ACROSS A CONTINENT; OR, THE REWARD OF SYMPATHY
“Who will penetrate through Africa?”
“It is a goodly thing to see
What heaven hath done for this delicious land
What fruits of fragrance blush on every tree!
What goodly prospects o'er the bills expand
“Martyrs, all things for Christ's sake resigning,
Lead on the march of death serenely brave.”
YOU are my father; leave me not! The Makololo desire the sleep of peace. O white brother, it is Sekelètu, the son of Sebitaune, who desires you! Bring Ma Robert, your wife, and live and die with us.”
“I must seek a healthier spot for my children than this valley. The country northward, perhaps, may suffer them to live; my heart is sore to leave you, but I cannot stay.”
“Then will I go with you. The men will fear me, the Great Lion, and I shall whiten my heart by your words.”
After the travelers had journeyed about sixty miles they met the half brother and secret enemy of the chief. Three times by apparent accidents his attempt to murder Sekelètu was frustrated, once by Livingstone covering the chief by his own body. This gave Livingstone even greater influence over the chief, who loved him as his own father. Yet when the party of one hundred and sixty proceeded up the beautiful Zambesi river, he could not prevent two men who had opposed the chief being hewn in pieces with axes, and their bodies flung in to feed the numerous alligators.
“O Sekelètu, my heart is rent and torn with grief for your people! A boy walking with his mother shrieked out, and I learn that they have taken him for a slave. Men are brothers, and ought to love as brothers; it rends my heart to see poor men bound in the slave yoke. Why do the Makololo treat their brethren so?”
“You see we are ignorant, and have not been taught better. Yet we love to hear your preaching, for we know that you love the black man, and seek out good."
“Then listen to me. I cannot find a place where my family and other white people can live. The fever will carry us all away. I want to find, though, a highway for you to the sea, and will walk right through Africa to find it. When I have done this, I will perhaps be able to induce traders to come here, and you will surely then give up the slave trade.”
“If the Boers will let us alone, and we can buy guns and white men's beads and cloth, I will hunt slaves no more. But the way is long, and ye cannot take a wagon, but must walk every step of the way.”
“So be it. I will leave my wagon with you. Send men to point me the way, and I will bring them safely back to you.”
This journey through the continent occupied from 11th November, 1853, when Livingstone left Linyanti, to 31st May, 1854, when he reached the Atlantic Ocean, having opened up the continent according to his promise.
“I don't think I have seen a single man without either a club or a spear in his hand, and they will slay each other without compunction for a single word," said Livingstone to one of his companions, as he journeyed through a country which in its physical features much reminded the traveler of Scotland.
“The curses they hurl at each other are dreadful," said one of his men; "but they liked to see your magic lantern pictures. One man said, though, that he thought the figures as they passed along out of sight off the white sheet might enter their bodies, being evil spirits. Another said that the figures were more like gods than the things they worshipped. I feel you are one of the children of Jesus, or we should not have been allowed to escape when we thought the chief intended to kill us. But do you never weary for the sight of a white man's face?”
“Many and many a time I have. But you are very true and loving. When the ox flung me into the river, twenty of you ran to help me. I am proud of your love.”
“Look! master, the ox has got one of the grapple plants in his mouth. Hark how he roars!”
“Bring the grapple plant to me when you have taken it out of the animal's mouth. Now see, it is full of hooks. It is like the temptations that vex and trouble us, each hook in itself is very small, but don't they hold fast. O! brothers, sin is like a grapple plant, it is so hard to get it out.”
“How strangely these men dress their hair. See, master, that man has his back hair made up into a long cone," remarked a native.
“Yes, about eight inches in thickness, and then covered by red and black thread. They never do such things in the white men's country, do they, master?" said another.
“Well, not exactly so, but white people are foolish too, at least some of them are. We have people who think more about how they dress their bodies than they do about the mind within. But we must be near the Portuguese settlement of Loanda, that is close to the sea.”
“The sea! I fear it. Suppose one of us went for water, would the others see that he was not kidnapped and sold for a slave?”
