The abolition of the slave-trade by King Mtesa, chief of Waganda, near Lake Victoria Nyanza, is one of the most recent fruits of the agitation. The services of Mr. Mackay, a countryman of Livingstone's, and an agent of the Church Missionary Society, contributed mainly to this remarkable result.
Such facts show that not only has the slave-trade become illegal in some of the separate states of Africa, but that an active spirit has been roused against it, which, if duly directed, may yet achieve much more. The trade, however, breeds a reckless spirit, which cares little for treaties or enactments, and is ready to continue the traffic as a smuggling business after it has been declared illegal. In the Nyassa district, from which to a large extent it has disappeared, it is by no means suppressed. It is quite conceivable that it may revive after the temporary alarm of the dealers has subsided. The remissness, and even the connivance, of the Portuguese authorities has been a great hindrance to its abolition. All who desire to carry out the noble object of Livingstone's life will therefore do well to urge her Majesty's Ministers, members of Parliament, and all who have influence, to renewed and unremitting efforts toward the complete and final abolition of the traffic throughout the whole of Africa. To this consummation the honor of Great Britain is conspicuously pledged, and it is one to which statesmen of all parties have usually been proud to contribute.
If we pass from the slave-trade to the promotion of lawful commerce, we find the influence of Livingstone hardly less apparent in not a few undertakings recently begun. Animated by the memory of his four months' fellowship with Livingstone, Mr. Stanley has undertaken the exploration of the Congo or Livingstone River, because it was a work that Livingstone desired to be done. With a body of Kroomen and others he is now at work making a road from near Banza Noki to Stanley Pool. He takes a steamer in sections to be put together above the Falls, and with it he intends to explore and to open to commerce the numerous great navigable tributaries of the Livingstone River. Mr. Stanley has already established steam communication between the French station near the mouth of the Congo and his own station near Banza Noki or Embomma. The "Livingstone Central African Company, Limited," with Mr. James Stevenson, of Glasgow, as chairman, has constructed a road along the Murchison Rapids, thus making the original route of Livingstone available between Quilimane and the Nyassa district, and is doing much more to advance Christian civilization. France, Belgium, Germany, and Italy have all been active in promoting commercial schemes. A magnificent proposal has been made, under French auspices, for a railway across the Soudan. There is a proposal from Manchester to connect the great lakes with the sea by a railway from the coast opposite Zanzibar. Another scheme is for a railway from the Zambesi to Lake Nyassa. A telegraph through Egypt has been projected to the South African colonies of Britain, passing by Nyassa and Shiré. An Italian colony on a large scale has been projected in the dominions of Menelek, king of Shoa, near the Somali land. Any statement of the various commercial schemes begun or contemplated would probably be defective, because new enterprises are so often appearing. But all this shows what a new light has burst on the commercial world as to the capabilities of Africa in a trading point of view. There seems, indeed, no reason why Africa should not furnish most of the products which at present we derive from India. As a market for our manufactures, it is capable, even with a moderate amount of civilization, of becoming one of our most extensive customers. The voice that proclaimed these things in 1857 was the voice of one crying in the wilderness; but it is now repeated in a thousand echoes.
In stimulating African exploration the influence of Livingstone was very decided. He was the first of the galaxy of modern African travelers, for both in the Geographical Society and in the world at large his name became famous before those of Baker, Grant, Speke, Burton, Stanley, and Cameron. Stanley, inspired first by the desire of finding him, became himself a remarkable and successful traveler. The same remark is applicable to Cameron. Not only did Livingstone stimulate professed geographers, but, what was truly a novelty in the annals of exploration, he set newspaper companies to open up Africa. The New York Herald, having found Livingstone, became hungry for new discoveries, and enlisting a brother-in-arms, Mr. Edwin Arnold and the Daily Telegraph, the two papers united to send Mr. Stanley "to fresh woods and pastures new." Under the auspices of the African Exploration Society, and the directions of the Royal Geographical, Mr. Keith Johnston and Mr. Joseph Thomson undertook the exploration of the country between Dar es Salaam and Lake Nyassa, the former falling a victim to illness, the latter penetrating through unexplored regions to Nyassa, and subsequently extending his journey to Tanganyika. We can but name the international enterprise resulting from Brussels Conference; the French researches of Lieutenant de Semellé and of de Brazza; the various German Expeditions of Dr. Lenz, Dr. Pogge, Dr. Fischer, and Herr Denhardts; and the Portuguese exploration on the west, from Benguela to the head-waters of the Zambesi. Africa does not want for explorers, and generally they are men bent on advancing legitimate commerce and the improvement of the people. It would be a comfort if we could think of all as having this for their object; but tares, we fear, will always be mingled with the good seed; and if there have been travelers who have led immoral lives and sought their own amusement only, and traders who by trafficking in rum and such things have demoralized the natives, they have only shown that in some natures selfishness is too deeply imbedded to be affected by the noblest examples.
