Appendix.—Book Review in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February, 1858

Appendix.—Book Review in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, February, 1858.

[This review is provided to allow the reader to view Livingstone's achievement as it was seen by a contemporary.—A. L., 1997.]

Livingstone's Travels in South Africa.*

These two works, each embodying the results of years of travel and research, entirely revolutionize all our theories as to the geographical and physical character of Central Africa. Instead of lofty mountains and sandy deserts, we have a wide basin, or rather series of basins, with lakes and great rivers, and a soil fertile even when compared with the abounding exuberance of our own Western valleys and prairies.

Barth, traveling southward from the Mediterranean, explored this region till within eight degrees of the equator. Livingstone, traveling northward from the Cape of Good Hope, approached the equator from the south as nearly as Barth did from the north. He then traversed the whole breadth of the continent diagonally from the west to the east. His special researches cover the entire space between the eighth and fifteenth parallels of south latitude. Between the regions explored by Barth and Livingstone lies an unexplored tract extending eight degrees on each side of the equator, and occupying the whole breadth of the continent from east to west. Lieutenant Burton, famous for his expedition to Mecca and Medina, set out from Zanzibar a few months since, with the design of traversing this very region. If he succeeds in his purpose his explorations will fill up the void between those of Barth and Livingstone.

Dr. Livingstone, with whose travels we are at present specially concerned, is no ordinary man. The son of a Presbyterian deacon and small trader in Glasgow; set to work in a cotton factory at ten years old; buying a Latin grammar with his first earnings; working from six in the morning till eight at night, then attending evening-school till ten, and pursuing his studies till midnight; at sixteen a fair classical scholar, with no inconsiderable reading in books of science and travels, gained, sentence by sentence, with the book open before him on his spinning-jenny; botanizing and geologizing on holidays and at spare hours; poring over books of astrology till he was startled by inward suggestions to sell his soul to the Evil One as the price of the mysterious knowledge of the stars; soundly flogged by the good deacon his father by way of imparting to him a liking for Boston's "Fourfold State" and Wilberforce's "Practical Christianity"; then convinced by the writings of the worthy Thomas Dick that there was no hostility between Science and Religion, embracing with heart and mind the doctrines of evangelical Christianity, and resolving to devote his life to their extension among the heathen—such are the leading features of the early life of David Livingstone.

He would equip himself for the warfare and afterward fight with the powers of darkness at his own cost. So at the age of nineteen—a slim, loose-jointed lad—he commenced the study of medicine and Greek, and afterward of theology, in the University of Glasgow, attending lectures in the winter, paying his expenses by working as a cotton-spinner during the summer, without receiving a farthing of aid from any one.

His purpose was to go to China as a medical missionary, and he would have accomplished his object solely by his own efforts had not some friends advised him to join the London Missionary Society. He offered himself, with a half hope that his application would be rejected, for it was not quite agreeable to one accustomed to work his own way to become dependent in a measure upon others.

By the time when his medical and theological studies were completed, the Opium War had rendered it inexpedient to go to China, and his destination was fixed for Southern Africa.

He reached his field of labor in 1840. Having tarried for three months at the head station at Kuruman, and taken to wife a daughter of the well-known missionary Mr. Moffat, he pushed still farther into the country, and attached himself to the band of Sechele, chief of the Bakwains, or "Alligators", a Bechuana tribe. Here, cutting himself for six months wholly off from all European society, he gained an insight into the language, laws, modes of life, and habits of the Bechuanas, which proved of incalculable advantage in all his subsequent intercourse with them.

Sechele gave a ready ear to the missionary's instructions.

"Did your forefathers know of a future judgment?" he asked.

"They knew of it," replied the missionary, who proceeded to describe the scenes of the last great day.

"You startle me: these words make all my bones to shake; I have no more strength in me. But my forefathers were living at the same time yours were; and how is it that they did not send them word about these terrible things? They all passed away into darkness without knowing whither they were going."

Mr. Moffat had translated the Bible into the Bechuana language, which he had reduced to writing, and Sechele set himself to learn to read, with so much assiduity that he began to grow corpulent from lack of his accustomed exercise. His great favorite was Isaiah. "He was a fine man, that Isaiah; he knew how to speak," he was wont to say, using the very words applied by the Glasgow Professor to the Apostle Paul. Having become convinced of the truth of Christianity, he wished his people also to become Christians. "I will call them together," he said, "and with our rhinoceros-skin whips we will soon make them all believe together." Livingstone, mindful, perhaps, of the ill success of his worthy father in the matter of Wilberforce on "Practical Christianity", did not favor the proposed line of argument. He was, in fact, in no great haste to urge Sechele to make a full profession of faith by receiving the ordinance of baptism; for the chief had, in accordance with the customs of his people, taken a number of wives, of whom he must, in this case, put away all except one. The head-wife was a greasy old jade, who was in the habit of attending church without her gown, and when her husband sent her home to make her toilet, she would pout out her thick lips in unutterable disgust at his new-fangled notions, while some of the other wives were the best scholars in the school. After a while Sechele took the matter into his own hands, sent his supernumerary wives back to their friends—not empty-handed—and was baptized.

