From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

by Sven Anders Hedin

The journey was difficult and troublesome, through a multitude of savage tribes. First the Zambesi was followed upwards, and then the route ran along other rivers. In consequence of heavy rain, swollen watercourses and treacherous swamps had to be crossed continually. Livingstone rode an ox which carried him through the water after a small portable boat had been wrecked and abandoned. Swarms of mosquitoes buzzed over the moist ground, and Livingstone repeatedly caught fever from the damp, close exhalations, and was often so ill that he could not even sit on his ox. But amidst all these difficulties and hardships he never omitted to observe the natural objects around him and to work at his map of the route. His diary was a big volume in stout boards with lock and key, and he wrote as small and as neatly as print.

Step by step he came nearer the sea. Most opportunely they met a Portuguese, and in his company the small troop entered the Portuguese territory on the west coast. The Portuguese received Livingstone with great hospitality, supplied him with everything he wanted, and rigged him out from top to toe.

Some English cruisers were lying off Loanda, having come to try to put down the slave-trade, and Livingstone enjoyed a delightful rest with his countrymen and slept in a proper bed after having lain for half a year on wet ground. It would have been pleasant to have had a thorough holiday on a comfortable vessel on the voyage to England after so many years' wanderings in Africa, but Livingstone resisted the temptation. He could not send his faithful Makololos adrift; besides, he had found that the route to the west coast was not suitable for trade, and was now wondering whether the Zambesi might serve as a channel of communication between the interior and the east coast. So he decided to turn back in spite of fever and danger, bade good-bye to the English and Portuguese, and again entered the great solitude.

Before Livingstone left Loanda he put together a large mass of correspondence, notes, maps, and descriptions of the newly discovered countries, but the English vessel which carried his letters sank at Madeira with all on board, and only one passenger was saved. News of the misfortune reached Livingstone when he was still near the coast, and he had to write and draw all his work again, a task that took him months. If he had left the Makololo men to their fate he would have travelled in the unfortunate vessel.

Rain and sickness often delayed him, but on the whole his return journey was easier. He took with him from Loanda a large stock of presents for the chiefs, and they were no longer strangers. And when he came among the villages of the Makololo, the whole tribe turned out to welcome him, and the good missionary held a thanksgiving service in the presence of all the people. Oxen were killed round the fires at night, drums were beaten, and with dance and song the people filled the air far above the crowns of the bread-fruit trees with sounds of gladness. Sekeletu was still friendly, and was given a discarded colonel's uniform from Loanda. In this he appeared at church on Sunday, and attracted more attention than the preacher and the service. His gratitude was so great that when Livingstone set out to the east coast he presented his white friend with ten slaughter oxen, three of his best riding oxen, and provisions for the way. And more than that, he ordered a hundred and twenty warriors to escort him, and gave directions that, as far as his power extended over the forests and fields, all hunters and tillers of the ground should provide the white man and his retinue with everything they wanted. Not the least remarkable circumstance connected with Livingstone's travels was that he was able to carry them out without any material help from home. He was the friend of the natives, and travelled for long distances as their guest.

Now his route ran along the bank of the Zambesi, an unknown road. During his earlier visit to Linyanti he had heard of a mighty waterfall on the river, and now he discovered this African Niagara, which he named the Victoria Falls. Above the falls the river is 1800 yards broad, and the huge volumes of water dash down foaming and roaring over a barrier of basalt 390 feet high to the depth beneath. The water boils and bubbles as in a kettle, and is confined in a rocky chasm in some places barely 50 yards broad. Clouds of spray and vapour hover constantly above the fall, and the natives call it "the smoking water." Among the general public in Europe, Livingstone's description of the Victoria Falls made a deeper impression than any of his other discoveries, so thoroughly unexpected was the discovery in Africa of a waterfall which could match, nay in many respects surpass, Niagara in wild beauty and imposing power. Now a railway passes over the Falls, and a place has grown up which bears the name of Livingstone.

The deafening roar of the water died away in the distance, and the party followed the forest paths from the territory of one tribe to that of the next. Steadfast as always, Livingstone met all danger and treachery with courage and contempt of death, a Titan among geographical explorers as well as among Christian missionaries. He drew the main outlines of this southern part of Darkest Africa and laid down the course of the Zambesi on his map. For a year he had been an explorer rather than a missionary. But the dominating thought in his dream of the future was always that the end of geographical exploration was only the beginning of missionary enterprise.

At the first Portuguese station he left his Makololo men, promising to return and lead them back to their own villages. Then he travelled down the Zambesi to Quilimane on the sea. He had, therefore, crossed Africa from coast to coast, and was the first scientifically educated European to do so.

After fifteen years in Africa he had earned a right to go home. An English ship carried him to Mauritius, and at the end of 1856 he reached England. He was received everywhere with boundless enthusiasm, and never was an explorer fêted as he was. He travelled from town to town, always welcomed as a hero. He always spoke of the slave-trade and the responsibility that rested on the white men to rescue the blacks. Africa, lying forgotten and misty beneath its moving rain-belts, became at once the object of attention of all the educated world.

Detraction was not silent at the home-coming of the victor. The Missionary Society gave him to understand that he had not laboured sufficiently for the spread of the Gospel, and that he had been too much of an explorer and too little of a missionary. He therefore left the Society; and when, after a sojourn of more than a year at home, he returned to Africa, it was in the capacity of English Consul in Quilimane, and leader of an expedition for the exploration of the interior of Africa.