“I see what you mean," said Livingstone, "I know nothing of the place. But nothing shall happen to you but what happens to myself I will stand or fall by you.”
“I suppose there are places there like your house; a little mountain full of caves?”
“Yes. There is the sea Look, O Makololo!”
“O father! we marched with you believing that what the ancients had told us was quite true, and that the world had no end. But now the world says I'm finished, there's no more of me.'”
"Thirty-one attacks of fever, complicated by dysentery at the end of the journey; through so many perils that I cannot recount them, but brought safely by the mercy of God," said Livingstone, as he looked upon the ocean.
Received with great kindness by all the white population at Loanda, after resting there for about four months, Dr. Livingstone returned through Africa, leaving Loanda, 20th September, 1854, and reaching Linyanti on 11th September in the following year.
During Livingstone's residence at Loanda he resolved to explore the Zambesi route to the east coast, that to the west coast being found impracticable for wagons on account of the forests, rivers, and marshes. While there he received tempting offers of a passage home to England, but refused them all, as he felt it his duty first, as he had promised, to lead his faithful African followers safe home.
As he was preparing to send his dispatches and letters by the Forerunner from Loanda, the Makololo men who had accompanied him came in much distress to his quarters, fearing he was going away from them.
“O father, do not leave us! These Portuguese are not like you, and when you have gone over the great water they will sell us for slaves.”
“Be at rest; I will not forsake you. I promised to take you back to your homes, and I will keep my promise.”
“We shall sleep. Our father is a man who keeps his promise. Our hearts are white as milk and we fear naught.”
The Forerunner went down off Madeira, and all on board were lost except one solitary man. Had Livingstone gone with her he too would have perished.
By fulfilling his pledge Livingstone acquired great influence over the natives, who knew at what terrible cost he had kept his word.
When at length the party reached Linyanti, a native meeting was held, when the Makololo described their adventures while accompanying Livingstone to Loanda.
“We've finished the world," they said; "seen it all, and there's all water on the outside.”
“Then you saw Ma Robert, the master's wife?’
“No, she lives farther still outside the world, over the water. But we carried coals while the master was at Loanda.”
“Coals, what are they, we don't understand you.”
“Why, stones that burn. They gave us money for carrying them into what they call a ship. It's a sort of house you climb into by a rope.”
“Ra Robert is very glad. The stores Moffat brought him have made him glad that he is not forgotten. He is a good man, Livingstone. We watched him a long time and he knew it not, but he has no secret sin, he is white right through. If all the followers of Jesus are like him they are good and happy.”
“What will he do now, think you?”
“They say that he means to go up the great river Zambesi and find the sea there.”
“They say too that 120 men are going with him. I would like to go. I could follow such a man all through the world.”
Dr. Livingstone started again from Linyanti for the new expedition on 3rd November, 1855, and during this journey to the east coast of Africa he discovered the Victoria Falls upon the Zambesi river. Across the river bed is a deep fissure, some 80 feet wide, into which the river, here 1.800 yards in breadth, falls to the depth of 320 feet, becoming finally pent up in rocky gorges, making a grander fall than Niagara. The natives call the volumes of vapor hovering above the pool "sounding smoke.”
Leaving his men at Quilimane, Livingstone now returned to England, which he reached 9th December, 1856.
"The end of the geographical feat is only the beginning of the enterprise," he had said; the magnitude of the feat cannot be estimated, perhaps, by any save by the God who sustained and supported His servant.
He had not only explained that Africa was like a hat, having a central elevation, which, however, had longitudinal ridges at the brim; but that the hat crown had once been the bed of an inland sea, which had drained itself off through fissures such as the Victoria falls, leaving the great inland lakes as portions of what had once been a vast stretch of water. He not only found, too, that what once had been a blank space in the maps was crowded with nations likely to subsist, but he had shown how to influence them for good, and had shown too that slavery was bad policy, and had opened the continent to both the trader and missionary. He had done what no man had dreamed of as possible. After his making a road others might follow, because of the gracious influence Livingstone had acquired. All honor to those who have followed, but more abundant honor to him who ventured into an unknown danger and steadily persisted until his work was done.