Mr. Livingstone's station was in the region since rendered famous by the hunting exploits of Gordon Cumming. He vouches for the truth of the wonderful stories told by that redoubtable Nimrod, who visited him during each of his excursions. He himself, indeed, had an adventure with a lion quite equal to any thing narrated by Cumming or Andersson, the result of which was one dead lion, two Bechuanas fearfully wounded, his own arm marked with eleven distinct teeth-marks, the bone crunched to splinters, and the formation of a false joint, which marred his shooting ever after.

Mr. Livingstone has a republican contempt for the "King of Beasts". He is nothing better than an overgrown hulking dog, not a match, in fair fight, for a buffalo. If a traveler encounter him by daylight, he turns tail and sneaks out of sight like a scared greyhound. All the talk about his majestic roar is sheer twaddle. It takes a keen ear to distinguish the voice of the lion from that of the silly ostrich. When he is gorged he falls asleep, and a couple of natives approach him without fear. One discharges an arrow, the point of which has been anointed with a subtle poison, made of the dried entrails of a species of caterpillar, while the other flings his skin cloak over his head. The beast bolts away incontinently, but soon dies, howling and biting the ground in agony. In the dark, or at all hours when breeding, the lion is an ugly enough customer; but if a man will stay at home by night, and does not go out of his way to attack him, he runs less risk in Africa of being devoured by a lion than he does in our cities of being run over by an omnibus—so says Mr. Livingstone.

When the lion grows old he leads a miserable life. Unable to master the larger game, he prowls about the villages in the hope of picking up a stray goat. A woman of child venturing out at night does not then come amiss. When the natives hear of one prowling about the villages, they say, "His teeth are worn; he will soon kill men," and thereupon turn out to kill him. This is the only foundation for the common belief that when the lion has once tasted human flesh he will eat nothing else. A "man-eater" is always an old lion, who takes to cannibalism to avoid starvation. When he lives far from human habitations, and so can not get goats or children, an old lion is often reduced to such straits as to be obliged to live upon mice, and such small deer.

Mr. Livingstone's strictly missionary life among the Bakwains lasted eight or nine years. The family arose early, and, after prayers and breakfast, went to the school-room, where men, women, and children were assembled. School was over at eleven, when the husband set about his work as gardener, smith, or carpenter, while his wife busied herself with domestic matters—baking bread, a hollow in a deserted ant-hill serving for an oven; churning butter in an earthen jar; running candles; making soap from ashes containing so little alkaline matter that the ley had to be kept boiling for a month or six weeks before it was strong enough for use. The wife was maid-of-all-work in doors, while the husband was Jack-at-all-trades outside. Three several times the tribe removed their place of residence, and he was so many times compelled to build for himself a house, every stick and brick of which was put in place by his own hands. The heat of the day past, and dinner over, the wife betook herself to the infant and sewing schools, while the husband walked down to the village to talk with the natives. Three nights in the week, after the cows had been milked, public meetings were held for instruction in religious and secular matters. All these multifarious duties were diversified by attendance upon the sick, and in various ways aiding the poor and wretched. Being in so many ways helpful to them, and having, besides, shown from the first that he could knock them up at hard work or traveling, we can not wonder that Livingstone was popular among the Bakwains, though conversions seem to have been of the rarest. Indeed, we are not sure but Sechele's was the only case.

A great drought set in the very first year of his residence among them, which increased year by year. The river ran dry; the canals which he had induced them to dig for the purpose of irrigating their gardens were useless; the fish died in such numbers that the congregated hyenas of the country were unable to devour the putrid masses. The rain-makers tried their spells in vain. The clouds sometimes gathered promisingly overhead, but only to roll away without discharging a drop upon the scorched plains. The people began to suspect some connection between the new religion and the drought. "We like you," they said, "but we wish you would give up this everlasting preaching and praying. You see that we never get any rain, while the tribes who never pray have an abundance." Livingstone could not deny the fact, and he was sometimes disposed to attribute it to the malevolence of the "Prince of the Power of the Air", eager to frustrate the good work.

The people behaved wonderfully well, though the scarcity amounted almost to famine. The women sold their ornaments to buy corn from the more fortunate tribes around; the children scoured the country for edible roots; the men betook themselves to hunting. They constructed great traps, called 'hopos', consisting of two lines of hedges, a mile long, far apart at the extremities, but converging like the sides of the letter V, with a deep pit at the narrow end. Then forming a circuit for miles around, they drove the game—buffaloes, zebras, gnus, antelopes, and the like—into the mouth of the hopo, and along its narrowing lane, until they plunged pell-mell in one confused, writhing, struggling mass into the pit, where they were speared at leisure.

The precarious mode of life occasioned by the long drought interfered sadly with the labors of the mission. Still worse was the conduct of Boers who had pushed their way into the Bechuana country. Their theory was very simple: "We are the people of God, and the heathen are given to us for an inheritance." Of this inheritance they proceeded to make the most. They compelled the natives to work for them without pay, in consideration of the privilege of living in "their country". They made regular forays, carrying off the women and children as slaves. They were cowardly as well as brutal, compelling friendly tribes to accompany them on their excursions, putting them in front as a shield, and coolly firing over their heads, till the enemy fled in despair, leaving their women, children, and cattle as a prey.