AS 



PEEFACE. 



"IT7HEN the report of the death of Dr Livingstone reached this country, 

 * ' many people refused to give it credit. He had so often been given up 

 for lost and mourned as dead, his countrymen were reluctant to believe that 

 the grand old man would never more be seen amongst them. 



Ever since the indomitable Stanley took his last look of the great travel- 

 ler — who, although for nearly six years he had been wholly cut off from 

 civilisation, still lingered, self-exiled, until his work should be completed — 

 the interest in his movements had not abated. From the Congo or from 

 the Nile — according to the opinions formed as to the further course of the 

 mysterious Lualaba, whose gathering waters he had followed from the up- 

 lands which divide the African central valley from that of the Zambesi, to a 

 point within a couple of hundred miles of the hitherto supposed head waters 

 of the Nile — intelligence of his movements had been looked for with an 

 impatience which shows how strong an impression this remarkable man and 

 his extraordinary career had made upon the public mind. 



The life of this truly great man, from its childhood to its close, is a 

 living lesson which the youth of our country cannot take too closely to heart. 

 The child and boy who, while undergoing the drudgery of twelve hours' 

 daily labour in a factory, found time and means to educate himself for the 

 noble office of a Christian Missionary to the heathen, is as interesting and 

 instructive a study as that of the grown man, whose determined will and untir- 

 ing effort have made us familiar with more of the formerly unknown regions 

 of the earth than any previous explorer of ancient or of modern times. 



The present narrative — mainly designed for that large class of modern 

 readers who have neither the time nor the opportunity for becoming acquainted 

 with the many sources from which it has been gleaned — has been written and 

 compiled with the view of giving a graphic account of a memorable life 

 story, the full details of which are either shut up in books beyond the reach 

 of the majority of readers, locked up in files of newspapers, or buried in the 

 Reports and Journals of the Royal Geographical Society — these latter, a 



