As they approached Tete, a Portuguese colony, David became so ill that he sent some of his guides on ahead of him. When the Portuguese army major in Tete heard of David’s plight, he immediately sent a contingent of soldiers out to get him. The soldiers escorted David into town with all the fanfare of royalty. However, David was too ill to appreciate any of it.
Days later, when he was beginning to feel a little stronger, David had dinner with the major. The two men discussed David’s travels thus far. David was particularly interested in finding out anything the major might know about the stretch of river he had bypassed after leaving Victoria Falls. The major assured him the river was navigable all the way to the falls, with just a few minor rapids to negotiate. Whether the major had ever seen these “minor” rapids or not, David never found out, but his casual comment was to result in much frustration for David Livingstone on his next trip.
Eventually, David felt strong enough to continue on. Since he knew he could travel the rest of the way by canoe down the river, when most of his Makalolo helpers asked if they could remain in Tete, David agreed. Sixteen Makalolos and five Portuguese soldiers paddled on down the Zambezi River with David. When they neared their destination, most of the remaining Makalolos asked if they could go back to Tete, and David let them. One man, Sekwebu, begged to stay with David. He said he wanted to see the Indian Ocean. While David felt the Makalolos should stay together, in the end he allowed Sekwebu to continue on with him.
In May 1856, David Livingstone, Sekwebu, and the five Portuguese soldiers arrived at the town of Quilimane in the delta of the Zambezi River. David had mapped the Zambezi along most of its course from near Linyanti to its end at the Indian Ocean. Now he was sure that missionaries and Christian traders could penetrate deep inland, opening up areas that had only been exploited by Arab slave traders until then.
In Quilimane, David was welcomed into the home of Colonel Nunes. The colonel had been expecting David and had some good news and some bad news for him. The good news was that a bundle of letters was waiting for him. The bad news was that five crewmen from the British ship Dart had drowned while negotiating the sandbars at the mouth of the river. The crewmen were returning to the ship after making a special trip to deliver David’s mail. David was too sad to read the letters right away, but eventually he did open them. It seemed hollow praise when Roderick Murchison of the Royal Geographical Society wrote that David’s first trip to the Atlantic Ocean had been “the greatest triumph in geographical research in our times.”
David also received a letter from a publisher in London named John Murray, who said he was interested in publishing a book about David’s travels in Africa. There were no letters, though, from Mary or his family, which caused David to begin to wonder whether he ought to go home to Scotland and see how everyone was. Once he added up his time spent traveling, he was astounded to find it had been nearly four and a half years since he had seen his family off in Port Elizabeth!
David secured passage on the HMS Frolic to the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, where he would catch a steamer headed north into the Red Sea. When it came time for him to leave, Sekwebu once again begged to go with him. David was not enthusiastic, but in the end he gave in, and the two men climbed into a longboat for the perilous ride over the sandbar to where the ship was anchored.
The men made it to the HMS Frolic in one piece, but it was a rough trip to Mauritius. About halfway there, Sekwebu began acting very strangely. The captain warned David that Sekwebu was going mad from being on the ocean so long and suggested he should be shackled for his own safety. Although David could see that something was seriously wrong with Sekwebu, he could not bear to see his friend shackled like a slave. Regrettably, that night Sekwebu jumped overboard and drowned in the Indian Ocean, the ocean he had longed to see. David was very depressed about Sekwebu’s death and chided himself for not taking the captain’s advice.
In Mauritius David transferred to a steamer headed for Egypt via the Red Sea. As he crossed Egypt on his way to the Mediterranean Sea to catch still another steamer that would take him the rest of the way to Scotland, David intercepted a letter addressed to him. This letter was from his mother. David hoped it would cheer him up after Sekwebu’s death, but the letter contained more bad news: David’s father had died. David was devastated. He tormented himself with questions. Should he have gone home earlier? Were Mary and the children all right? Would he make it home before something else bad happened?
When the steamer he was traveling on had to dock in Marseilles, France, for emergency repairs, David became obsessed with getting home as soon as possible. He could not wait for the ship to be repaired, and he caught a train across France and a ship across the English Channel.
David had sent a message on ahead, and when he arrived in Southampton from France, Mary and the children were waiting for him. Waves of relief swept over David as he hugged his wife and children. They all looked fine and healthy, although five-year-old Zouga hung back and would not look his father in the eye. David couldn’t blame him. He knew he was a stranger to his children.
David discovered to his dismay that Mary had not adjusted to staying in Scotland. She couldn’t seem to get along with David’s family, and in the end, she had left the children there and returned to London to stay with friends of her parents. She hadn’t talked to David’s family in over six months! David was devastated. All the time he had been trudging through the jungles and deserts of Africa he had imagined his family happy and comfortable back in Scotland. Now it seemed the family had been anything but.
