“I need to talk with my men,” replied David, desperately stalling for time.
“Very well,” said the chief. “We will speak again in the morning. I do not think you will be going anywhere. You cannot cross the river without our help, and if you turn back, we will follow you.” He let out a loud laugh.
David was far from laughing when he returned to his men to tell them the grim news. The men were all sitting around a small fire discussing what they should do, when they heard a rustle in the bushes behind them. David grabbed his gun as everyone’s eyes turned towards the noise. Suddenly a man dressed in the uniform of a Portuguese soldier stepped into the clearing.
“My name is Sergeant Cypriano di Abreu, at your service,” he said, bowing to David. “Is there anything I can help you with?”
For a moment David was too amazed to speak, but he quickly regained his composure and told the sergeant about their predicament. Sergeant di Abreu told them there was a Portuguese settlement across the river and he would ferry them there if they liked. In the middle of the night, the party left the riverbank. The Bashinje chief heard the commotion and directed his warriors to fire on them. Thankfully, the warriors were poor shots, and no one was hit.
Much to David’s surprise, the Portuguese were very kind to him and his men. Sergeant di Abreu served them the best meal David had eaten since leaving Kuruman four-and-a-half months before. He also gave David and his men enough rations to make it to the Portuguese trading post of Cassange, where he told David to ask for Captain Neves.
Captain Neves turned out to be as kind and helpful as Sergeant di Abreu. He gave David a set of his own clothes to replace the rags he was wearing and insisted on feeding the entire group. When the group was rested and ready to travel on, Captain Neves sent a corporal with them. The corporal had an official letter giving him permission to requisition whatever food and supplies he needed for David’s expedition.
The corporal guided the group all the way to the coast. As they got closer, however, the Makalolo guides began to get nervous and whispered among themselves. They were going to see the ocean, but big ships traveled across the ocean, big ships filled with slaves. Eventually they became so anxious that they confided in David. Although he was unsure of exactly what would happen when they got to the coast, David promised the men he would defend them with his own life. He would never let them be taken prisoner while he was alive and able to prevent it.
On May 31, 1854, the expedition wound its way wearily into the port town of Loanda. By this time, David was so sick from a relapse of his malaria that he was forced to travel on the back of an ox. And even then, the group had to stop every ten minutes to let him rest. Still, David was strong enough to look up and see the Atlantic Ocean. He had done it. He had made the two-thousand-mile journey from Kuruman through the Kalahari Desert and West African jungle all the way to the west coast.
Before long, David found himself in front of the British consulate, an imposing brick building with a brightly colored flower garden in front of it. He swung open the gate, not knowing for sure what awaited him. He need not have worried. Mr. Gabriel, the consul, was amazed but glad to meet him. On seeing how sick David was, he ordered him straight to bed. The story of his adventure could wait until he was rested.
A week later a British warship berthed at Loanda. One of the ship’s doctors called on David and was appalled by the missionary’s physical condition. David was little more than a skeleton. The doctor ordered him to stay in bed for at least a month to regain his full strength and recover from the malaria and from dysentery. As he lay in bed, David corrected his journals and wrote reports home to the Royal Geographic Society and the London Missionary Society. At one stage, a British captain visited him and offered him free passage back to England on his ship the Forerunner. Although David refused the offer, he was relieved when the captain agreed to transport his letters, reports, and maps back to England. He knew that the London Missionary Society and the Royal Geographic Society would be glad to hear of his findings and that his wife would be glad to learn he was still alive!
If David had been on his own, he would have eagerly accepted the offer to return to England and deliver the reports in person. But he wasn’t alone. He had brought twenty-seven Makalolo men with him to Loanda and had promised to return them home safely. So while a voyage to England may have been appealing, David knew what he had to do. He had made a promise, and he would keep it. Somehow he would have to get well enough to guide the Makalolo men home.
Chapter 15
An Easier Route to the Ocean
David Livingstone was a man who kept his word, though it was four months before he was well enough to begin the trek back to Linyanti with his Makalolo helpers. The trip back was not so fast: The trip to the coast had taken nearly seven months; the trip back took one year. Along the way, David and his men faced many challenges. They arrived at Christmastime at Pungo Andongo, one hundred sixty miles inland from the coast, where David learned of the tragic fate of the Forerunner. The ship on which David had sent his reports and maps back to England had been wrecked on some rocks and all hands were lost at sea. David prayed a prayer of thanks that he had not taken up the captain’s offer to sail aboard her. However, since all of his papers were lost, he had to set to work rewriting his reports and letters to his family and friends and redrawing his maps. This held the men up in Pungo Andongo for several weeks.
The expedition also had to endure the entire wet season while traveling. Often the men waded through thigh-deep water for days on end, and it was nearly impossible for them to find a dry spot to sleep. The best they could do was to find a high patch of ground and build up a pile of dirt and mud, lay grass on top of it, and hope that the “little island” didn’t get swamped in the night or attract the curiosity of crocodiles.
