By 1867 it seemed that David Livingstone had all but gone. For several years since his passage ten years prior to that, the mail were sent to England, accounting of his development about central Africa. The world had learned of his individual misfortune years earlier, Mary Livingstone had died from the fever. After her death David had gone North by the Rovuna river. He wanted to reach Lake Nyassa. He believed that it would be a superb place to start an English colony. The land there was dry and healthy and the lake offered fresh water. On 16 September 1859 David and his company came to the waters of elegant Lake Nyassa. He sent correspondence to England telling them to propel people to form a community. He then went to Tette, where he had an ecstatic reuniting with his Makololo friends. They went back to Linyanti.
When David returned once again to Tette, England’s reply to his letters was waiting for him. The first band of workers had arrived on a light steamer called the Pioneer. They went back to Lake Nyassa. Then David left the missionaries and travelled north to the city of Zanzibar. Here the slave trade was the worst of all. David rented a light ship and sailed south again. On foot, all the villages that he passed were unoccupied and burned, the people had been snared by the slave traders. They went up North again, food was running low and David’s medicine case was stolen. Without medicine David suffered constantly with fever. David needed to reach Ujiji, an Arab colony on the east shore of Lake Tanganyika, about three hundred miles west of Lake Nyassa.
Meanwhile England newspapers wondered if David Livingstone was lost, or dead? News reached America. An American man went to find out what had happened to David Livingstone. He arrived in Ujiji with two hundred native porters wearing packs. Oxen pulled wagons loaded with bundles. The American recognized David Livingstone, he was meager, his clothes hung loosely on him.
An American, Gordon Bennet, publisher for the New York Herald, wanted to know what had happened to David Livingstone, the pioneer of the Victoria Falls. So he sent Henry Morton Stanley to find him. Stanley brought supplies for David, and letters from his offspring. He stayed for over four months. The two became confidential friends. After Stanley left, David went on a finishing journey.
He needed to find a river called Laupula, which was said to be the source of the Nile River.
They didn’t make it, in Chitambo’s village near Molilamo David Livingstone died. It was 4th May 1873.
In Westminister Abbey, in London where he is buried you can find a headstone with the following words:
Brought by faithful hands over land and over sea. Here rests DAVID LIVINGSTONE, Missionary Traveller, Philanthropist. Born March 19, 1813, at Blantyre, Lanarkshire. Died May 4th, 1873, at Chitambo’s Village, Ilala. For thirty years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets. And abolish the desolating slave-trade of central Africa, where, with his last words, he wrote: “All I can say in my solitude is, May heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one – American, English, Turk – who will help to heal the open sore of the world.”
For more data on Victoria Falls or David Livingstone, visit http://www.livingstonesadventure.com. This is the last instalment of a four part series of articles about David Livingstone to be found on this website. I trust the facts provided was useful.
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