At last, the patient worker and traveler had triumphed. He went back to Paris and reported all he had done in the name of his beloved king and country. Robert Cavelier de la Salle had done a greater thing than he realized. One hundred and twenty years later, Napoleon, Emperor of the French, sold to the United States the territory of Louisiana, claimed by La Salle, which is now half of the great republic. This was an achievement which meant more than the discovery of an outlet to China. Although a boat may be sailed through long rivers and short canals from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, this fact is hardly thought worthy of mention in these days. A far greater benefit to America and the whole world was achieved by Robert La Salle, because he enabled the French government to give to the United States her broad empire of the west. LIVINGSTONE, THE WHITE MAN OF THE DARK CONTINENT Little Davie Livingstone was a queer, quiet Scotch laddie. His father was a high-minded man, but he was so poor that he had to take Davie out of the village school when he was ten. In those days, the early part of the nineteenth century, children began to work when they were very young. So Mr. Livingstone sent the lad to work, with other boys of his own age, as a piecer in a cotton mill. David worked from six in the morning till eight at night, stopping only for lunch. With his first week’s wages the ten-year-old boy bought a Latin grammar. He was so eager to learn that he went to night school from eight to ten at night. He studied till midnight, and even later, when his mother did not take his books away and send him to bed. His great desire was to be a missionary. So he took up other languages besides Latin, and such studies as would fit him for missionary work. As soon as he was able, he went to London and [Illustration: DAVID LIVINGSTONE, THE BRAVE SCOTCH MISSIONARY _From a photograph taken in 1867_] elsewhere to study, working part of the time, to earn enough to pay his way. On a visit to London Livingstone met Doctor Moffat, a leading missionary in South Africa, and soon decided to work in Africa himself. He had prepared himself to help men’s bodies as well as their souls. So he went first as a medical missionary. Doctor Livingstone’s first mission station, or center, was seven hundred miles farther north than Doctor Moffat’s, in a region which was dangerous because of savage men, wild beasts, and, worst of all, an unhealthful climate. In this lonely place the new missionary began to tell the ignorant black people about the one true God. He cured them of their illnesses, and showed them how to dig canals and build dams to water their little farms. He also taught them to till these farms in a better way than they had known.