At last, after twelve months, David Livingstone led his Makalolo helpers home to Linyanti. Chief Sekeletu and the entire tribe were astonished to see them.
“It has been so long. I thought you had all been lost!” exclaimed the chief. “How many of you have come back to us?”
“All of us,” replied one of David’s helpers. “Not one of us was lost.”
The chief was speechless. Indeed, it was an amazing feat for twenty-eight men to walk more than two thousand miles through enemy territory, facing countless wild animals, sickness, and harsh weather conditions, without a single fatality or defection.
A week of dancing, singing, and storytelling followed the men’s arrival back at Linyanti. Chief Sekeletu, dressed grandly in the colonel’s uniform the governor of Loanda had sent back to him with the men, presided over the proceedings. Each of the twenty-seven Makalolo men who had made the trip told his story to the village. Never in the history of the tribe had there been so many stories to tell at once!
David was humbled to discover that the Makalolos had taken good care of his things while he was gone. The tribespeople had made a shelter for his wagon, and not a single thing had been touched or stolen from the belongings he’d left behind.
Most men would have wanted to rest after such an arduous journey, but not David Livingstone. He didn’t have time to rest. He had a new mission to undertake. Arab traders at Loanda had told him there was an easier route to the ocean. The Zambezi River and its tributaries, if he followed them, would lead him to the east coast of Africa and the Indian Ocean. David needed to explore this route.
A month after arriving back at Linyanti, David was ready to go again. This time Chief Sekeletu trusted him with one hundred of his men and plenty of goods that could be used as gifts and to barter for food along the way. There were also twelve oxen and enough beads to buy a canoe. By November 13, 1855, they were following the Zambezi River. David and about forty men traveled in canoes while the rest of the men herded the oxen along the riverbank. Progress was slow but steady.
Before long, David heard the men beginning to talk about the smoke that thunders. He had heard the same talk from his guide on his first visit to see the mighty river, and he knew they were talking about the waterfall. This time he urged the men to show him this legendary place.
The group was still six miles from the falls when David saw enormous columns of white vapor billowing into the air. David could hear the faint sound of rushing water. The whisper soon turned into a roar as the canoe was swept closer to the edge of the falls. The paddlers skillfully turned the canoe and headed for an island in the middle of the river that overhung the edge of the waterfall. David dared not move a muscle. He knew that one wrong move could throw the canoe off course and send it careening over the edge.
The canoe landed safely on the island, and David climbed out. By now the noise was so thunderous that the men could communicate only by using gestures. The men pushed through the undergrowth to the far end of the island, where David lay flat on his stomach and wiggled his way to the edge. Below him lay the most stunning sight he had ever seen. Sheets of water, two thousand yards wide, rolled over the edge of the falls and tumbled three hundred feet straight down. The thunderous noise vibrated through David’s body, and the vapor billowed all around him. David lay there for a long time taking in the incredible sight, and knowing he was the first white man to see the falls.
Finally, David knew he had to pull himself away from the scene. As he wiggled back from the edge of the falls, he felt he had to do something special to mark the spot. He pulled out his pocketknife and found a large tree. Carefully he carved his initials, D. L., and the year, 1855, into the trunk. Then he gathered some wild flowering plants and made a little native garden around the base of the tree. Stepping back, David smiled, pleased with his work.
Later that evening David struggled to put into words what he had seen. He wrote, “Pieces of water leap off it in the form of comets with tails streaming behind, till the whole snowy sheet become[s] myriads of rushing, leaping, aqueous comets.” As he took his navigational readings from the stars, he thought of a name for the falls. He named them the Victoria Falls, after Queen Victoria of England.
As much as David would have liked to have stayed and watched the falls some more, he needed to keep moving. This time he decided to take a northeasterly route overland, cutting out a loop of the Zambezi River that wound south and then east before turning to the northeast again. Much to his surprise, David soon found himself on a high plateau, where the soil was fertile and moist but not waterlogged and there was an abundance of wild animals. He was certain the land would make good grazing land for cattle. Before long he had decided it would also be the perfect location for the northern missionary station he wanted to see established. He wrote a letter to the London Missionary Society detailing the land and asking it to send out missionaries as soon as possible before the opportunity to establish a mission station there slipped away. David was convinced he could find a practical route to the coast from there, while a mission station on the plateau could serve as the hub for a vast missionary enterprise in the area. Of course, he had no way to send his letter, so he poked it away in a leather pouch until he encountered civilization again and could mail it.
After David became sick again, the expedition’s progress slowed. There were days when they couldn’t travel at all because David was too ill. And then there were the many enemy villages they passed through. David had to be constantly alert to evil schemes and double-crossing chiefs. Regrettably, he lost two of his men within days of each other. One died of fever and the other from a lion attack.
