Dr David Livingstone
Regarded as a saint by some, and as a madman by others, David Livingstone embodied much that defined the ethos of the Victorian age, becoming Africa’s best known explorer.
Born on 19th March 1813 in the industrial town of Blantyre in Scotland,
David Livingstone was able to escape from a background of poverty
to qualify both as a doctor and a clergyman, and, in December 1840,
he set out on the first of his three memorable visits to Africa, as
a medical missionary. In truth he was a marked failure as a missionary,
and his trip was only redeemed by his success as an explorer – the
calling which was to dominate, and ultimately end, his life. The feat
for which he gained immediate fame back in Britain – achieving “the
greatest single contribution to African geography which has ever been
made” – was the coast to coast crossing of Africa that he made (the
first European to do so) during which he walked almost the entire
course of the mighty Zambezi river.
During the course of this exploration he discovered the huge tract
of fertile countryside north of the Kalahari Desert (which had previously
been believed to extend up to the Sahara), reaching the country that
we now know as Zambia for the first time via the upper Zambezi. Then,
on 17th November 1855, he made his greatest discovery yet – Mosi-oa-Tunya
(“the smoke that thunders”) – now known to us as Victoria
Falls. Approaching
the Falls from upstream, he disembarked on the island at the very
lip of the 
Falls that now bears his name, lying face downwards
to view “the most wonderful sight I had witnessed in Africa”. He
promptly named the Falls after his reigning monarch – “the only
English name I have affixed to any part of the country”.
Incidentally (and it seemed incidental to him), Livingstone was badly mauled by a lion during this journey, an injury that was to trouble him for the remainder of his life, although it was while being nursed to his recovery that his relationship developed with his future wife, Mary Moffat. In 1856 Livingstone returned to England as a national hero, riding the crest of a wave of a growing interest in Africa encouraged by the exploits of Burton, Speke, Baker and others. Fuelled and funded by his fame, Livingstone returned to Africa in 1858, setting out on an ill-conceived plan to travel up the Zambezi from its mouth by boat.
It was during this, his second great journey within Africa, that Livingstone became more and more involved in active opposition to the slave trade, at one point freeing a number of slaves, amongst whom was one such – Chuma – who was to become one of his most faithful travelling companions. This trip was, however, marred by the death of his wife, in 1862. On his return to England, in 1864, Livingstone was received with little trace of his former acclaim, but he became obsessed with a desire to discover the source of the Nile (a riddle speculated about since the time of Herodotus) with the goal of opening up the heart of Africa to both commerce and Christianity. This quest became the main focus of his final expedition in 1866.
During
this final journey, in December 1866, Livingstone crossed the Luangwa
river into what is now Zambia’s South Luangwa National Park. Profoundly
touched by the splendour of the Valley, he wrote “I will make this
beautiful land better known to men that it may become one of their
haunts. It is impossible to describe its luxuriance”, and it is
a very emotional experience to cross this river at this very same
point, reflecting on how little the scenery can have altered in
the intervening 140 years. Livingstone’s health deteriorated badly
during this fruitless quest (his theory as to where the source
of the Nile lay was badly flawed, and indeed he actually confused
it with the Congo). He rallied somewhat during his stay in Ujiji,
on Lake Tanganyika, in 1871, bolstered by the encouragement of
the journalist Henry Morton Stanley (of “Dr Livingstone,
I presume”
fame - see above image) who had been sent out specifically to find
him by the American newspaper magnate, Gordon
Bennett Jnr, since the outside world had given
him up as lost.
However after Stanley had left him Livingstone’s health deteriorated
further, and he died on 1st May 1873 in the village of Chitambo,
accompanied by his faithful servants, Susi and Chuma (who are commemorated
– more or less – by having two camps, Sussi and 
Chuma,
named after them in the Livingstone area). Sorrowfully, they buried
his heart and viscera in a tin box underneath a mvula tree, before
accompanying his embalmed remains back to the coast from where they
were taken back to England, to be buried amid national mourning in
Westminster Abbey.
Successful as he was an explorer (although less so as a husband and father), Livingstone was largely unsuccessful during his lifetime in his other aims of teaching the gospel (he only converted one person to Christ – who subsequently reneged), and combating the evils of the slave trade. However, such was the emotion aroused by his death that a widespread Christian movement subsequently spread throughout the African continent, and the slave trade itself ceased soon after. Other explorers did subsequently clarify the sources of the great African rivers, and its heart was indeed opened up to both missionaries and traders – a heart first revealed by this remarkable, if flawed, human being.
Discover the Real Africa with our full range of safaris experiences
