xii PREFATORY LETTER. 



to its eastern and western shores, which other men may 

 follow : and he has now gone back from England in the fervent 

 hope that Christian men may learn to carry on a righteous 

 commerce along this " highway ;" and that Africa may learn 

 to bless the stranger who comes to visit her, and to know 

 that she may procure the precious goods of the white man at 

 a better rate than giving him in exchange the life and blood 

 of her own children. 



Some readers of this letter may think it strange that I 

 have written so much about Dr Livingstone's earlier life, and 

 passed over, with such brief notice, his almost super-human 

 labours during his two journeys of discovery from Linyanti 

 to the eastern and western coasts of Africa. But I do not 

 profess to write a review of his admirable Volume. Thou- 

 sands will delight to read his history after he left Cape Town 

 in 1852. But in the long succession of trying incidents there 

 recorded — in the varied aspects of wild untamed nature, and of 

 man as wild as the land in which he dwells, yet struggling 

 and looking upward for something better — a reader may per- 

 haps forget that Livingstone travelled and did all his work as 

 a Christian Missionary; and overlook the causes which, with 

 God's blessing, helped him to triumph over every danger that 

 beset him on his way. If his early life was a preparation 

 for his mission to South Africa ; with still more literal truth 

 we may affirm that his missionary life of twelve years helped 

 to arm him, in mind and hand, for the good work which he 

 afterwards accomplished: and we may well doubt whether in 

 all Europe there was another man who could have had the 

 heart to undertake, and the head to finish the good work that 

 he has done. 



Let us just consider the powers he brought to bear upon 

 the task. He was a man of a wiry frame that was fitted 

 for much endurance; of great physical courage; of much 

 fore-thought and prudence; of a strong and steadfast will 

 in carrying out the purpose of his heart; of a cheerful and 



