It was said that the British could never establish their rule over the great Wabemba tribe, southwest of Tanganyika, without a military campaign. In 1894, two humble Catholic fathers entered Lobemba, walked straight to the chief town, and were told that if they did not leave the country in one day they would be killed. As the stern message was delivered, they saw an old woman on the ground in great pain from a severe wound. The news soon spread that these unwelcome strangers had washed and dressed the wound, and made the old woman comfortable. "These people love men," was the word that passed from lip to lip, as the sick and suffering came out from the town to be treated, while thousands of natives looked on. At nightfall the white men were told they might remain another day; they ministered for eleven days to those who needed help, and were then invited to remain the rest of their lives. The mission stations of the White Fathers are to-day scattered all over Lobemba; the country is open in every corner to the whites, and in 1899 British rule was established. The victory was won, not with guns, but by gentle, helpful kindness.
Livingstone never believed that the sympathies of our common humanity are extinct even in the bosom of a savage. Enfolded in the panoply of Christian kindness, he passed unscathed among the most warlike tribes. No memory of wrong or pain rankled in the heart of any man, woman, or child he ever met. He is known to-day as "the good old man" wherever his path led him in those twenty years.
When explorers began to study the healthful highlands of the Akikuyu tribe in East Africa a few years ago, the natives rushed to arms. "Keep away from us," they said. "One of your white men came through the land, stealing food from our gardens, and killing all who said he ought to pay us for our vegetables. We want nothing to do with thieves and murderers like you."
But no vengeance fell on the head of any white traveller who ever followed in the footsteps of Livingstone. Those explorers have achieved most who adhered to his example of unfailing kindness, mercy, and justice. The brutal German, whose crimes made the Akikuyu hostile to all whites, marked his path with blood from the Indian Ocean to Victoria Nyanza. Serpa Pinto, renowned for the scientific value of his work, aroused condemnation and disgust because he fought his way through many tribes, among whom Livingstone and Arnot had wandered almost alone and in perfect safety. Fortunately, there have not been many explorers militant. The brilliant discoveries of Grenfell, Delcommune, Lemaire, and others, who are in the first rank of African pioneers, were made without harming a native.
Let us glance at a few of Livingstone's discoveries and form our own conclusions as to whether his sublime faith in the future of Africa has thus far been justified by events. In the depths of the wilderness he discovered the large lake, Mweru, through which the Upper Congo flows. Though white influences have reached that remote region only within the past two or three years, a little steamboat now plies those waters. A photograph of Mpweto, one of the white settlements on the lake, shows the commodious quarters of the Europeans, two long lines of cabins in which the native workmen live, and well-tilled gardens extending for a half-mile along the shore. Livingstone brought to light the coal fields of the Zambesi, the only coal yet known in tropical Africa. While these lines are being written, the British of Rhodesia are preparing to open mines along these deposits. He told the world of the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, the largest known, a mile wide and twice as high as Niagara. The installation of an electrical plant at this great source of power is now in progress, and it is hoped within three years to transmit electrically all the power required to work the large copper mines in the north, the coal fields in the east, and to move trains on the Cape to Cairo Railroad for a distance of three hundred miles. The recent improvements in long-distance transmission of power encourages the belief that the Victoria Falls may some day possess large industrial utility for a wide region around them. Coffee plantations on the hills overlooking the long expanse of Nyassa, the splendid freshwater sea which Livingstone revealed in its setting of mountains, are selling their superior product in London at a high price. The town of Blantyre, among the Nyassa highlands which Livingstone first described, has a newspaper, telegraphic and cable communication with all the world, and industrial schools in which the manual arts are taught to hundreds of natives. Here is the large brick church, now famous, built by native craftsmen, who before Livingstone's time had never seen a white man, and lived in a state of barbarism; an edifice that would adorn the suburbs of any American city, and of which the explorer, Joseph Thomson, said: "It is the most wonderful sight I have seen in Africa." The natives made the brick, burned the lime, sawed and hewed the timbers, and erected the building to the driving of the last nail. They had the capacity, and it was evoked by the genius of one of the most remarkable men in Africa, Missionary Scott of Blantyre. Steamboats are afloat on five of the six important seas of the great lake region of Central Africa; on two of the three which Livingstone discovered. Only a beginning has been made, for the field stretches from ocean to ocean; but the man who, in 1873--the year of Livingstone's death,--should have predicted one-half of the achievement of the present generation would have been laughed at as a crack-brained visionary.
