Therefore in 1852, having seen his wife and children off to England, he started in his Cape waggon and again made for Kuruman, after leaving which he was constantly harassed by parties of Boers, who believed he was teaching their slaves to rise in revolt. But he reached the land of Sebituan, a friendly chief, safely, and found the warmest welcome awaiting him. As doctor and missionary his hands were full, and seeing the field of work opening all around him, he grew more and more anxious to become the pioneer missioner to the very interior. Fever, he realised, would be his worst enemy. "I would like," he wrote in his journal, "to discover some remedy for that terrible disease. I must go to parts where it prevails most and try to discover if the natives have a remedy for it.... I mean to open up a path to the interior or perish. I never have had the shadow of a doubt. Cannot the love of Christ carry the missionary where the slave trade carries the trader?"
The travels of Livingstone through that unknown country which he practically discovered, would have to be closely followed on a map from point to point to be made clear. Otherwise they are a mere string of strange names. He set out in the November of 1853. "I had three muskets for my people and a double-barrelled gun for myself," he said. "My ammunition was distributed through the luggage, that we might not be left without a supply. Our chief hopes for food were in our guns. I carried twenty pounds of beads, a few pounds of tea, sugar, and coffee. One tin canister was filled with spare clothes, another was stored with medicines, a third with books, and a fourth with a magic lantern. A small tent, a sheep-skin, and a horse-rug completed my equipment, as an array of baggage would have excited the tribes." Four years later, worn out by frequent attacks of fever, but otherwise perfectly satisfied with the result of his journeyings into parts where as yet no other Englishman had penetrated, Livingstone sailed for England, having heard nothing of his family for three years. He at once became the hero of the hour; dinners were given, speeches were made in his honour, and he was asked to equip and command a government expedition for the exploration of that part of South-Eastern Africa through which the river Zambesi flows. After some consideration he decided to undertake this, though it meant that from henceforth he would cease to be a missionary pure and simple. But he looked at the question in its broadest aspect. "Wherever I go," he said, "I go as the servant of God, following the leadings of His Hand. My ideal of a missionary is not that of a dumpy man with a Bible under his arm. I feel I am not my own. I am serving Christ in labouring as well as in preaching, and having by His help got information which I hope will bring blessing to Africa, am I to hide the light under a bushel, because some will not consider it sufficiently or even at all missionary? I refrain from taking any salary from Missionary Societies, so no loss is sustained by any one."
In the March of 1858 he returned to his work, and Mrs. Livingstone started with him to go at least as far as Kuruman. This second Zambesi expedition lasted nearly six years, and as Livingstone stood on the shores of Lake Nyasa, he was able to feel that he stood where no white man had ever stood before him. Three years later, Bishop Mackenzie and six missionaries followed him here, but among the many sorrows which fell upon him about this time, was the death of the "good bishop" from fever, the death of his own wife, and the growing feeling that the extreme unhealthiness of the district would make anything like colonisation impossible. His third great journey, commenced in 1866, was his last, and when more than three years passed by without any tidings of him, owing to his long stay in the country of the cannibal Manyema, the editor of the New York Herald equipped an expedition to go in search of him the man in charge of it being Henry Stanley, whose orders were "to find Livingstone, living or dead." It was in 1871 that the two men met face to face at Tanganyika, and the relieving party found the object of their search almost alone, worn out, fever-stricken, cut off from all news of his children, and as near to despair as was possible to one of his strong faith and brave nature. But when Stanley, after many attacks of fever, returned to Europe, he could not persuade his companion to leave the country, which held him as a magnet. He was determined to find the sources of the Nile, and the determination cost him his life. The district through which he fought his way has been described as "one vast sponge," and was poisonous to the last degree. His strength failed, and though his faithful natives bore him along on a litter with the utmost tenderness, his sufferings were terrible. He died on the first of May 1873, alone save for his natives, "the greatest and best man who ever explored Africa." Believing that to labour is to pray, if the work be done for God's glory and not for self-advancement, David Livingstone's life had been one long prayer, and throughout those lonely dangerous journeyings the sense of God's Presence had been his stay and comfort. Around the last hours of the brave man a veil is drawn. But who can doubt that the love of God overshadowed him, and made even that desolate, marsh-like place a road of light, along which the worn-out traveller passed to Him, his one true goal?
His native servants behaved with beautiful devotion, and would not leave him alone in death. His heart they buried where he died, but as best they could they embalmed his body, and by slow stages made their way towards the coast with their precious burden, which they were determined somehow to get to England. At one time every one of them was stricken down by the terrible fever, but on they went for many a month, through swamp and desert and through hostile lands. Nothing could daunt them. Their master must lie in his home, far away, over the seas. When at last they reached Zanzibar and handed over the trust they had so loyally guarded, they barely received a word of thanks. But one friend of Livingstone's came forward just in time, and undertook to pay all expenses for two of their number to go to England and be present at the funeral. Susi and Chuma, two of the slaves the Doctor had freed, and his most devoted attendants, were chosen to go with their master till the end of his journey. It was almost a year after his death when the great traveller was borne into the Abbey, and those two stood there among the mourners, awe-struck but contented. Their task was accomplished; the white man who had been their deliverer lay among his own people.
A very simple inscription, ending with the words, "Other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also must I bring," marks the place in the nave where, with a curious significance, Livingstone, an architect of the Empire, lies close to other architects, Sir Charles Barry, Sir Gilbert Scott, and John Pearson, whose works are to be seen in the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and Westminster Hall.
We cannot leave these lovers of humanity without one glance at the statue of the good Earl of Shaftesbury, the friend of little children and of all those who were desolate and oppressed. Possessed of all that could make life attractive to him, he devoted himself to his dying day to the service of his fellows, and his name will go down to history as the liberator of the white slaves in England. For, as Wilberforce championed the negro, Shaftesbury fought long and steadily in the cause of the women and children employed in factories and collieries, who worked sometimes for thirty-six hours at a time under the most appalling conditions. At last he forced Parliament to take action, and to pass the Ten Hours' Bill, besides insisting that factory inspectors were appointed to see that all workers were protected as the law intended they should be. That was his greatest work, but to tell of all that he did would fill a volume with a record of golden deeds. Ever ready to lead an unpopular cause; an enthusiast without being a fanatic; strong, clear-headed, steadfast, reliable, and single-hearted, he stands out a noble figure in the social history of the nineteenth century. Just before his death, in 1885, his friend, Dean Stanley, in writing to him, spoke of Westminster Abbey as the place where he should rest. But the old man shook his head and begged to be buried in his country home.
However, the Abbey could not altogether refrain from doing him honour, and through streets lined with people, many of them the poorest in the land, most of them wearing some outward sign of mourning, a bit of black ribbon or a scrap of crape, followed by deputations from almost every charitable association, the coffin was carried to Westminster. Around it stood high and low, rich and poor. The wreaths sent by royal princes lay Bide by side with the tributes from the flower-girls and the boys on the training-ships. A mighty volume of sound ascended to the vaulted roof, as the familiar hymn was sung—
"Let saints on earth in concert sing,
With those whose rest is won,
For all the servants of our King
In earth and heaven are one!"
Then the organ ceased, the Blessing was given, and the great procession left the Abbey to the march of the coster-mongers' band, to the tramp of thousands of feet, whose way in life he had made more easy and more blessed.
In the north aisle of the nave rest three great men, builders in another way, who have served the world by their thoughts—Newton, Herschel, and Darwin.