IV.

Livingstone’s Final Journey

Back in England, Livingstone remained immensely popular with the Royal Geographical Society and the British public. His speeches about the need to take action against the slave trade and his publication of Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi and Its Tributaries (1865) brought private support for another venture, this time to explore the watersheds (divides between river drainage basins) of central Africa. This expedition would search for the source of the Nile, a topic hotly debated in Europe, and report further on the slave trade in the region. Livingstone never lost hope that “civilizing influences” could begin the process of suppressing the slave trade, which he termed “that enormous evil.” Appointed British consul to Central Africa, without salary, he left for Africa in 1865.

Livingstone’s final expedition lasted from 1866 until his death in 1873. Accompanying him throughout were two Africans: Chuma, a freed slave, and Susi, a man employed earlier to work on an expedition steamer. Livingstone tried once more, unsuccessfully, to penetrate eastern Africa by way of the Ruvuma River. Then, ridden with various fevers and becoming increasingly frail, he explored Lake Malawi, Lake Mweru, Lake Bangweulu, and the watercourses of rivers flowing into and out of these lakes. From Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika he accompanied a group of Arab slave traders westward, in March 1871, becoming the first European to reach the Lualaba River. Livingstone theorized that the Lualaba was the headwaters of the Nile (it is actually the headwaters of the Congo River), but instability caused by slave raiding made further exploration impossible. With his health deteriorating, he made it back to Ujiji in October.

Throughout most of these last explorations, Livingstone was unable to get word out about his activities, and his welfare became a matter of international concern. Five days after his arrival in Ujiji, a rescue party headed by Anglo-American explorer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley reached Livingstone. Stanley supposedly greeted Livingstone with the famous words “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” After Livingstone convinced Stanley that he was not in need of rescue, the two men explored Lake Tanganyika together. Then, with replenished supplies, Livingstone made off on his own again, toward Lake Bangweulu, and continued his efforts to find the source of the Nile. Dysentery eventually weakened him to the point that he had to be carried on a stretcher, and finally he could not travel at all. He died in Chitambo (in present-day Zambia) in May 1873. Chuma and Susi buried his heart at the foot of a nearby tree and dried and wrapped Livingstone’s body. They then carried the body, along with Livingstone’s papers and instruments, to the Indian Ocean coast and the island of Zanzibar, a trip that lasted nine months. In April 1874 Livingstone’s remains reached England by boat and were buried in Westminster Abbey in London. The hero’s funeral fixed British attention once more on Africa and Livingstone’s ideas for African progress. The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa (1874) was published after his burial.

No European explorer did so much for knowledge of African geography as Livingstone. For more than 30 years he traveled across one-third of the continent, making careful observations of people and places. By the time of his death, the Western world had a heightened interest in Africa and a greatly enhanced idea of what was there. His explorations revealed that the interior of the African continent was not an arid wasteland, as many 19th-century geographers believed. He also inspired countless Christian missionaries to work among Africans. Moreover, in his long effort to marshal English interest in the tragedies associated with slave trading in central and east Africa, he provided new moral incentives for European colonization of Africa. His idea of opening Africa to Christianity and legitimate commerce, the latter to replace the slave trade, became the standard rhetoric of European colonialists through the subsequent years of the Scramble for Africa.