In the region there were many lions. One day, when the missionary was
out with a band of natives, he met one of the big beasts. Livingstone
and one of his black men shot at the lion, which sprang up with a roar
and bounded into the bushes, through the circle the men had made around
him. Then two more lions appeared. Before Livingstone could reload his
gun, he saw one great brute with bristling mane and angry eyes springing
upon him. Its weight bore him to the earth. The lion seized his shoulder
with jaws strong enough to carry off an ox. When some one asked him
afterward what he thought just then, Doctor Livingstone replied, “I was
wondering what part of me he would eat first.” In a letter the doctor
described this adventure:
“With his terrible roar sounding in my ear, the lion shook me as a dog
does a rat; but, strange to say, I felt neither pain nor fear, though
fully conscious of all that passed. As I turned to escape the weight of
his paw, which was resting on my head, I saw his eyes turn toward
Mebalwe [one of the natives], who was about to fire, but his gun missed
fire in both barrels. Instantly the lion quitted his hold of me and
leaped on Mebalwe, biting him badly in the thigh; then he dashed at
another man who was about to attack him with his spear. But at that
moment the previous shots the lion had received took effect and he
dropped to the ground dead.”
Livingstone was bitten in eleven places, his arm was badly mangled, and
bones were broken in several places. It was many months before he was
well. The broken arm was always weak, and he bore the marks of that big
lion’s teeth to his dying day.
While recovering from his wounds, Livingstone made the long journey to
the home of Doctor Moffat, and married that gentleman’s daughter Mary.
Miss Moffat was born in South Africa, so that she knew the language and
ways of the people. This made her a true helpmeet to her husband in his
noble work.
Livingstone called himself “Jack-of-all-trades.” “I read in journeying,”
he wrote, “but little at home. Building, gardening, cobbling, doctoring,
tinkering, carpentering, gun-mending, farriering (horse-doctoring and
shoeing), wagon-mending, preaching, schooling, lecturing in divinity to
a class of three, fill up my time.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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