4 DA VID LIVINGSTONE. [chap. i. 



Caffres, as he says ; and the tradition of Kirsty's Rock 

 would seem to confirm it. But the stories of the 

 " baughting-time " presented a fairer aspect of Ulva life, 

 and no doubt left happier impressions on his mind. 

 His grandfather, as he tells us, had an almost unlimited 

 stock of such stories, which he was wont to rehearse to 

 his grandchildren and other rapt listeners. 



When, for the first and last time in his life, David 

 Livingstone visited Ulva, in 1864, in a friend's yacht, he 

 could hear little or nothing of his relatives. In 1792, 

 his grandfather, as he tells us, left it for Blantyre, in 

 Lanarkshire, about seven miles from Glasgow, on the 

 banks of the Clyde, where he found employment in a 

 cotton factory. The dying charge of the unnamed ancestor 

 must have sunk into the heart of this descendant, for, 

 being a God-fearing man and of sterling honesty, he was 

 employed in the conveyance of large sums of money from 

 Glasgow to the works, and in his old age was pensioned 

 off, so as to spend his declining years in ease and comfort. 

 There is a tradition in the family, showing his sense of 

 the value of education, that he was complimented by the 

 Blantyre schoolmaster for never grudging the price of a 

 school-book for any of his children — a compliment, we 

 fear, not often won at the present day. The other near 

 relations of Livingstone seem to have left the island at 

 the same time, and settled in Canada, Prince Edward's 

 Isle, and the United States. 



The influence of his Highland blood was apparent in 

 many ways in David Livingstone's character. It modified 

 the democratic influences of his early years, when he 

 lived among the cotton-spinners of Lanarkshire. It 

 enabled him to enter more readily into the relation of 

 the African tribes to their chiefs, which, unlike some 

 other missionaries, he sought to conserve while purifying 

 it by Christian influence. It showed itself in the dash 

 and daring which were so remarkably combined in him 



