A letter was waiting for David when he returned to Kolobeng. He ripped the letter open and read. “Dear Sir, Allow us to convey our congratulations on your successful journey, in company with Messrs. Oswell and Murray, across the South African desert for the discovery of an interesting country, a fine river, and an extensive inland lake.” The letter went on to inform David that he had been awarded the Royal Geographic Society’s annual gold medal, along with a prize of twenty-five pounds for finding Lake Ngami.
David was astonished to think that anyone in England would be that interested in his exploration, but he was very pleased to have the money. He was already planning how to use it on another attempt to find Chief Sebitoane.
Robert and Agnes both recovered from their malaria, and a month after arriving back in Kolobeng, Mary gave birth to their newest baby, a little blue-eyed girl whom they named Elizabeth. Things did not go well, however. During the delivery, Mary suffered a mild stroke, which paralyzed one side of her face, causing the older children to become scared of her. And baby Elizabeth did not thrive. Within a month she caught a chest infection, for which there was no cure. David did what he could, but Elizabeth died two weeks later. After they had buried her, the Livingstone family went to Kuruman, where Mary’s parents could help take care of the children while Mary recovered.
The following year, the family returned to Kolobeng, where David made plans for another trip north as soon as the wet season was over. David planned to take his family along with him this time, too, and his old friend Cotton Oswell would join them.
David’s mother-in-law had some stern words for David when she heard what he was up to. No doubt her criticism was guided by the fact that Mary was pregnant again. “My dear Livingstone,” she wrote. “To my dismay, I now get a letter in which [Mary] writes, ‘I must again wend my way to the far interior, perhaps to be confined in the field.’ O Livingstone, what do you mean? Was it not enough that you lost one lovely babe, and scarcely saved the others while the mother came home threatened with paralysis? And will you again expose her and them in those sickly regions, on an exploring expedition?”
David knew her letter echoed the thoughts of most missionaries in southern Africa. To them the northern region was no place for a woman and children. Despite what these other missionaries might think, David was determined to open up the region for future missionaries to work in. As well, Mary made it clear she would rather go north with him than stay with her family in Kuruman.
On April 24, 1851, David, with his family, set out on his third trip north into the Kalahari. Once again, Cotton Oswell had cheerfully borne the brunt of the expenses for the trip. He had turned out to be a true and loyal friend to David, and as he got to know the rest of the Livingstone family, he came to love and appreciate them all.
The trip went smoothly to begin with. Cotton Oswell and several of the guides rode ahead of the wagons on horseback. Using the map David had drawn on his previous trips, they located the “pans” of water and were able to dig down to them before the rest of the group arrived with the wagons to set up camp for the night.
The expedition made good time in reaching the Zouga River, where David learned from some of the local bushmen that Chief Sebitoane was camped along the Chobe River, across the great salt flats of Ntwetwe. The natives told David it would take three days to cross the flats, but they must go prepared, since there was no water and very little wildlife out there. David and Cotton Oswell estimated that they could carry enough water for three days in the wagons, as long as the oxen and horses were well fed and watered before beginning the trek. Neither man had ever taken a wagon across a salt flat before and did not realize how difficult it would be. By the third day, they were only halfway across. The wagonwheels kept breaking through the thin crust of salt, and the oxen had to be whipped constantly to make them keep pulling the partially stuck wagons.
David and Mary Livingstone began to panic at the slow progress. What would happen if they didn’t find water soon? David confided in his journal that the possibility of the children’s “perishing before our eyes was terrible.” On the fifth day, they entered some grassland and were able to find a small waterhole. Some rhinoceroses had beaten them to it, and the water was black with their dung. But by now they were all too thirsty to care, and they knelt down and willingly lapped up the black water.
From then on they were able to find enough water to meet their needs each day, but with the water came mosquitoes that dive-bombed the children mercilessly, leaving huge welts all over their little bodies. Once again, David and Mary wondered whether they had done the right thing exposing the children to such dangers.
On June 18, 1851, two months after setting out from Kolobeng, they reached the Chobe River, where they found a native man waiting for them. The man, whose name was Tonuana, told David and Cotton Oswell that Chief Sebitoane had heard a rumor that some white men were looking for him and he had come more than four hundred miles to meet them. The chief was staying on an island thirty miles downstream, and Tonuana offered to escort the men to him.
It did not take David long to decide that the best thing to do was for him and Cotton to go alone with Tonuana while Mary and the others stayed with the wagons by the edge of the river. On June 21, David found himself being escorted downriver to be the first white person ever to meet Chief Sebitoane of the Makalolos.
As he paddled the canoe, David wondered whether he was being lured into a trap. What if Tonuana was leading them right into an ambush? Or what if right at that moment the Makalolos were preparing poisoned food for their guests? David muttered a silent prayer that God would watch over them.
