Dr. David Livingstone

This is an informational site that pulls together research done by myself on the Victoria Falls and on the man Dr. David Livingstone. I hope that you find this website very informative.
Website kindly sponsored by Livingstones Adventure – An activities operator in the Victoria Falls

Born on March 19, 1813 in the village of Blantyre in Lanarkshire, David Livingstone was to live his life for others, his own comfort and happiness was selflessly sacrificed to help others less capable of overcoming hardship than himself. He was born to Neil Livingstone, a poor tea merchant. He was taught to read and write by his father. When David was 10 he went to work in the Blantyre cotton mill, his job was to watch a cotton spinning frame and tie any threads that broke.

David wanted to learn more and self studied whenever he could. He soon began to be tutored at nights after work, provided by the mill. He taught himself Latin and developed a love of natural history. He was also strong physically, he loved to tramp for miles and miles all over the countryside. He grew up strong and with great stamina. Little did he realise that he was unknowingly preparing for his life’s work.

At eighteen he was promoted to the position of spinner at the mill, thus earning much better wages. He saved his money for university. He was determined to study to become a doctor and a missionary. He had read about a doctor missionary in China and hoped that he too could go to China and be like that man. He was accepted at the university in Glascow, Scotland. He wrote a letter to the London Missionary Society offering himself as a missionary to China whilst he was still studying at the University. He was accepted on the condition that he went through a training course at a school in Chipping Ongar in Essex near London, England. He suspended his course and spent a year at the mission society. Whilst he was at the little school he met a man named Robert Moffat who was to give him his life’s vision. Robert Moffat had just returned from Africa with stories that fuelled the heart of David, of a mysterious continent with the “vast plain to the north” and the “smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever been before.”
He moved to London in 1940 to complete his studies at the British and Foreign medical school, the Aldarsgate Street Dispensary, Charing Cross Hospital and Moorsfeild Hospital and at the end of the year he qualified as a licentiate of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons of Glascow. That same year he was also ordained a missionary by the London Missionary Society.

David told the directors of the missionary society that he wished to go to Africa, they agreed to send him. On the morning of November 17, 1840, 27 year old David Livingstone bade farewell to his father on the Broomielaw quay in Glascow and boarded his waiting ship, the George. He would never see his father again. The ship George sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and into the bay of Algoa, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet. Here is where David landed and began the long journey inland. David and his companions travelled on foot and horseback with a an ox cart to carry their supplies. The days were blisteringly hot and the nights clear and cold. They slept under stars huddled in blankets. They came to the village of the Kuruman, where Robert Moffat lived. Robert was not home, he was back in England on a visit. Kuruman had once been dry and barren, but now it was filled with fruit trees and gardens. Robert Moffat had been a gardener before he became a missionary. David stayed only long enough for the oxen to recover and rest. The people here called themselves the Bakwena the “people of the crocodile.”David waited for six months for word from the missionary society in London. He learned the language and habits of the Bakwena. David taught the people about God. He also helped the people irrigate the land. Finally the letter came. This journey took him to the people called the Mabotsa “people of the monkey” where he helped them defeat a lion and got injured in the shoulder which would never heal completely.

David stayed in Mabotsa for a long time. The villagers helped him build a brick house and he lived with them and taught their children. His friend Robert Moffat sent word that he was returning to Kuruman. So David went to meet him. It was then that he met Mary, Robert’s eldest daughter. Soon they were engaged. Mr. Moffat had been born in Africa and knew well the duties and hardships of missionary life. It took some time to prepare for the wedding, have a house built and send for a marriage license from England.

The village had a marriage feast when Mary arrived.
David and Mary felt that the time had come to move on, they packed all of their belongings and moved up north to a village of Chonuane, forty miles to the north. The people here were called the Bakwena (the people of the crocodile). David built a school and another stone house. They had their first child here, a son. They named him Robert after Mary’s father. It was a very dry place, and when it came time to move on the Bakwena people went with the Livingstones. They settled in a place that they called Kolobeng. They built a school, irrigated and created gardens and stayed there for several years. Mary and David had two more children, Thomas and Agnes.
David and his family then travelled on to Lake Ngami. They wanted to reach “the land of many rivers” but travel was hard and the children were often sick because of the hard living conditions. They travelled eastward around Lake Ngumi and there they found a wide river. It was the Zambezi river. David’s children were ill again. He made the decision to take his family back to Cape Town and send them back to England from there. David estimated that he would need two years to find a place to live and set it up a home. He didn’t know that it would turn out to be five years!