Even the surface of Africa is changing, and the truth of Livingstone is not always the truth of to-day. In his first journey, in which he braved the perils of the South African thirst lands, he reached the broad and placid expanse of Lake Ngami, covering an area of three hundred square miles. In the gradual desiccation of that region, the lake has now entirely disappeared. Its place is wholly occupied by a partly marshy plain covered with reeds, and no vestige of water surface is to be seen. He found the little Lake Dilolo so exactly balanced on a flat plain between two great river systems that one stream from the lake flowed north to the Congo and another south to the Zambesi; but for years past there has been no connection between the lake and the Congo. He sought in vain, like many explorers after him, for the outlet to Lake Tanganyika. The mystery was not solved till, more than twenty years after, Burton discovered the lake; the solution came when the explorer Thomson and Missionary Hore found the waters of Tanganyika pouring in a perfect torrent down the valley of the Lukuga to the Congo. The explanation of the strange phenomenon is that for a series of years the evaporation exceeds the water receipts, the level of the lake steadily falls, and the valley of the Lukuga becomes choked with grass; then a period follows when the water receipts exceed the evaporation, and the waters rise, burst through the barriers of vegetation in the Lukuga, and are carried to the Congo once more.
It was his second and third journeys that established Livingstone's fame as a great explorer. In those journeys (1853-56) his routes were from the Upper Zambesi to Loanda in Portuguese West Africa, and then from Loanda to the mouth of the Zambesi, nearly twelve thousand miles of travel. The third journey was the first crossing of the continent; and while traversing the wide savannas of the uplands and revealing the Zambesi, the fourth largest river of Africa, from source to delta, he was able to verify one of the most brilliant generalizations ever made by a geologist. Sir Roderick Murchison, President of the Royal Geographical Society, in 1852, deducing his conclusions from the very fragmentary and imperfect knowledge of Africa then extant, evolved his striking hypothesis as to the physical conformation of the continent, which has been briefly mentioned above and is the accepted fact of to-day. Livingstone was able to prove the accuracy of this hypothesis, and he dedicated his "Missionary Travels" to its distinguished author.
The Makalolo chief, Sekeletu, on the Zambesi River, supplied Livingstone with men, ivory, and trading commissions, that helped the humble and unknown white man, lacking all financial resources except his slender salary, to make the two great journeys which kindled the world's interest and led to the wonderful achievements of our generation. In this noteworthy incident we see the human agencies through which Africa will attain the full stature allotted to her. The Caucasian and the Negro each has his onerous part in the work of bringing the civilized world and Africa into touch and accord.
When Livingstone went home, after his third journey, his fellow-countrymen crowded to see and hear the explorer, who had added more facts to geographical knowledge than any other man of his time. They saw a person of middle age, plainly and rather carelessly dressed, whose deep-furrowed and well-tanned face indicated a man of quick and keen discernment, strong impulses, inflexible resolution, and habitual self-command. They heard a speaker whose command of his mother tongue was imperfect, and who apologized for his broken, hesitating speech by saying that he had not spoken the English language for nearly sixteen years. In no public place did he ever allude to his personal sufferings, though fever had brought him to death's door and the years had been crowded with the most harrowing cares. The work he had done and would carry on to the end, the new Africa he alone could describe, the faith that had grown and strengthened in every week of his long pilgrimage that the world needed Africa, its resources and peoples, were the burden of every utterance. The great London meeting where he first appeared took practical measures to support him in the work he had begun unaided; and one of the resolutions adopted, declaring that "the important discoveries of Dr. Livingstone will tend hereafter greatly to advance the interest of civilization, commerce, and freedom among the numerous tribes and nations of that vast continent," was prophetic of all the best fruits of the colossal work that has been done to the present time.
During his two years at home, Livingstone wrote his "Missionary Travels." He returned to England once more (1864-65), when he published "A Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi," and in 1866 went back to Africa to resume the explorations which ended only with his death. Between 1849 and 1873 he was four years in Europe and twenty years in the field, eating native food, sleeping in straw huts (in one of which he died), lost to view for many years at a time because he had no means of communication with the coasts. It was this fact that led to Stanley's successful search for Livingstone in 1871. Perhaps no other explorer ever gave so many years to continuous field-work. In this respect he far surpassed the record of any other of the African pioneers.