Dec. 24, 1 8 74 J 



NATURE 



143 



is amply confirmed by the simple narrative before us. 

 No one, we presume, who knows the work that Livingstone 

 has done, and how he has done it, will hesitate to place him 

 in the front rank of explorers, and award him a niche 

 among the few whom men deem worthy of the highest 

 and most enduring honour. It is, we believe, the simple 

 truth to say that he has done more than any other 

 man to fill up that vast blank in inner Africa which in 

 the maps of twenty or thirty years ago was occupied only 

 by the word " Unexplored " in large and widespread 

 letters, delightful enough to the hearts of lazy schoolboys- 

 Now, what with the labours of Livingstone in the south, 

 and those of Baker, Burton, Speke, Grant, and others in 

 the north and north-east, this blank space is reduced 

 to a comparatively small circle around the equator on the 

 2olh degree of east longitude. We have no doubt that 

 within the space of the next twenty years, or less, the 

 heart of Africa will be as fully and accurately mapped as 

 that of South America, if indeed not more so. And 

 when the geography of this region of the earth is com- 

 plete ; when science shall have been enriched with the 

 knowledge of its multitudinous products organic and in- 

 organic, when a legitimate commerce shall have brought 

 its many blessings to the native population, who seem pos- 

 sessed of many capabilities for good ; when Central Africa 

 shall have taken its place among the civilised nations of 

 the world — the memory of David Livingstone will be che- 

 rished by its peoples as worthy of the greatest reverence and 

 gratitude. It will be long ere the tradition of his sojourn 

 dies out among the native tribes, who, almost without 

 exception, treated Livingstone as if he were a superior 

 being ; indeed, had it not been for the baneful influence 

 of the Arab slave-traders, and the troubles which arose 

 from the debased characters of the majority of his own 

 retinue, Livingstone's last journey would have been one 

 of comparative ease, would have been accomplished pro- 

 bably in about half the time, might possibly have been 

 even more fruitful in results than it has been, and, above 

 all, he himself might now have been among us, receiving 

 the honours which he so nobly won. 



As it is, we are thankful for the grand results that 

 Livingstone has left behind him, which he achieved in 

 the face of difficulties that would have daunted almost 

 any other man, and which in the end brought himself to 

 death ; thankful are we also to the brave and loyal Susi 

 and Chuma, who stuck so faithfully to their master, and 

 preserved so religiously the invaluable record of his 

 achievements. Their conduct has won for them the 

 admiration of the civilised world, and their care for their 

 master's remains has earned for them the gratitude of all 

 Englishmen. 



If this record of Livingstone's last wanderings is a sad 

 one, it is not on account of any wailings that escape from 

 the traveller himself. His journals were faithfully kept 

 day after day, but the entries in them are brief, though 

 pregnant. He wastes no useless words on his sufferings ; 

 nearly every sentence is a statement of an observed fact. 

 Indeed, he distinctly says, when his difficulties began — 

 and they began at the beginning — that he looked upon 

 all his troubles as necessarily incident to the work he had 

 set himself to do, and to be taken no more -account of 

 than the little difficulties which everyone must look for in 

 carrying out his workinthe world. Like all reallygreat men, 



he did his work and made no fuss about it. Until near the 

 end, when his sufferings must have been extreme, nothing 

 like the cry of an afflicted man escaped him ; his difficul- 

 ties of all kinds were regarded merely as hindrances to the 

 great work 'which he was so anxious to achieve. His 

 journal is written in the simplest style, and never betrays 

 any consciousness on his part that he was doing anything 

 very extraordinary. His was no attempt to accomplish a 

 mere traveller's feat ; he had a definite task before him — 

 the exploration of the lake region of Central Africa, a 

 task which he never once lost sight of. True, in 

 the end, his work concentrated itself on the discovery of 

 the four fountains of Herodotus, which he expected to 

 find away to the west of Lake Bangweolo, and among 

 which he firmly believed he would find the long-sought- 

 for source of the Nile. It was on the road to these sup- 

 posed fountains that he died ; had he lived to discover 

 them or to disprove their existence, he would have con- 

 sidered his work as an explorer at an end, and would 

 have returned to spend his remaining days at rest among 

 his friends. 



Livingstone's theories as to the sources of the Nile 

 may very possibly turn out to be mistaken ; but this 

 can in no way detract from the value of his work. The 

 " Nile mystery " cannot now long remain unravelled ; 

 but, compared with the large and substantial achieve- 

 ments of Livingstone, the solution of this is little more 

 than that of an ingenious puzzle. Under all circum- 

 stances, Livingstone must ever stand forth as one of the 

 world's greatest explorers, not only on account of his own 

 immediate discoveries, but on account of the impetus 

 which he has given to African discovery ; for it is mainly 

 owing to the enthusiasm generated by his noble example 

 that so much has been done during the last thirty years 

 to fill up the great blank on the map of Africa. His own 

 travels, extending over a period of thirty years, embraced 

 an area of some millions of square miles, reaching from 

 the Cape to within a few degrees of the equator, and from 

 the mouth of the Zambesi to Loango. And, as we have 

 said, his aim was not to get over so much ground in the 

 shortest possible time, and return to reap the reward of 

 his feat. Like the native Africans, he travelled slowly 

 and leisurely by short stages, mainly on foot, carefully and 

 minutely observing and recording all that was worthy of 

 note in the natural productions and phenomena of the 

 region over which he travelled, studying the ways of the 

 people, eating their food, living in their huts, and sympa- 

 thising with their sorrows and joys. Already have various 

 departments of science been enriched by his observa- 

 tions ; and, what is perhaps of more importance, he has 

 shown that in Africa a fertile field remains for the minute 

 observations of the trained naturahst, ethnologist, geo- 

 logist, and meteorologist. 



It is impossible in the space at our disposal to give any 

 adequate idea of the results of his last seven years' 

 journeys. Indeed, as we hs.ve said, the records in his 

 journals are so terse, there is so little of what is super- 

 fluous and so much of the highest value, that anyone 

 wishing.to have a satisfactory notion of what he accom- 

 plished must go to the work itself. Mr. Waller has 

 wisely printed the journal as he found it, making no 

 attempt at a systematic arrangement of the material ; this 

 will, no doubt, be done gradually, and the observations 



