Therefore in 1852, having seen his wife and children off to England, he
started in his Cape waggon and again made for Kuruman, after leaving
which he was constantly harassed by parties of Boers, who believed he
was teaching their slaves to rise in revolt. But he reached the land of
Sebituan, a friendly chief, safely, and found the warmest welcome
awaiting him. As doctor and missionary his hands were full, and seeing
the field of work opening all around him, he grew more and more anxious
to become the pioneer missioner to the very interior. Fever, he
realised, would be his worst enemy. "I would like," he wrote in his
journal, "to discover some remedy for that terrible disease. I must go
to parts where it prevails most and try to discover if the natives have
a remedy for it.... I mean to open up a path to the interior or perish.
I never have had the shadow of a doubt. Cannot the love of Christ carry
the missionary where the slave trade carries the trader?"
The travels of Livingstone through that unknown country which he
practically discovered, would have to be closely followed on a map from
point to point to be made clear. Otherwise they are a mere string of
strange names. He set out in the November of 1853. "I had three muskets
for my people and a double-barrelled gun for myself," he said. "My
ammunition was distributed through the luggage, that we might not be
left without a supply. Our chief hopes for food were in our guns. I
carried twenty pounds of beads, a few pounds of tea, sugar, and coffee.
One tin canister was filled with spare clothes, another was stored with
medicines, a third with books, and a fourth with a magic lantern. A
small tent, a sheep-skin, and a horse-rug completed my equipment, as an
array of baggage would have excited the tribes." Four years later, worn
out by frequent attacks of fever, but otherwise perfectly satisfied with
the result of his journeyings into parts where as yet no other
Englishman had penetrated, Livingstone sailed for England, having heard
nothing of his family for three years. He at once became the hero of
the hour; dinners were given, speeches were made in his honour, and he
was asked to equip and command a government expedition for the
exploration of that part of South-Eastern Africa through which the river
Zambesi flows. After some consideration he decided to undertake this,
though it meant that from henceforth he would cease to be a missionary
pure and simple. But he looked at the question in its broadest aspect.
"Wherever I go," he said, "I go as the servant of God, following the
leadings of His Hand. My ideal of a missionary is not that of a dumpy
man with a Bible under his arm. I feel I am not my own. I am serving
Christ in labouring as well as in preaching, and having by His help got
information which I hope will bring blessing to Africa, am I to hide the
light under a bushel, because some will not consider it sufficiently or
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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