David and his travelling companions went North again, and crossed the Chobe river. There they were reunited with their friends, the Makololo people. David told of his wish to open a road from the coast into the centre of the country.
Twenty seven young Makololo men went with David.
They decided to travel along the Zambezi River until it turned to the east. Then they would leave the Zambezi and go westward on the Kassai River, then north west on the Kwango river to the Lucalla River. Then it would be due west on to Loanda on the coast. It was a long and hard journey. It took over six months and then they finally reached the sea. David sent his journals back to England by ship. In all his travels he had written about places, people, the land, the rivers, the mountains and the slave trade. His information would later prove valuable to the world in understanding much of the land then called the ‘Dark Continent’. His written accounts would do much to stop the slavery in the world. He saw the waterfall Mosi-Ao-Tunya and named them Victoria Falls after his queen on 17th of November 1855.
They started back to Linyanti. They came into Libonta, the first village of Chief Sekeletu, as heroes. The chief was excited to hear that they had found a way to the west coast. David explained that it was a long hard way and that he wondered if it would be better if they travelled along the Zambezi river. Chief Sekeletu sent David out again. This time he sent him with 120 men. Sekeletu himself joined them.

They travelled along the Chobe river to where it met the Zambezi River. It was March 1856. They came to Tette an inland Portuguese station on the Zambezi River. They were about 300 miles from the coast.
David was very weak. A commander of the Portuguese army stationed in Tette took him into his home to rest. When he was well enough he settled his Makololo friends on plantations to work until his return, and he went to the port city of Quilimane where he boarded a ship for home.

David reached London on the 9th of December 1856. The family celebrated Christmas together for the first time in five years. In the sixteen years that he had been away England had made him a hero. Because of his journals and written accounts about him, his home country had not forgotten him. His written accounts on the slave trade had stirred up an anger within the nation and the whole world, against the evil of slavery.
David travelled over eleven thousand miles of African territory. In his travels he had made careful recordings of the land. His life was now filled with speeches to Universities, lectures to scientific groups, meetings with government officials, invitations to social gatherings and even an invitation from the Queen of England. He was made an honorary doctor of sciences by the university of Glascow. And he wrote a book. In February 1858, he had been given a formal commission as Her Majesty’s Consul at Quilimane for the Eastern Coast and the independent districts in the interior, and commander of an expedition for exploring eastern and central Africa. He wanted to find a healthy place, high in altitude, in central Africa where missionaries could train natives to be teachers and preachers. He wanted to open routes for trade.

By 1867 it seemed that David Livingstone had all but vanished. For several years since his departure ten years prior to that, the reports were sent to England, telling of his progress through central Africa. The world had learned of his personal tragedy years earlier, Mary Livingstone had died from the fever. After her death David had gone North along the Rovuna river. He wanted to reach Lake Nyassa. He believed that it would be a good place to start an English colony. The land there was dry and healthy and the lake offered fresh water. On 16 September 1859 David and his companions came to the waters of beautiful Lake Nyassa. He sent letters to England telling them to send people to form a colony. He then went to Tette, where he had a joyful reunion with his Makololo friends. They went back to Linyanti.

When David returned once again to Tette, England’s answer to his letters was waiting for him. The first group of workers had arrived on a light steamer called the Pioneer. They went back to Lake Nyassa. Then David left the missionaries and travelled north to the city of Zanzibar. Here the slave trade was the worst of all. David rented a light ship and sailed south again. On foot, all the villages that he passed were empty and burned, the people had been taken by the slave traders. They went up North again, food was running low and David’s medicine chest was stolen. Without medicine David suffered constantly with fever. David needed to reach Ujiji, an Arab settlement on the east shore of Lake Tanganyika, about three hundred miles west of Lake Nyassa.
Meanwhile England newspapers wondered if David Livingstone was lost, or dead? News reached America. An American man went to find out what had happened to David Livingstone. He arrived in Ujiji with two hundred native porters wearing packs. Oxen pulled wagons loaded with bundle. The American recognized David Livingstone, he was thin, his clothes hung loosely on him.

An American, Gordon Bennet, publisher for the New York Herald, wanted to know what had happened to David Livingstone. So he sent Henry Morton Stanley to find him. Stanley brought provisions for David, and letters from his children. He stayed for over four months. The two became close friends. After Stanley left, David went on a last journey.

He wanted to find a river called Laupula, which was said to be the source of the Nile River.
They didn’t make it, in Chitambo’s village near Molilamo David Livingstone died. It was 4th May 1873.
In Westminister Abbey, in London where he is buried you can find a headstone with the following words:
Brought by faithful hands over land and over sea. Here rests DAVID LIVINGSTONE, Missionary Traveller, Philanthropist. Born March 19, 1813, at Blantyre, Lanarkshire. Died May 4th, 1873, at Chitambo’s Village, Ilala. For thirty years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets. And abolish the desolating slave-trade of central Africa, where, with his last words, he wrote: “All I can say in my solitude is, May heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one - American, English, Turk - who will help to heal the open sore of the world.”