III.

River Explorations

Livingstone returned to Cape Town in 1852, sent his family to England, and then made preparations for a return expedition. His intentions were to locate a healthy site in Makololo country to build a mission and trading center, and to find a route from the upper Zambezi to one of Africa’s coasts. Over the next four years, he undertook this remarkable venture. First he traveled back to the Zambezi, then west to the Atlantic Ocean coast at Luanda (now in Angola). Having failed to find a navigable waterway to connect the river and the coast, Livingstone returned to the Zambezi and headed downriver. In spite of repeated episodes of malaria, dysentery, and hunger, he kept careful geographical records, which would fill huge gaps in European knowledge of central and southern Africa. In 1855 Livingstone became the first European to see the Zambezi’s spectacular plunge into a narrow gorge, which he named Victoria Falls after reigning British monarch Queen Victoria. Livingstone reached the mouth of the Zambezi on the Indian Ocean in May 1856, becoming the first European ever to cross the full width of southern Africa.

Livingstone returned to England in 1856 a national hero, and he was honored by the Royal Geographical Society. His book Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857) sold widely and he made speeches across the country. One speech, at Cambridge University, led to the establishment of the Universities Mission for Christian Work in Africa. In 1857 he resigned from the London Missionary Society, whose directors were not convinced that he was spreading the gospel through his journeys. With Mary and one son, he left for Africa again in March 1858, this time with an official appointment as Her Majesty’s Consul for the East Coast of Africa.

Between 1858 and 1863, with half a dozen British assistants and a succession of steam vessels, Livingstone explored the Zambezi, the Shire River, Lake Malawi, and the Ruvuma River. In 1861 Livingstone helped the Universities Mission set up a station near Lake Chilwa, south of Lake Malawi; the death of the mission’s leader and its withdrawal within a year were bitter disappointments. A more personal blow was the death of Mary Livingstone in April 1862 from malaria. In addition, Livingstone was disheartened by the slave trading between Lake Malawi and Africa’s east coast. Encounters with marches of manacled slaves and with an entire countryside devastated by warring and slave raiding weighed heavily on him. Livingstone was ordered home in 1864 by a British government disappointed by the results of his explorations.