The Reverend Moffat put down his fork and began to speak in his strong Scottish accent, which hadn’t diminished one bit despite all his years in Africa. “I don’t think it, laddie, I know it. I know the popular view is that the center of Africa is a wasteland, but that’s only because no white man has ventured inland. But I can tell you this, some mornings I have got up and looked towards the vast plain to the north and seen the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been!” His eyes gleamed with excitement as he spoke.
David sat silent for a moment, taking in the enormity of what the older missionary had just told him. Africa was not empty after all. It was filled with people, people who needed to hear the gospel message.
Before David had finished his mutton stew, he had made up his mind. He would not wait for the end of the Opium War in China. There was missionary work to be done in Africa. That’s where he would go.
It took several letters to the directors of the London Missionary Society for David to convince them that Africa was the right place for him. The directors were reluctant to send an inexperienced missionary to Africa, which they considered a dark and dangerous place. Indeed, the continent had been nicknamed the “white man’s graveyard.” Still, David’s persistence paid off, and David was given permission to go to Africa—on one condition. After he had qualified as a doctor, he would need to be ordained as a minister.
David returned to Glasgow in November 1840 to take his physician’s exams, which he passed with flying colors. His family was very proud of the new “Dr. Livingstone” when he returned to Shuttle Row in Blantyre to visit. David was proud of them all, too. By now his oldest brother John’s lace business was booming, while younger brother Charles had emigrated to the United States and was studying to become a pastor at Oberlin College in Ohio. His sisters were also doing well. Both Janet and Agnes were teachers at a local school. With hard work and education, each of his brothers and sisters had managed to escape a lifetime of drudgery working in the cotton mills.
David could spend only one night at home with his parents. He was expected back in London for his ordination ceremony at the Albion Street Chapel in four days. That autumn night the Livingstone family sat up talking late into the evening. David told his parents and sisters all about London and all he knew about Africa. Just before David had left for Glasgow, the London Missionary Society had sent a letter to him informing him he had been assigned to work at the Reverend Moffat’s mission station at Kuruman.
Despite the late night of talking, David awoke in the morning at five o’clock. The rich aroma of brewing coffee rather than the tea the family normally drank filled the apartment. David’s mother and father were already up and dressed. David folded the blanket he had slept under on the wooden floor and put it away, then sat down with his father to a bowl of hot porridge. It wasn’t long before Janet and Agnes joined them.
“David, how far is Kuruman from the coast?” asked Agnes.
“It’s about six hundred miles inland, and almost due north from Port Elizabeth in southern Africa,” he replied.
“You will remember to write, won’t you?” asked Janet anxiously. “I love the letters you send from London. When people at church ask me what you’re doing and how they can pray for you, I know what to tell them.”
“I’ll write,” promised David, “though it’s going to take three or four months for a letter to get from the coast of Africa to Scotland. If I go inland, goodness knows how long it will take to hear from me.”
“Well, if we don’t hear from you for a while, we’ll just pray all the more,” smiled his mother bravely as she poured David another cup of coffee. “Now tell me, what are you going to take with you? Is there anything you need?”
David smiled back at his mother. Even though he was now twenty-seven years old, she still liked to fuss over him. “According to Reverend Moffat, I’ll be able to buy most of the supplies I’ll need in Port Elizabeth before heading inland,” he said.
“Would you take the morning Bible reading for us before you go?” Mr. Livingstone asked his son, handing him the black leather-bound family Bible.
David took the familiar book in both hands, as he had done so many times before. He flicked the Bible open to Psalm 121, his favorite psalm, and began to read. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.”
The final words of the psalm, “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore,” were still echoing in David’s mind as he set out with his father to walk to Glasgow to catch the boat to Liverpool, from where he would take a coach to London. As father and son walked along together in the still morning air, David wondered whether this was the last hour he would ever spend with his father. Neil Livingstone was fifty-two years old and did not look well. And although his father would not complain about his health, David noticed he didn’t have the same spring in his step as when he’d accompanied David to Glasgow to attend Anderson College four years before.
It was a sad parting in Glasgow for David and his father. Mr. Livingstone’s health was failing, and David was on his way to the white man’s grave. Neither of them expected to see each other again, and David stood on the aft deck for a long time watching his father disappear from view as the boat slipped down the Broomielaw and out to sea.
Two-and-a-half weeks later, on December 8, 1840, the Reverend Doctor David Livingstone stood on the stern of another ship. This time it was the George, a sleek three-masted sailing ship under the command of Captain Donaldsen. Onboard with David were William Ross and his wife, who were also on their way to be missionaries at Kuruman. In fact, William Ross had been ordained in the same ceremony as David two weeks before. Both men were now officially ministers with the London Missionary Society.
