 45, in, 123-125, 135, 141, 142, 154-156, 179, 180; prayers, see Prayer; preparation, 23-26; public work in Great Britain dur- ing visits home, 134-136, 156; quest, 18, 23, 83, 194; recreation, 17; riding on ox-back, 42, 80; rescuing slaves, 2)7, _ 38, 150, 162, 166 ; scientific interest, 17, 60, 89, 91, 92, 122, 124, 128, 129, 134, 148, 163; sisters, 4, 14, 29; student experiences, 24-27; swimming, 99, 163; teaching, 5, 51-53; voyages, 3Z, 34, 130-133, 137, 153- 156; walkmg, 6, 17, 24-27, 29, 162, 177; winning power with natives, 124-128, 141, 142 ; work or spirit still go- ing on, 200-202 Livingstone, Mrs., 50-56, 61, 66-75, 137, 151 ; called Ma- Robert, 53 Livingstone, Neil, David's father, 5, 12, 14, 23, 24, 29, 134 Livingstone, Robert, 53, 61, 65-71, 133 Livingstone, Thomas, 56, 61, 65-71, 133, 142 Livingstone, William Oswell, 71, 133, 137 Loanda, 94, 95, 101-107 Loangwa river, 123-125 London, 25, 26, 28, 133 London Missionary Society, 25, 28, 2>7, 137 Lualaba river, 169, 176, 177 Luama river, 177 2IO INDEX Luapula river, 169, 178, 179, 193, 195 Lucalla river, 94 M Mabotsa, 43, 49-52 Mabruki, 195 Mackenzie, Bishop, 149, 150, 151 Magic lantern, 88, 97 Magnifying lens, 124, 125, 129 Magomero, 151 Majwara, a boy, 194 Makololo, chief, 3, 67 ; herald, 79; men with Liv- ingstone, 3, 4, 88, 97, IDS- ISO, 136, 139, 140, 144. 148- 153, 165; people, 79, 80, 95, 148; warriors, 3 Makonde natives, 161 Malonda (things for sale), 138 Mamochisane, 70, 80 Manganja captives, 150 Manyuema, 176, 179-181 Maps of Africa, change in, 28 Marenga, Chief, 164 Market, a native, 178 Ma-Robert, name of Mrs. Livingstone, 53 Ma-Robert, the, 137, 138 Marriage of David Living- stone and Mary Moffat, 50 Masebele, wife of Sechele, 76 Mashauana, head boatman, 94 Maunku, 70 Mazitu chief, 164 Mebalwe, 44, 45 Medical and surgical work of Livingstone, 39, 40, 55, 164 Medicine-cases, 88, 166 Messengers, 56, 123 Mikindany Bay, 160 Mirage in the desert, 59 Missionaries, 122, 147-149,. 201 ; opening up Africa, 56,, 60, 70 Missionary native workers, 136 Missionary Travels, 134, 201 Moffat, Mary, 50 Moffat, Mrs. Robert, 50, 76 Moffat, Robert, 28, 34, 36, 37,. 50, 53, 71, 75, 137 Mohammed Bogharib, 170 Mohorisi, loi Molepolole, 201, 202 Molilamo river, 192, 193 Monkeys, 6, 56, 142 Morumbwa Cataract, 140, 141 Mosquitoes, 79, 142 Mottoes or sayings of Liv- ingstone, 71, 76, 83, 191 Mountains, 41, 60 Mozambique, 153, 154 Mozunga, a (a Portuguese), 127 Mpende, chief and village on Zambezi, 126, 127; near Lake Nyassa, 163 Murchison Cataracts and Falls, 142, 143, 149, 152, 153 Murray, a hunter, 56 Musa, one of Livingstone's men, 164 Mvula trees, 186, 194 Mweru, Lake, 169, 176 N Neves, Captain, 108, 109 New York Herald, 186, 191 Ngami, Lake, 5, 60, 67 Niagara Falls, 121 Nile, question of source, 168, 176, 191 Njambi, Chief and village, 