Livingstone himself traveled twenty-nine thousand miles in Africa, and added to the known part of the globe about a million square miles. He discovered Lakes 'Ngami, Shirwa, Nyassa, Moero, and Bangweolo; the upper Zambesi, and many other rivers; made known the wonderful Victoria Falls; also the high ridges flanking the depressed basin of the central plateau; he was the first European to traverse the whole length of Lake Tanganyika, and to give it its true orientation; he traversed in much pain and sorrow the vast watershed near Lake Bangweolo, and, through no fault of his own, just missed the information that would have set at rest all his surmises about the sources of the Nile. His discoveries were never mere happy guesses or vague descriptions from the accounts of natives; each spot was determined with the utmost precision, though at the time his head might be giddy from fever or his body tormented with pain. He strove after an accurate notion of the form and structure of the continent; Investigated its geology, hydrography, botany, and zoölogy; and grappled with the two great enemies of man and beast that prey on it--fever and tsetse. Yet all these were matters apart from the great business of his life. In science he was neither amateur nor dilettante, but a careful, patient, laborious worker. And hence his high position, and the respect he inspired in the scientific world. Small men might peck and nibble at him, but the true kings of science,--the Owens, Murchisons, Herschels, Sedgwicks, and Fergussons--honored him the more the longer they knew him. We miss an important fact in his life if we do not take note of the impression which he made on such men.
Last, but not least, we note the marvelous expansion of missionary enterprise in Africa since Livingstone's death. Though he used no sensational methods of appeal, he had a wonderful power to draw men to the mission field. In his own quiet way, he not only enlisted recruits, but inspired them with the enthusiasm of their calling. Not even Charles Simeon, during his long residence at Cambridge, sent more men to India than Livingstone drew to Africa in his brief visit to the Universities. It seemed as if he suddenly awakened the minds of young men to a new view of the grand purposes of life. Mr. Monk wrote to him truly, "That Cambridge visit of yours. lighted a candle which will NEVER, NEVER go out."
At the time of his death there was no missionary at work in the great region of Shiré and Nyassa on which his heart was so much set. The first to take possession were his countrymen of Scotland. The Livingstonia mission and settlement of the Free Church, planned by Dr. Stewart, of Lovedale, who had gone out to reconnoitre in 1863, and begun in 1875, has now three stations on the lake, and has won the highest commendation of such travelers as the late Consul Elton [80]. Much of the success of this enterprise is due to Livingstone's old comrade, Mr. E.D. Young, R.N., who led the party, and by his great experience and wonderful way of managing the natives, laid not only the founders of Livingstonia, but the friends of Africa, under obligations that have never been sufficiently acknowledged [81]. In concert with the "Livingstone Central African Company," considerable progress has been made in exploring the neighboring regions, and the recent exploit of Mr. James Stewart, C.E., one of the lay helpers of the Mission, in traversing the country between Nyassa and Tanganyika, is an important contribution to geography [82]. It would have gratified Livingstone to think that in conducting this settlement several of the Scotch Churches were practically at one--Free, Reformed, and United Presbyterian; while at Blantyre, on the Shiré, the Established Church of Scotland, with a mission and a colony of mechanics, has taken its share in the work.
[80] Lakes and Mountains of Africa, pp. 277, 280.
[81] See his work. Nyassa: London, 1877.
[82] See Transactions of Royal Geographical Society, 1880.