Appendix.—Book Review in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February, 1858.
[This review is provided to allow the reader to view Livingstone's achievement as it was seen by a contemporary.—A. L., 1997.]
Livingstone's Travels in South Africa.*
* 'Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa'. By
David Livingstone, LL.D., D.C.L. 1 vol. 8vo. With Maps and
numerous Illustrations. Harper and Brothers.
'Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa'. By
Henry Barth, Ph.D., D.C.L. 3 vols. 8vo. With Map and numerous
Illustrations. Harper and Brothers.
These two works, each embodying the results of years of travel and research, entirely revolutionize all our theories as to the geographical and physical character of Central Africa. Instead of lofty mountains and sandy deserts, we have a wide basin, or rather series of basins, with lakes and great rivers, and a soil fertile even when compared with the abounding exuberance of our own Western valleys and prairies.
Barth, traveling southward from the Mediterranean, explored this region till within eight degrees of the equator. Livingstone, traveling northward from the Cape of Good Hope, approached the equator from the south as nearly as Barth did from the north. He then traversed the whole breadth of the continent diagonally from the west to the east. His special researches cover the entire space between the eighth and fifteenth parallels of south latitude. Between the regions explored by Barth and Livingstone lies an unexplored tract extending eight degrees on each side of the equator, and occupying the whole breadth of the continent from east to west. Lieutenant Burton, famous for his expedition to Mecca and Medina, set out from Zanzibar a few months since, with the design of traversing this very region. If he succeeds in his purpose his explorations will fill up the void between those of Barth and Livingstone.
Dr. Livingstone, with whose travels we are at present specially concerned, is no ordinary man. The son of a Presbyterian deacon and small trader in Glasgow; set to work in a cotton factory at ten years old; buying a Latin grammar with his first earnings; working from six in the morning till eight at night, then attending evening-school till ten, and pursuing his studies till midnight; at sixteen a fair classical scholar, with no inconsiderable reading in books of science and travels, gained, sentence by sentence, with the book open before him on his spinning-jenny; botanizing and geologizing on holidays and at spare hours; poring over books of astrology till he was startled by inward suggestions to sell his soul to the Evil One as the price of the mysterious knowledge of the stars; soundly flogged by the good deacon his father by way of imparting to him a liking for Boston's "Fourfold State" and Wilberforce's "Practical Christianity"; then convinced by the writings of the worthy Thomas Dick that there was no hostility between Science and Religion, embracing with heart and mind the doctrines of evangelical Christianity, and resolving to devote his life to their extension among the heathen—such are the leading features of the early life of David Livingstone.
He would equip himself for the warfare and afterward fight with the powers of darkness at his own cost. So at the age of nineteen—a slim, loose-jointed lad—he commenced the study of medicine and Greek, and afterward of theology, in the University of Glasgow, attending lectures in the winter, paying his expenses by working as a cotton-spinner during the summer, without receiving a farthing of aid from any one.
His purpose was to go to China as a medical missionary, and he would have accomplished his object solely by his own efforts had not some friends advised him to join the London Missionary Society. He offered himself, with a half hope that his application would be rejected, for it was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to work his own way to become dependent in a measure upon others.