The men paddled for four hours, with only the sounds of crocodiles slipping into and out of the water and waterfowl squawking overhead to break the silence. Finally, they came upon an island in the middle of the river, and David found himself face to face with fifteen naked warriors. The warriors ran into the water and eagerly pulled the canoe ashore. As David stepped from the canoe, the warriors parted and a tall, lean man wearing a leopard skin cloak walked towards him and Cotton Oswell. Without thinking, David thrust out his hand to shake the chief’s. As the chief reached out to grasp it, David realized that he probably knew nothing of the white man’s custom of shaking hands. Chief Sebitoane welcomed the men in Bantu and showed them into his camp. By now the sun was beginning to set over the trees.
Dinner that night was a huge celebration. The chief had ordered an ox be killed and cooked, and there was a lot of singing and storytelling. Throughout the festivities, Chief Sebitoane sat silently on a stool watching.
Later that evening, after the celebration had died down, David and Cotton Oswell lay sleeping beside the fire. Suddenly David awoke with the feeling that someone was standing over him. His heart beat fast as he scrambled to his feet. Standing in the flicker of the firelight was Chief Sebitoane himself. At the same moment, Cotton Oswell awoke.
“I have come to speak with you,” said the chief.
“Please, sit down,” said David, hoping Chief Sebitoane had come in peace.
After they sat down, the chief gathered his cloak around him and began to speak in a soft, low voice. He told them his life story from beginning to end. He described how he had outwitted other tribes and their chiefs and how his tribe had been driven north by the Zulus. He told of the cattle he had stolen, the rivers he had crossed, and the battles he had fought. The stories continued all night, with only the occasional interruption as David asked the chief to clarify something he had said. It was dawn before Chief Sebitoane finished his stories and got up and walked back to his hut.
By now, David and Cotton Oswell were very tired, but they were also thrilled with the way Chief Sebitoane had welcomed them and taken them into his confidence. David was particularly struck by the chief’s intelligence, and he hoped that before too long the chief might become a Christian convert like Chief Sechele.
After five days on the island, Chief Sebitoane asked the men to take him back to their wagons so that he could meet David’s wife and children. Nothing could have pleased David more. The chief’s men paddled them upstream. Much to David’s relief, everything was well with his family. Chief Sebitoane was fascinated with the Livingstone children, the first white children he had ever laid eyes on. He stayed with them for a week before David and Cotton Oswell accompanied him back downriver to his camp.
It was then that disaster struck. On July 6, 1851, Chief Sebitoane fell ill with pneumonia. David visited him, but there was little he could do. Any treatment he tried might not work, and David knew that if he touched his new friend and the chief then died, he himself could be accused of killing him. Three days later, Chief Sebitoane did die. David was disheartened. He had many questions but few answers. It seemed so unfair that he’d had so little time with the chief. He had hoped the two of them could develop a long and lasting friendship.
David had another serious question to think about. The Makalolos did not know what to do with the white people who were now in their midst. Their new chief was Sebitoane’s daughter, Mamochisane. What would she think of the white strangers? Mamochisane lived some distance to the north, and it would take a week to get a message to her that her father was dead and another week to get a reply from her about what to do with the white people.
David, Cotton Oswell, and the rest of their party had no choice but to wait for a reply, all the time praying that God would grant them favor with the new chief. Finally, after camping on the bank of the Chobe River for nearly a month, news arrived, and it was good. Mamochisane instructed her tribe to treat the visitors exactly as Chief Sebitoane would have and to help them go wherever they wanted.
It was wonderful news to David. He had heard that there was a large river about three days’ travel away, and he was eager to be guided to it. In the end, he and Cotton Oswell left Mary and the children and the guides with the wagons and went ahead on horseback. The Makalolos had warned them that there were many small rivers and a large marsh to cross before they got to the big river. A man on horseback or on foot could make it across, but not wagons pulled by oxen.
It was not an easy journey, even on horseback. The tall swamp grass sometimes reached to their shoulders, and the men had to urge the horses on through crocodile-infested waters. On August 4, everything they had endured was made worthwhile in a single moment. David Livingstone and Cotton Oswell sat on their horses and looked down at the mighty Zambezi River, a huge expanse of water about four hundred yards wide, and deep, though how deep they could not tell.
David and Cotton’s guide told the men about a huge waterfall on the river and offered to take them there. He said it was called Mosioatunya, “the smoke that thunders.” As much as they wanted to go and see the waterfall right then and there, David and Cotton had to get back to the wagons because Mary Livingstone was expecting another baby any day, and Cotton was long overdue in England. They needed to get back to Kolobeng as quickly as possible. The waterfall would have to wait for another day.
Chapter 14
Wherever He Laid His Head
It was September 15, 1851, a hot, sunny day like all the other days so far on the journey home to Kolobeng. The wagons were stopped beside the Zouga River. As the remaining scrawny oxen that had not died from the bite of the tsetse fly drank loudly from the river, another sound suddenly filled the air—the crying of a newborn baby. The baby was David and Mary Livingstone’s fifth child, another son. David climbed from the wagon carrying the tiny infant in his arms. He first looked over at the river whose water had saved his life on an earlier trip and then looked down at the baby. “I’ll call you Zouga,” he whispered gently to the infant, “Zouga Livingstone.”