David loved life at sea. He enjoyed the sound of the waves crashing against the bow of the ship, and he loved watching the dolphins that swam alongside. He was also fascinated by the stars and the navigation equipment the George carried. Captain Donaldsen showed him how to make lunar observations at night with the quadrant and chart the position of the stars on a map. Soon David was as accurate at this as the captain. He did not know it at the time, but it would be a skill he was glad to have in Africa.
The Ross family, however, were not clambering around on deck. William and his wife were both very seasick for almost the entire voyage. David tended to them as best he could, but there was nothing he could do to stop the pitching and rolling of the ship that was the source of their sickness.
With William Ross confined to his cabin, David became responsible for the Sunday service in the dining room. He had high hopes for the service, but once again he was reminded that he was not a natural preacher. The few crew that attended the service were sullen and rude, and David’s sermons didn’t seem to grab their attention.
The George was headed for Port Elizabeth, with a stop in Cape Town on the way. About halfway through the voyage, the ship was lashed by a massive storm. Captain Donaldsen’s stubborn determination kept the ship afloat, but when the storm finally subsided, the George had lost her main mast and most of her sails. As a result, she was at the mercy of the currents and the trade winds, which were pushing her westward towards South America. As the ship drifted helplessly across the Atlantic Ocean, David noticed a marked increase in attendance at the Sunday service, and the crew became much quieter and better behaved.
David watched each night as Captain Donaldsen took quadrant readings and plotted their new position. Each day they moved closer and closer to South America until they finally spotted land dead ahead. They were just off Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, five thousand miles and a continent away from their destination.
Still, Brazil was a mission field. Although it was not the mission field to which he had been assigned, David was eager to begin some missionary work. He unpacked a number of tracts and Bibles and disembarked the ship as soon as it docked in Rio de Janeiro. Captain Donaldsen told him it would take about a week for emergency repairs to be made to the ship so that it could make its way back across the Atlantic Ocean to Cape Town. David invited William Ross to accompany him, but William felt too weak from all the seasickness. Besides, William protested, he’d signed up to be a missionary to Africa, not South America.
Undeterred, David walked for many miles, talking to people and handing out tracts and Bibles. He visited many pubs and bars to talk to sailors about the gospel message. He was appalled by what he saw in these places. The sailors were usually drunk and out of control, and the worst-behaved of them all were the British sailors. Because they set such a bad example for the local people, David was embarrassed to be from the same country as they.
A week later, the George had new sails flapping from her remaining masts, and the broken railings and hatch covers had been repaired. The ship was soon headed east across the Atlantic Ocean towards southern Africa. They encountered no more storms to push them off course, and in early March 1841, the George arrived at Simon’s Bay off Cape Town. Of course, because of the detour to South America, they arrived much later than expected. And they would be even later getting to Port Elizabeth because the ship was to undergo an overhaul and have a new main mast fitted in Cape Town. This would leave the three missionaries stranded in Cape Town for a month while the work on the ship was carried out.
During their stay in Cape Town, David and the Rosses were guests at the London Missionary Society station there. David made himself as useful as he could, but after only a few days he was restless. He was finally in Africa, but there was a whole unexplored continent to the north of him, and he was itching to see it all. The smoke of a thousand villages beckoned him to get moving inland. By contrast, William Ross and his wife were very glad to spend the month in Cape Town. After the crowded conditions of the ship, living at the mission station seemed blissful to them. They began to wonder whether God had really called them inland. After all, there was a lot of work to be done on the coast.
William Ross discussed his feelings with David, who was astonished that any missionary would consider staying on the coast when there was so much work to be done inland. Secretly, he labeled men like William Ross “veranda missionaries”—people who didn’t really want to leave their front porch to venture out into the mission field. Indeed, since boarding the George, William Ross and his wife had done nothing but complain about how bad things were. David had tried to overlook their complaining because they were so sick. But now that the Rosses were having second thoughts about whether they should even be going inland as missionaries, their behavior irritated David. David began to wonder how he would ever work alongside William Ross at Kuruman. He was already sick of hearing from him about how much better things were in England. When an opening for a pastor came up in Cape Town, David privately hoped that William Ross would take the job. But much to David’s chagrin, William did not, and on April 15, 1841, all three missionaries set sail aboard the refitted George on the final leg of their sea voyage to Port Elizabeth.
Chapter 6
Kuruman at Last
So, how much do you want for it?” asked David Livingstone as he walked around the wagon.
“That’s hard to say,” responded the trader wearing a tattered cloth hat. “A wagon like this is in big demand, what with the Boers and their trek north.”
David nodded. He had heard all about the Dutch settlers, or Boers as they were called, who had headed up into the land of the Zulus in the northeast to get away from the British who dominated the coastline of southern Africa.
