His instructions as to handing back the “Pioneer” to the Government men were quite explicit, and it was clear that he had little time left in Africa. Yet before he returned to England he accomplished two feats that would have made the reputation of any other man. With only one white colleague and five Makololo he marched seven hundred and sixty miles in fifty-five days, getting to within ten days’ march of Lake Bangweolo or Bemba, and the village of Ilala, where years later his own heart was to be buried. He would have reached the lake but for the duty of fulfilling his instructions from the Government. The second great feat was on the ocean. He had to face the problem of his own admirable little steamer, the “Lake Nyassa.” She had cost him a fortune and he needed the money. He could have sold her as a slave-vessel, but sooner than do that he would sink her in the Indian Ocean. After many adventures he gets her to Zanzibar, but cannot get a fair price. The one chance left is to sail her across the Indian Ocean and sell her in Bombay. It was the wildest adventure, but it was worthy of him. He could take but fourteen tons of coal, and the distance was 2,500 miles. The crew consisted of himself, a stoker, a carpenter, and a sailor, seven native Zanzibarians, and two “boys,” one of whom was Chumah, who was with him on his last march. The voyage took forty-five days, much of it marked by dead calm, but the latter part by furious squalls. The sails were torn, and the little boat nearly rolled right over. But “God’s good providence” is “over us,” and on June 13th, 1864, they creep into the harbour through the fog, their entrance being unobserved.
He stays in Bombay a short time, interesting the merchants in East African trade. Then he takes ship for England, where he arrived on July 21st.
The Livingstone who thus returned for his last visit home was in some respects a very altered man from the one who took England by storm at the close of his first great explorations. He had suffered severe personal losses. His wife’s death had left him lonely and sad, with the deep and lasting sadness of a strong nature. His grief and disappointment over the tragedy of the Universities’ Mission had left their mark upon him. But two experiences had changed his outlook even more radically. In the first place he had seen the limitations inseparable from the life of a Government official. His position as a Consul had not helped him, while at the same time it had made his attitude towards the Portuguese more difficult. He could not be his own free and independent self when the relations of two European Powers were at stake. His recall was something of a relief. He was now unmuzzled: and gentle and kindly as his spirit was, Livingstone was capable of what we may dare to speak of as “the wrath of the Lamb.” It becomes more and more evident during this visit that his heart had turned back in full affection to his original vocation and work as a missionary; and when the next negotiations were opened up with him, he bluntly avows his determination to return only on the condition that he may pursue his travels in that capacity. The second experience was, of course, his full contact with all the indescribable villainies of the slave trade. He had seen enough of the miseries it involved during his journey to Loanda; but the West Coast was vigilantly watched by English cruisers, and the slave trade reduced to comparatively small proportions. On the East Coast, Portugal was in authority; and her connivance and sympathy were responsible for the vast extent of the operations of the raiders. Livingstone came back to England in the grip of a great and noble passion—a fiery indignation against the barbarities of this traffic in flesh and blood; and he sternly resolved to fight it single-handed if need be. He had no heart to pursue purely scientific observations or geographical explorations to gratify the intellectuals, while Africa was being desolated and her population laid waste. The great public might complain that he no longer tickled their ears with thrilling or amusing descriptions of adventures: he was, as Mr. Thomas Hughes truly said, “a great Puritan traveller,” and the moral ends of his labours remained with him ever supreme. With such a fire consuming him, it may easily be realised that he found the Foreign Office “cold.” The year was 1864. America was washing out the guilt of centuries in the blood of her bravest and best. Livingstone’s own boy, Robert, who had been somewhat erratic, had heard his call, and was fighting in the Federal ranks on his way to a grave in Gettysburg Cemetery. Never in the history of the world had slavery revealed itself so convincingly as a hideous cancer in the social system. But official England was “cold.” She had begun by believing that Jeff Davis was making a nation; she had reached the stage of chill condescension towards Abraham Lincoln, for whom Livingstone had a true man’s admiration and affection. The Foreign Office was in no mind to take an heroic line, and was, no doubt, heartily relieved that Livingstone had not made a greater fuss about his recall.
It was not to make a fuss about his personal affairs, however, that Livingstone had come home. The “fuss” was to be about his friends, the natives, who were being done to death in thousands, and the residue sold into degradation and forced labour. He opened the battle in a lecture to the British Association at Bath; and so effective an opening was it, that the Portuguese had to put up Senhor Lacerda, the traveller, to declare that it was “manifest that Dr. Livingstone, under the pretext of propagating the Word of God, and the advancement of geographical and natural science,” was bent on robbing Portugal of the “advantages of the rich commerce of the interior.” “Rich commerce” is good! The learned Senhor goes on to urge that Livingstone’s “audacious and mischievous actions” ought to be “restrained.” This was a pretty plain hint to the Portuguese authorities, and not lost on them, as we shall see. The next move in the war lay with Livingstone. This was the book in which he proposed to lay the whole scandal bare. He wrote this book at Newstead Abbey, the home of his hospitable friends, Mr. and Mrs. Webb, the former of whom was a noted African hunter. The day he finished his book was the day when Lincoln was assassinated in Washington.
