The elephant is found from sea to sea, but he has not proved to be so amenable to domestication as his Asian brother. He may yet be reduced to useful servitude. The efforts in this direction in the German and French colonies are somewhat encouraging, though in 1901 only six elephants had thus far been broken to work and were daily used as beasts of burden. Explorers of tropical Africa have always been compelled to rely upon human porterage, the most expensive and unsatisfactory form of transportation, with the result that nearly all the great lines of exploration have been extended through the continent at enormous cost.
So most other parts of the world were occupied, colonized, civilized, before Africa was explored. A continent one-fourth larger than our own was for centuries neglected and despised. "Nothing good can come out of Africa" became proverbial. Seventy years ago Africa, away from the coasts and the Nile, was almost a blank upon our maps, save for fanciful details that are ludicrously grotesque in the light of our present knowledge (1902).
Then dawned the era of David Livingstone. Sixty-two years ago this humble Scotchman went to South Africa as a missionary. It was not long before he became imbued with the idea that missionary service could not be projected on broad, economic, and effective lines till the field was known. The explorer, he said, must precede the teacher and the merchant. We can work best for Christianity and civilization after we learn what the people are and know the nature of their environment. This was the thought that took him into the unknown; that inspired him with unflagging courage and zeal throughout twenty years of weary plodding in the African wilderness among hundreds of tribes who never before had seen a white man. And all the years he was studying the country and winning the love of its people, his faith in Africa, in its abounding resources worth the world's seeking, in the capacity of its people for development, steadily grew till it became the all-pervading impulse of his life. Livingstone's faith converted the world to the belief that, after all, there was good in Africa.
"I shall never forget," said Stanley, one day in New York, "the time when I stood with Livingstone on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, and he raised his trembling hand above his head, leaned towards me as he looked me in the eye, and said in a voice broken with emotion: 'The day is coming when the whole world will know that Africa is worth reclaiming, and that its people may be brought out of barbarism. The world needs Africa; and teachers, merchants, railroads, and every influence of civilization will be spread through this continent to fit it for the place in human interests that belongs to it.' I thought then that Livingstone was an enthusiast and a visionary; but long ago I learned to believe that every word he said was true."
Europe and America were thrilled by the simple narrative of those twenty-two thousand miles of wanderings that brought into the light of day millions of human beings who had been as much unknown to us as though they inhabited Mars. Livingstone did not live to know it, but it was he who kindled the great African Movement,--an outburst of zeal for geographic discovery and economic development such as was never seen before.
Thirteen years ago (1889) a Frenchman named De Bissy completed the largest map yet made of Africa. In the preparation of this great work, which occupied much of his time for eight years, he used as his sources of information nearly eighteen hundred route and other maps, nearly all of which were the result of the work of explorers in the preceding quarter of a century. All that we know of the geography of over three-fourths of Africa is the work of the past half-century since Livingstone made his first journey in 1849; and we know far more of inner Africa to-day than was known of inner North America three hundred years after Columbus discovered the western world. A little over a century ago, our great-grandfathers were reading in their school geographies that North America had no conspicuous mountains except the Alleghanies; and these mountains and the Andes of South America were believed to be one and the same chain, interrupted by the Gulf of Mexico. Many men not yet bent with years can remember when the interior of Africa was a white space on the maps; but it is not possible to-day to make such a geographical blunder as we have mentioned, about any part of Africa.
It is because of the work he did in those twenty years, sowing all the while the seeds from which sprang the great African Movement, that "the gentle master of African exploration" is acclaimed to-day as one of the world's great men, and that his body rests in Westminster Abbey among the illustrious dead of Britain.
The son of a worthy weaver in Blantyre, Scotland, Livingstone's early life was that of a poor boy, working in a spinning-mill, quiet, sober, affectionate, and faithful in every relation of life. Moved at last by the thirst for knowledge that has distinguished many a humble Scotch boy, he entered the University at Glasgow, studying during the winter months and spending the summers at his trade in the factory, fitting himself all the while for the conquests he little dreamed he was to achieve over difficulties almost insurmountable. A classmate spoke of him as a pale, thin, retiring young man, but frank and most kind-hearted, ready for any good and useful work, even for chopping the University fuel and grinding wheat for the bread. In 1838, when he was twenty-five years old, he went to London to be examined as a candidate for the African missionary service. Two years later he was sent to South Africa, where for eight or nine years he labored among the natives earnestly and unostentatiously north of the place now famous as the site of the Kimberley diamond mines. It was here that he became intimately acquainted with the celebrated missionary, Robert Moffatt, whose daughter he married. His devoted wife accompanied him in some of his later travels, but long before he finished his work her body was laid to rest under the shade of a tree that for years was pointed out to all visitors to the Lower Zambesi.
In 1849, began the series of explorations that continued till his death. "The end of geographical discovery is the beginning of missionary enterprise," he wrote. Burning with zeal to reveal Africa to the world, Livingstone never forgot the main aim of his life,--to open ways for the planting of mission stations among all the scores of tribes he visited. "I hope God will in mercy permit me to establish the Gospel somewhere in this region," he wrote from the land of the Barotse, on the Upper Zambesi. Does he now look down from his eternal home upon that very land whose churches and schools are the fruition of the labors of French Protestants; whose king, in London to attend the coronation of Edward VII., said he wanted more teachers and more men to train his people to build houses and work iron? He prayed that he might live to see "the double influence of the spirit of commerce and Christianity employed to stay the bitter fountain of African misery." The glowing zeal of the Christian philanthropist and the untiring ardor of the born explorer were perfectly blended in the spirit of the great pioneer of modern African discovery.
Livingstone's routes through Africa would extend about seven times between New York City and San Francisco; and in his almost endless marches over plain, through jungle, across mountains and wide rivers, the natives met him almost without exception in a generous and hospitable spirit. Love was the secret of his success. He won his way by kindness. Give the barbarous African time to see that you wish him well, that you would do him good in ways he knows are helpful, and his affection is evoked.