95 " Nyaka," or " the doctor," 88 Nyangwe, 178 Nyassa, Lake, 143, 144, 151- 153, 162, 168 INDEX 2ir O Ongar, 26, 27 Opening paths to the coasts, 70, 82, 83, 90-127 Orange river, 35 Orange trees, 142 Ostrich egg-shells, 58 Ostriches, 5, 57, ly Oswell, a hunter, 56, 68, 70 Oxen, drawing wagons, 5, 35, 52, 57, 59, 66, 67, 80; for food, 93, 94, 95, 97, ii3, 119, 124; for riding, 5, 42, 80, 95-99, 112, 113, 124 Oxford University, 149 Pack-ox, the, 42 Paddles and punting-poles, 81 Palms, 137, 138 Palmyra tree, 92 Pannikin or cup, 36, 91 Pearl, the, 137, 138 Pelicans, 143 Pens for slaves, 162, 163 People of the Crocodile, 38, 53, '/d. See also Bakwena, the People of the Monkey, 43-45. See also Bakhatla, the Picho or council, 87 Pineapples, 142 Pioneer, the, 149-153 Pioneers, spirit of, 37, 52, 83, 202 Pits to catch animals, 6y Pitsane, 113, 114 Plants, 57, 112, 161 Play-guns of African boys, 191 Poison test for witchcraft, 109 Poisoned arrows, 57, 141, 151, 176 Pomare, 38 Pontoon, a, 78 Portuguese, 95, 123, 125-127; commandants, 108 ; slave- trade, 94, 149 Prayer, Livingstone's use of, 7, 93, 94, loi, 194 Presents, 97, 107, 108 Psalm cxxi, 29 Pungo Andongo, 108 Q " Queen of the Wagon," 52 Queen Victoria, 135, 143 Quilimane, 130 R Rafts, 5, 61 Rain-making, 40 Rains as barriers to travel,. 100, 120, 192 Reptiles. See African reptiles Rhinoceroses, 37, 54, 55, 128 Rice, 138 Riding on ox-back in Living- stone's travels, 41, 42, 80 Rivers, 35, 60, 61, 66-70, 78, 94, 168; dry beds of, 56, Robinson Crusoe referred to, 51 Rome, ancient, 200 Rovuma river, 152. 161 Sahara desert. 56 Salmon caught by Living- stone, 17 School work, 49-53 Scotch, bonnet, 15 ; covenant- ing heroes, 4. 12, 13 Scotland, 13, 28, 41 Scout, Livingstone's spirit of a, 7, 17, 41, 78, 169 212 INDEX Sea, a wonder to the inland natives, loi Sebituane, Chief, 67, 69, 80 Sechele, Chief, 53, 55, 70, 75 ; escape of wife, 76 Sekeletu, Chief, 80, 81, 87-90, 94. 95, 107, 119, 120, 130 Sekwebu, 123, 125 Serpents, '/'], 142 Sesheke, 90 Sheds in camping, 93 Shereef, 181 Shire river, 141-153, 164; Valley, 149 Shirwa, Lake, 143 Shobo, a Bushman guide, 68 Shooting wild animals by Livingstone, because of danger or for food, 42-44, 54, 78 Shupanga, 138 Sinbad, the riding ox, 98, 99 Singing of natives, 5, 170, 189, 190 Skin, color of, used by Liv- ingstone to show his race, 98, 123, 127, 188 Slave, caravan, 170, 171, 177; dhows, 160; drivers, 150; market, 160; raiders, 165, 175; sticks, 150, 162, 170; trade, 82, 83, 94, 112, 113, 125, 137, 152, 160; traders, 137, 149, 160, 178, 200; traf- fic, 156, 179; work of sup- pression, 107, 108, no, 191 Slavery, 82, 125 Slaves, yi, 38, 94, 95, I44, 149, 150, 162, 163, 171, 176 Sleeping, 4, 7, 2^, 36, 93 Sleeping-blankets, 93, 100 Soils shown by color of rivers, 92 Soko, the, 176, 177 Soldiers, Portuguese, 129 ■" Sounding Smoke," 121 Spain, 14 Spears, 113, 179 Spies, 126 Springboks, 36 Spy-glass, 122 Stanley, Henry Morton, 182, 185-191 Stars guiding Livingstone, 92 Steamers excite wonder, 138 Stevenson, Robert Louis, quoted, 65 Stewart, Dr. James, 157, 201 Susi, 169, 177, 181, 188, 192- 195 Swimming in Livingstone's journeys, 41, 99 Swords of native warriors, 95 Tamunak'le river, 60, 69 Tanganyika, Lake, 168, 170, 176, 186-188, 191 Taylor, Isaac, 2"] Tents, 186 Tette, 127, 129, 139, 147, 148 i hames river, 199 Thanksgiving service, 114 The Zambezi and Its Tribu- taries, 156 Times, the, of London, no Tingane, Chief, 141 Traders, 128; to open up Africa, 70 Trekking in South Africa, 35, 93 Tribal names, 38 Tselane, Makololo woman, 148 Tsetse fly, 67, 107, 119 Tusks of elephants, 56, 83, 94, 95, 128, 135 U Ujiji, 168, 171, 179, 181, 189 Ulva, island, 14 INDEX 213 Umbrella in canoe, 93 United States, 128, 181, 182 University, addresses, 135, 136; students, 135 Unyanyembe, 188-191, 195 Vapor, columns of, 120 Veldt, the African, 34, 36 Victoria Falls, 70, 121, 148 Villages burned or deserted through slave raiders, 150, 152, 162, 179 Vlei, a v^ater-pit, 35 Voyages of Livingstone. See Livingstone, voyages W Wagons, in African travel, 35, 36, 52, 56-59, 66-68, 75, 77-80 Wainwright, Jacob, 192, 195 "Wait-a-bit" thorns, 6 Walking a feature of Living- stone's life, 6, 17, 24-27, 29, 41, 162, 177 Warriors, native, 3, 95, 150 Wars among people in Africa, 124, 125 Watch, Livingstone's, 100, 124, 125, 193 Water, need of and efforts to secure, 5, 35, 40, 43, 54, 56-59, 66, 68, 69 Water-antelope, 78 Waterloo, battle of, 14 Wells or water holes, 57, 66, 68 West coast, 90, loi, 105 Westminster, Abbey, 25, 196, 199, 200; Bridge, 199 White Leader, 4 White Man Who Would Go On, 5, 100 White traders as a check to slavery, 137 Whydah birds, 190, 191 Wild beasts. See African animals Witchcraft, 39, 43, 97, 108, 109 Witch-doctors, 39, 46, 109 Women of Africa, 51, 58, 112, 115, 148, 150, 161, 178, 186; aim not to cry, 39 Y Young, proving Musa's story false, 164 Zambezi, cataract, 140; falls, 121; men, 152, 153, 164; river, 70, 81, 90-94, 114, 1 19-120, 137-153; rapids, 139 Zanzibar, 153, 154, 159, 160; cathedral, 200 Zebras, 66, 191 Zouga river, 59-61, 66, 69 j/^N W 1:^13 iX* s'^^. -^^■ ^-".r^^^^ .^^ ^ ./ . A^' '^^ x^' V V * ^"^^' ^^^ *1 ° 'a .A ^^u' ,-^^N -7^ ■< fr « -^ t» t 0_ •/ ,^^ \. .V C -^^ \ I 8 .0 o. ^^, ^ c?-. > " 8 1 \ ,^^ '^^ ^ ^^ .0* V * ,-^^ V <=^0 A> % %^^ -^^ 0.\^ .V V ^, ^^ ^^. -v^ '-'^ '^^' .<^^ A' ^ -n^ V s^ oC V^^\P^ xO^x ^0 .\ A mO^ V^ cP*^ * .^0• ^oo' ^' Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent; Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: June 2003 PreservatlonTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township. 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