The book finished, he was to settle a question which Sir Roderick Murchison had raised with him, of a return to Africa for purely geographical purposes. Livingstone is all eagerness to return, and the line of exploration suggested on the inland lakes appeals to him strongly, but he answers that he can only feel in the way of duty by working as a missionary. He writes to Mr. James Young, “I would not consent to go simply as a geographer, but as a missionary, and do geography by the way, because I feel I am in the way of duty when trying either to enlighten these poor people, or open their land to lawful commerce.” Later on came an informal request from Lord Palmerston to know what he could do for him. It may be doubted whether that decidedly worldly statesman ever anticipated so disinterested a reply as he received. Instead of bargaining for salary or pension, Livingstone replied that he wanted but one thing; “free access to the highlands by the Zambesi and Shiré to be secured by a treaty with Portugal.” Governments find those men easiest to deal with who are satisfied with a lump sum down.
In the interval of fixing up his arrangements with the Government and the Royal Geographical Society, Livingstone had a personal sorrow in the death of his mother at the age of eighty-two. He was glad, however, to be at home to fulfil her wish that “one of her laddies should lay her head in the grave.” After that, he visited the school which his children attended, and made a short speech. The last words he uttered in public in Scotland were the simple ones, “Fear God and work hard.”
The negotiations in regard to his new work were finally completed. The Government gave £500, and the Royal Geographical Society an equal sum. A private friend added a thousand pounds. This was all, except that he was to be the unsalaried Consul with power over the chiefs on the coast between Portuguese territory and Abyssinia. He was also warned to expect no pension. It is useless now to indulge in belated indignation over these very unhandsome terms. Probably if they were put into plain black and white they meant that the great British Government presented David Livingstone with £500 and a sphere of influence to keep him from making mischief with the Portuguese by expressing honest British hatred of the slave trade; while the Geographical Society hoped to tie him up to geographical work, and so prevent him wasting his time and talents on fatuous missionary enterprises. What actually happened we shall see in due course. Meanwhile Livingstone’s own personal plan was to sell his steamer at Bombay in order to make up the deficiency in the cost of his new expedition due to the financial economy of a lukewarm Government. It was for Bombay accordingly that he departed in August, 1865. He never saw these shores again.
CHAPTER VII
When Livingstone arrived in Bombay in September, Sir Bartle Frere was Governor. They were old friends, and the Governor became his very sympathetic host. His immediate purpose was to dispose of the “Lake Nyassa” for what she would fetch. This proved to be £2,600, for a steamer that had cost him £6,000. It was a poor bargain, but he was not in a position to refuse it, and as things turned out he got no good out of it. He deposited the money in an Indian bank which in a few weeks failed miserably, and Livingstone’s money was seen no more. As he cared for money less than any man, he did not allow himself to be unduly depressed by this misfortune. “The whole of the money she cost,” he wrote, “was dedicated to the great cause for which she was built: we are not responsible for results.” His preparations in Bombay for the forthcoming expedition were, for him, quite elaborate; and we may add at once gave little satisfaction in the sequel. There is a training school under Government for Africans at Nassick. Nine of the men volunteered to go with him. Besides these, he was supplied with sepoys from the “Marine Battalion.” He was assured that they had been accustomed to rough it in various ways. In practice they would only march five miles a day, were “notorious skulkers,” and disgusted Livingstone by their cruelty to the brute beasts. It was not long before he dismissed them to their homes. The Nassick “boys” were not much more manageable. The expedition included ten Johanna men who were only a moderate success, two Shupanga men—including Susi—and two Wayaus—including Chumah. Susi and Chumah, it will be remembered, were with him at the last. Chumah was a liberated slave who owed his freedom to Livingstone and Bishop Mackenzie in 1861. The expedition was further distinguished by a number of animals imported by Livingstone from India: six camels, three buffaloes and a calf, two mules and four donkeys. He was anxious to prove that camels were immune from the bites of the tsetse flies, and he expected to acclimatise the other beasts, and teach some native chief to breed them. The Sultan of Zanzibar was cordial, and armed Livingstone with a letter to be used as a passport. Then he took his leave, and on the 22nd of March he is at the mouth of the Rovuma with all his caravan complete. The navigation of the shallow river proved unexpectedly difficult, and occasioned tedious delay and some anxiety; so at last he sails north again and gets all his animals landed in Mikindany Bay. He is too old a traveller not to realise that his troubles are all in front of him; but he does not anticipate them; and writes in high spirits of the joy of setting out once more into wild and unexplored country.
As David Livingstone is now starting on his last and greatest march, which was to be lengthened out year after year, and to be signalised by unparalleled sufferings and heroic endurance, it will be well to acquaint ourselves with such plans as he had somewhat vaguely laid down. He realised that there are three great main waterways into the African interior: the Congo, the Zambesi, and the Nile. He was satisfied that no future exploration could do other than confirm his conclusions as to the watershed which he had traversed, from which certain rivers flowed north to the Congo, and certain others south to the Zambesi. But from earliest times the scientific imagination had been captured by the problem of the sources of the Nile. This was the greatest of all unsolved geographical problems; and to it Livingstone was attracted irresistibly, not only by his own native curiosity, but by that interest in classical questions which was a very marked characteristic of his mind. To this problem he knew that the system of inland lakes was the clue, and that whoever could completely explore them would settle the question for all time and “make himself an everlasting name.” That he would have numberless opportunities of proclaiming Christ to the scattered peoples of the interior, and would cut across the slave routes and perhaps be able to scheme out how to defeat the devilish purposes of the slavers, were motives with him even more powerful. So he got his caravan under way, marched south to Rovuma, and then south-west across the four hundred miles of country that lay between the coast and Lake Nyassa.