The Personal Life of David Livingstone / Chiefly from his Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in the Possession of His Family

by William Garden Blaikie

Nine days later they were again threatened by Mpende:

"23d January, 1856.--At Mpende's this morning at sunrise, a party of his people came close to our encampment, using strange cries, and waving some red substance toward us. They then lighted a fire with charms in it, and departed uttering the same hideous screams as before. This is intended to render us powerless, and probably also to frighten us. No message has yet come from him, though several parties have arrived, and profess to have come simply to see the white man. Parties of his people have been collecting from all quarters long before daybreak. It would be considered a challenge--for us to move down the river, and an indication of fear and invitation to attack if we went back. So we must wait in patience, and trust in Him who has the hearts of all men in his hands. To Thee, O God, we look. And, oh! Thou who wast the man of sorrows for the sake of poor vile sinners, and didst not disdain the thief's petition, remember me and Thy cause in Africa. Soul and body, my family, and Thy cause, I commit all to Thee. Hear, Lord, for Jesus' sake."

In the entire records of Christian heroism, there are few more remarkable occasions of the triumph of the spirit of holy trust than those which are recorded here so quietly and modestly. We are carried back to the days of the Psalmist: "I will not be afraid of ten thousand of the people that have set themselves against me round about." In the case of David Livingstone as of the other David, the triumph of confidence was not the less wonderful that it was preceded by no small inward tumult. Both were human creatures. But in both the flutter lasted only till the soul had time to rally its trust--to think of God as a living friend, sure to help in time of need. And how real is the sense of God's presence! The mention of the two longitudinal ridges, and of the refusal of the people to give more than two canoes, side by side with the most solemn appeals, would have been incongruous, or even irreverent, if Livingstone had not felt that he was dealing with the living God, by whom every step of his own career and every movement of his enemies were absolutely controlled.

A single text often gave him all the help he needed:

"It is singular," he says, "that the very same text which recurred to my mind at every turn of my course in life in this country and even in England, should be the same as Captain Maclure, the discoverer of the Northwest Passage, mentions in a letter to his sister as familiar in his experience: 'Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not to thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy steps. Commit thy way unto thy Lord; trust also in Him and He shall bring it to pass.' Many more, I have no doubt, of our gallant seamen feel that it is graceful to acknowledge the gracious Lord in whom we live and move and have our being. It is an advance surely in humanity from that devilry which gloried in fearing neither God, nor man, nor Devil, and made our wooden walls floating hells."

His being enabled to reach the sanctuary of perfect peace in the presence of his enemies was all the more striking if we consider--what he felt keenly--that to live among the heathen is in itself very far from favorable to the vigor or the prosperity of the spiritual life. "Traveling from day to day among barbarians," he says in his Journal, "exerts a most benumbing effect on the religious feelings of the soul."

Among the subjects that occupied a large share of his thoughts in these long and laborious journeys, two appear to have been especially prominent: first, the configuration of the country; and second, the best way of conducting missions, and bringing the people of Africa to Christ.

The configuration of intertropical South Africa had long been with him a subject of earnest study, and now he had come clearly to the conclusion that the middle part was a table-land, depressed, however, in the centre, and flanked by longitudinal ridges on the east and west; that originally the depressed centre had contained a vast accumulation of water, which had found ways of escape through fissures in the encircling fringe of mountains, the result of volcanic action or of earthquakes. The Victoria Falls presented the most remarkable of these fissures, and thus served to verify and complete his theory. The great lakes in the great heart of South Africa were the remains of the earlier accumulation before the fissures were formed. Lake 'Ngami, large though it was, was but a little fraction of the vast lake that had once spread itself over the south. This view of the structure of South Africa he now found, from a communication which reached him at Linyanti, had been anticipated by Sir Roderick Murchison, who in 1852 had propounded it to the Geographical Society. Livingstone was only amused at thus losing the credit of his discovery; he contented himself with a playful remark on his being "cut out" by Sir Roderick. But the coincidence of views was very remarkable, and it lay at the foundation of that brotherlike intimacy and friendship which ever marked his relation with Murchison. One important bearing of the geographical fact was this; it was evident that while the low districts were unhealthy, the longitudinal ridges by which they were fringed were salubrious. Another of its bearings was, that it would help them to find the course and perhaps the sources of the great rivers, and thus facilitate commercial and missionary operations. The discovery of the two healthy ridges, which made him so unwilling to die at the mouth of the Loangwa, gave him new hopes for missions and commerce.

These and other matters connected with the state of the country formed the subject of regular communications to the Geographical Society. Between Loanda and Quilimane, six despatches were written at different points [45]. Formerly, as we have seen, he had written through a Fellow of the Society, his friend and former fellow-traveler, Captain, now Colonel Steele; but as the Colonel had been called on duty to the Crimea, he now addressed his letters to his countryman, Sir Roderick Murchison. Sir Roderick was charmed with the compliment, and was not slow to turn it to account, as appears from the following letter, the first of very many communications which he addressed to Livingstone:

[45] The dates were Pungo Andongo, 24th December, 1864; Cabango, 17th May, 1855; Linyanti, October 16, 1855; Chanyuni, 25th January, 1856; Tette, 4th March, 1856; Quilimane, 23d May, 1856.