PREFATORY LETTER. vii 



I have dwelt on this passage of his life, hecause he told ua 

 in his Address that he came among us as a Christian Mission- 

 ary; and in that capacity asked us for our help and counsel 

 and sympathy. We are not permitted now to look for mi- 

 racles in the natural world; and no great tasks (those espe- 

 cially that are employed in changing the habits and opinions 

 of men, in influencing their lives, and in leading them from 

 evil to good) can ever be well done without much preparation 

 and previous thought, and without great and long-continued 

 labour. It would not, I think, be too much to affirm, that 

 all the early days of Livingstone's life, from his childhood up- 

 wards, were, under Providence, a preparation for his missionary 

 labours in South Africa. 



Disappointed in his early hopes of beginning his work in 

 China, he went out (under an engagement to the London Mis- 

 sionary Society) to South Africa; landed at Cape Town in 

 1840; without needless delay went up the country; and soon 

 began his labour of love among the Natives. After numberless 

 toils and some strange changes of fortune, but never without 

 hope and good courage and trust in God, he finally com- 

 pleted his great task at the mouth of the Zambesi, on the 12th 

 of July, 1856: and then, by the Mauritius and the Red Sea 

 he found his w T ay back to England. In the letter I am now 

 writing, I can do little more than allude to the works 

 by which he fulfilled his mission during these sixteen event- 

 ful years: the details may be read and studied in his 

 published volume. But I may dwell, through one or two 

 pages, on the manner in which he began his great task, and 

 how he carried it forward during the first twelve years of his 

 wanderings in Africa. 



For six months he shut himself out from all direct inter- 

 course with civilized men. He lived among the Natives as 

 their brother, till he gradually became familiar with their lan- 

 guage, their wants, their habits of thought, and all that made 

 them what they were — the poor degraded children of untaught 



