Victoria
Falls
In the period 1852–56, he explored the African interior, and was
the first European to see Victoria Falls (which he named after his
monarch, Queen Victoria). Livingstone was one of the first Westerners
to make a transcontinental journey across Africa. The purpose of
his journey was to open trade routes, while accumulating useful
information about the African continent. In particular, Livingstone
was a proponent of trade and missions to be established in central
Africa. His motto, inscribed in the base of the statue to him at
Victoria Falls, was "Christianity, Commerce and Civilization."
At this time he believed the key to achieving these goals was the
navigation of the Zambezi River. He returned to Britain to try to
garner support for his ideas, and to publish a book on his travels.
At this time he resigned from the missionary society to which he
had belonged. Zambezi expedition
Livingstone returned to Africa as head of the "Zambezi Expedition",
which was a government-funded project to examine the natural resources
of southeastern Africa. The Zambezi river turned out to be completely
unnavigable past the Cabora basa rapids, a series of cataracts and
rapids that Livingstone had failed to explore on his earlier travels.
The expedition lasted from March 1858 until the middle of 1864.
Livingstone was an inexperienced leader and had trouble managing
a large-scale project. The artist Thomas Baines was dismissed from
the expedition on charges (which he vigorously denied) of theft.
Livingstone's wife Mary died on 29 April 1863 of dysentery, but
Livingstone continued to explore, eventually returning home in 1864
after the government ordered the recall of the Expedition. The Zambezi
Expedition was castigated as a failure in many newspapers of the
time, and Livingstone experienced great difficulty in raising funds
to further explore Africa. Nevertheless, the scientists appointed
to work under Livingstone, John Kirk, Charles Meller, and Richard
Thornton did contribute large collections of botanicological, geological
and ethnographic material to scientific institutions in the UK.
Source of the Nile
In March 1866, Livingstone returned to Africa, this time to Zanzibar
(now part of Tanzania), where he set out to seek the source of the
Nile. Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, and Samuel Baker
had (although there was still serious debate on the matter) identified
either Lake Albert or Lake Victoria as the source (which was partially
correct, as the Nile "bubbles from the ground high in the mountains
of Burundi halfway between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria"
[1]). Finding the Lualaba River, which feeds the Congo River, Livingstone
decided that this river was in fact the "real" Nile.
Illness, pain and death
Livingstone was taken ill and completely lost contact with the outside
world for six years. Only one of his 44 later dispatches made it
to Zanzibar. Henry Morton Stanley, who had been sent in a publicity
stunt to find him by the New York Herald newspaper in 1869, found
Livingstone in the town of Ujiji, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika,
in 1871. Stanley joined Livingstone, and together they continued
exploring the north end of the Tanganyika (the other constituent
of the present Tanzania), until Stanley left the next year.
Despite Stanley's urgings, Livingstone was determined not to leave
Africa until his mission was complete, and he died there, in Chitambo,
Barotseland (now Zambia) on 1 May 1873 from malaria and internal
bleeding caused by bowel obstruction. His body, carried over a thousand
miles by his loyal attendants Chuma and Susi, was returned to Britain
for burial in Westminster Abbey.
Honours
Blantyre, the largest city in Malawi, is named after Livingstone's
birthplace
A portrait of Livingstone long featured on a Scottish banknote
According to Marlene Nourbese Philip, in her influencial book "Looking
for Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence", David Livingstone
"advocate[d] the destruction of African society and religious
customs so [he] could bring European commerce more easily to the
Africans, and then Christianity", and he "captured and
seized the Silence [he] found-- possessed it like the true discoverer
[he was]-- dissected and analysed it; labelled it-- [he] took their
Silence-- the Silence of the African-- and replaced it with [his]
own-- the silence of [his] word."
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