David Livingstone was very much in demand in London. Within days of arriving in England, he was invited to a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society where he was honored with a gold medal. It was a complete surprise to David, who did not know what to say when he was asked to respond. After living so long among the Africans and speaking their dialects, he was not used to speaking English. Still, he had to say something. He cleared his throat. As he looked out on the assembled crowd, he spotted Cotton Oswell and Thomas Steele, his two old friends, and their presence gave him the courage to speak. “I am only doing my duty as a missionary in opening up a part of Africa to the sympathy of Christ,” David said, looking squarely at the audience. “I am only just now buckling my armor for the good fight. I have no right to boast of anything. I will not boast until the last slave in Africa is free and Africa is open to honest trade and the light of Christianity.” With that he bowed and left the podium.
An uproar of applause exploded, and everyone in the room rose to his feet. After the meeting, many people congratulated David, including John Murray, who was more eager than ever to have David Livingstone write a book.
David spent a great deal of time speaking in churches throughout England and Scotland on behalf of the London Missionary Society, urging more people to become missionaries to Africa. At the same time, the LMS was urging David to return to Africa and open a mission station of his own. It admired David’s explorations and attempts to find trade and travel routes, but it did not share his enthusiasm that they would help spread the gospel message. Missionaries needed mission stations to be effective, it told him. All this made David think hard. His heart was really in trying to open up the Zambezi River area to trade and the gospel message.
It was then that David Livingstone received two amazing offers. One was an official government position in Africa that came with the title of “Her Majesty’s Consul at Quilimane for the Eastern Coast and Independent Districts of the Interior.” Along with the position came a salary of five hundred pounds a year, five times his missionary salary. The second offer was a publishing agreement to write a book to be called Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa.
After thinking things over, David resigned from the London Missionary Society and accepted both offers. He felt it would be the most useful to the spread of Christianity in Africa to open up the Zambezi River as a highway for trade and the spread of the gospel message. Before returning to Africa to take up his new position, though, he settled in the London suburb of Chelsea with his family where he set to work writing his book.
The book took six months to complete. It contained 687 pages of maps, stories, journal entries, and observations, and it was an instant bestseller. The first printing of twelve thousand copies was ordered in advance and sold before a single book ever made it to a store. The book went straight into a second printing. Charles Dickens penned one of hundreds of reviews of the book. He wrote: “A narrative of great dangers and trials, encountered in a good cause by as honest and courageous a man as ever lived.”
Privately David told Mary he would sooner cross Africa again than write another book! However, the income the book generated gave the Livingstones more money than they had ever had before, and David knew just what to do with it. He would pay for his three oldest children to stay with his mother and sisters in Scotland, where they could attend the best schools. He and Mary, along with Zouga, who was not yet in school, would return to Africa to take up his new position as Queen Victoria’s representative and explore the Zambezi River.
Much to his surprise, Queen Victoria asked for a private audience with David. They chatted together for half an hour about his travels. When it was time to leave, David told Queen Victoria he was glad to have met her. Wherever he went in Africa the natives were shocked that he had never met his “big chief.” This amused the queen, who inquired as to what else they asked. “Well,” said David, “they ask me if you are very rich, and when I say yes, they press me to tell them how many cows you own!” Queen Victoria burst into hearty laughter, and David left Buckingham Palace feeling he had made a new friend.
On March 10, 1858, David and Mary Livingstone and their youngest son left to return to Africa aboard the Pearl. Between the pages of his Bible, David had tucked a poem Mary had given him the first night he arrived back in England fifteen months before. The last verse read:
You’ll never part me, darling,
There’s a promise in your eye,
I may tend you while I’m living, you will watch me when I die,
And if death but kindly lead me to the blessed home on high,
What a hundred thousand welcomes will await you in the sky!”
They left England with high hopes, but the verse of Mary’s poem was to one day become a sad reality for them.
Chapter 16
Along the Zambezi River
The Livingstones were not the only passengers on the Pearl. Six other men were aboard whom the Royal Geographical Society had hired to help David explore the Zambezi River: Commander Bedingfeld of the Royal Navy; Dr. Kirk, a botanist and medical doctor; Richard Thornton, a geologist; Tom Baines, an artist; George Rae, an engineer; and David’s younger brother Charles, who had been hired to be the “spiritual advisor” of the group.
David and the six men spent many hours huddled together planning their trip upriver as the Pearl tossed its way towards Cape Town. Although they made big plans, they had little idea of the hardships that lay ahead.
Stowed in three sections in the hold of the Pearl was a small, flat-bottomed paddlesteamer supplied by the British government. The men would bolt the three sections of the boat together when they reached their destination. The vessel had been named the Ma-Robert after Mary Livingstone. (The Africans called her Ma-Robert, or the mother of Robert, her oldest son.)
With favorable winds at her back, the Pearl made speedy progress and anchored off Cape Town in late April 1858. Robert Moffat was waiting to greet everyone and escort Mary and Zouga back to Kuruman. Mary and Zouga would wait at Kuruman until David had established a small base on the upper Zambezi River. Mary would then travel overland to join him. David refused to allow Mary or Zouga to go on with him right then because the lower Zambezi was too unhealthy for them to survive in. Besides, Mary was expecting another baby, and David did not want to risk another long trip with a child and a pregnant wife.
