Biography dr david livingstone henderson

Livingstone had envisaged another solo journey with African helpers, in January he agreed to lead a second Zambezi expedition with six specialist officers, hurriedly recruited in the UK. They left on 10 March, at Freetown collected twelve Kru seafarers to man the river steamer, and reached the Zambezi on 14 May. The plan was for both ships to take them up the river to establish bases, but it turned out to be completely impassable to boats past the Cahora Bassa rapids, a series of cataracts and rapids that Livingstone had failed to explore on his earlier travels.

Pearl offloaded their supplies on an island about 40 miles 64 km upstream. From there, Ma Robert had to make repeated slow journeys, getting hauled across shoals. The riverbanks were a war zone, with Portuguese soldiers and their slaves fighting the Chikunda slave-hunters of Matakenya Mariano , but both sides accepted the expedition as friends. She died in The experts, stuck at Shupanga, could not make the intended progress, and there were disagreements.

Artist Thomas Baines was dismissed from the expedition. Others on the expedition became the first to reach Lake Nyasa and they explored it in a four-oared gig. Livingstone raised funds for a replacement river steamer, Lady Nyasa, specially designed to sail on Lake Nyasa. It was shipped out in sections, contrary to his request, with a mission party including Mary Livingstone, and arrived in The Pioneer was delayed getting down to the coast to meet them, and there were further delays after it was found that the bishop had died.

Mary Livingstone died on 27 April from malaria. Livingstone took Pioneer up the coast and investigated the Ruvuma River , and the physician John Kirk wrote "I can come to no other conclusion than that Dr Livingstone is out of his mind and a most unsafe leader". When Pioneer returned to Shupanga in December , they paid in cloth their "Mazaro men" who left and engaged replacements.

On 10 January they set off, towing Lady Nyasa, and went up the Shire river past scenes of devastation as Mariano's Chikunda slave-hunts caused famine, and they frequently had to clear the paddle wheels of corpses left floating downstream. They reached Chibisa's and the Murchison Cataracts in April, then began dismantling Lady Nyasa and building a road to take its sections past the cataracts, while explorations continued.

The Zambezi Expedition was castigated as a failure in many newspapers of the time, and Livingstone experienced great difficulty in raising funds to further explore Africa. John Kirk, Charles Meller, and Richard Thornton, scientists appointed to work under Livingstone, contributed large collections of botanical, ecological, geological, and ethnographic material to scientific Institutions in the United Kingdom.

The Nile [ edit ] In January , Livingstone returned to Africa, this time to Zanzibar , and from there he set out to seek the source of the Nile. Richard Francis Burton , John Hanning Speke , and Samuel Baker had identified either Lake Albert or Lake Victoria as the source which was partially correct, as the Nile "bubbles from the ground high in the mountains of Burundi halfway between Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria " [55] , but there was still serious debate on the matter.

Livingstone believed that the source was farther south and assembled a team to find it consisting of freed slaves, Comoros Islanders, twelve Sepoys , and two servants from his previous expedition, Chuma and Susi. He stayed here from 24 March to 7 April Livingstone set out from the mouth of the Ruvuma river, but his assistants gradually began deserting him.

The Comoros Islanders had returned to Zanzibar and falsely informed authorities that Livingstone had died. He reached Lake Malawi on 6 August, by which time most of his supplies had been stolen, including all his medicines.

Biography dr david livingstone henderson

Livingstone then travelled through swamps in the direction of Lake Tanganyika, with his health declining. He sent a message to Zanzibar requesting that supplies be sent to Ujiji and he then headed west, forced by ill health to travel with slave traders. He arrived at Lake Mweru on 8 November and continued on, travelling south to become the first European to see Lake Bangweulu.

Upon finding the Lualaba River , Livingstone theorised that it could have been the high part of the Nile ; but realised that it in fact flowed into the River Congo at Upper Congo Lake. He was saved by Arab traders who gave him medicines and carried him to an Arab outpost. He was coming down with cholera and had tropical ulcers on his feet, so he was again forced to rely on slave traders to get him as far as Bambara—where he was caught by the wet season.

With no supplies, Livingstone had to eat his meals in a roped-off enclosure for the entertainment of the locals in return for food. The Arabs attacked the shoppers and Kimburu's people. These slaves had been liberated and added to his party, but had shown violent conduct against local people contrary to his instructions, and he feared they might have been involved in starting the massacre.

In the diary he described his sending his men with protection of a flag to assist Manilla's brother. In his journal version it was to assist villagers. The version edited by Waller in the "Last Journals", published in , left out the context of Livingstone's earlier comments about Kirk and bad behaviour of the hired Banyan men, and omitted the villagers' earlier violent resistance to Arab slavers, so it portrayed the villagers as passive victims.

The section on the massacre itself had only minor grammatical corrections. He was determined to bring the gospel to the free peoples beyond the white-dominated south. In , after sending his family back to Scotland, he went north to Zambia and with Kololo companions walked west to Luanda on the coast of Angola. He then turned around and walked across Africa to Mozambique.

On his return to Britain he was a national hero, and the sales from his Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa guaranteed security for his family for some time. His work here helped the Europeans commerce, which he believed was instrumental in bringing Christianity to the region. He also started to push north to places that had not been explored by Europeans before.

Livingstone also spoke against the slavery being carried out on the continent. As Livingstone traveled, he became convinced that his mission was to reach the people in the interior of Africa and introduce them to Christianity. African Expeditions and Missions In , Livingstone's left arm was rendered useless due to a lion attack. The next year, Livingstone and a friend began an expedition to cross the Kalahari Desert to discover what later began known as Lake Ngami.

The two famous explorers succeed and later, in , discovered the Zambezi River. Because of the dangers of exploring, Livingstone sent his wife and four kids back to England. He set off again to discover more of central Africa. Because of the dangers that Livingstone had encountered, he was equipped with 27 men to do his exploring. As he traveled, he calculated the latitude and longitude of his area.

He also used his scientific knowledge to measure the temperatures of water and elevation. His wife died of malaria in , a bitter blow and in he was ordered home by a government unimpressed with the results of his travels. At home, Livingstone publicised the horrors of the slave trade, securing private support for another expedition to central Africa, searching for the Nile's source and reporting further on slavery.

This expedition lasted from until Livingstone's death in After nothing was heard from him for many months, Henry Stanley, an explorer and journalist, set out to find Livingstone. This resulted in their meeting near Lake Tanganyika in October during which Stanley uttered the famous phrase: 'Dr Livingstone I presume?