Exploring Africa (Livingstone,Stanley)
Livingstone's departure was hindered by the Opium War, which closed China to him for the time being. During this period he attended a meeting addressed by a fellow Scot, Dr Robert Moffat, who was home on leave from the mission station at Kuruman, some 500 miles north of Cape Town. This was as far as missionaries had penetrated into the 'dark continent' of Africa; at that time, apart from parts of the north and south, only the coastline of this huge continent was know to the outside world. After listening to Dr Moffat speaking of the vast, untouched regions of Central Africa, and the 'smoke of a thousand villages' where the gospel had never been preached, Livingstone rather shyly asked him whether he thought he would do for Africa. The outcome was that the London Missionary Society agreed he should go and, in 1840, Livingstone sailed for Africa on board the sailing ship, George.
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Livingstone made several difficult journeys into the interior, mapping the land and searching for navigable rivers that British missionaries and traders could use. In 1849, he arrived at Lake Ngami, in what is now Botswana. In 1851, Livingstone travelled to the Zambezi River, on the border between present-day Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Livingstone was constantly on the move into the African interior: strengthening his missionary determination, responding wholeheartedly to the delights of geographical discovery; clashing with the Dutch Boers and the Portuguese, whose treatment of the Africans he came to detest; and building for himself a remarkable reputation as a dedicated Christian, a courageous explorer, and a fervent antislavery advocate. Yet so impassioned was his commitment to Africa that his duties as husband and father were relegated to second place.
The Zambezi Explorations
The British government called the expedition in 1863, when it was clear that Livingstone's optimism about economic and political developments in the Zambezi regions was premature. Livingstone, however, showed something of his old fire when he took his little vessel, the "Lady Nyassa," with a small, untrained crew and little fuel, on a hazardous voyage of 2,500 miles across the Indian Ocean and left it for sale in Bombay. Furthermore, within the next three decades the Zambezi expedition proved to be anything but a disaster. It had amassed a valuable body of scientific knowledge, and the association of the Lake Nyasa regions with Livingstone's name and the prospects for colonization that he envisaged there were important factors for the creation in 1893 of the British Central Africa Protectorate, which in 1907 became Nyasaland, and in 1966 the republic of Malawi.
| He became the first European to cross Africa during an amazing journey between 1853 and 1856. On this trip, Livingstone started at the Zambezi and went north and west across Angola to Luanda on the Atlantic Ocean. On the return journey, he followed the Zambezi to its mouth, in what is now Mozambique. In 1855, during the return, Livingstone became the first European to sight Victoria Falls on the Zambezi River. He named the falls after Queen Victoria of Great Britain. Biography................Livingstone and Stanley
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