How I Found Livingstone, Henry M. Stanley [best fantasy books to read txt] 📗

I simply write down my own opinion

of the man as I have seen him, not as he represents himself; as

I know him to be, not as I have heard of him. I lived with him

from the 10th November, 1871, to the 14th March, 1872; witnessed

his conduct in the camp, and on the march, and my feelings for

him are those of unqualified admiration. The camp is the best

place to discover a man’s weaknesses, where, if he is flighty

or wrong-headed, he is sure to develop his hobbies and weak side.

I think it possible, however, that Livingstone, with an

unsuitable companion, might feel annoyance. I know I should do

so very readily, if a man’s character was of that oblique

nature that it was an impossibility to travel in his company.

I have seen men, in whose company I felt nothing but a thraldom,

which it was a duty to my own self-respect to cast off as soon

as possible; a feeling of utter incompatibility, with whose

nature mine could never assimilate. But Livingstone was a

character that I venerated, that called forth all my enthusiasm,

that evoked nothing but sincerest admiration.

 

Dr. Livingstone is about sixty years old, though after he was

restored to health he appeared more like a man who had not passed

his fiftieth year. His hair has a brownish colour yet, but is here

and there streaked with grey lines over the temples; his whiskers

and moustache are very grey. He shaves his chin daily. His eyes,

which are hazel, are remarkably bright; he has a sight keen as a

hawk’s. His teeth alone indicate the weakness of age; the hard

fare of Lunda has made havoc in their lines. His form, which

soon assumed a stoutish appearance, is a little over the ordinary

height with the slightest possible bow in the shoulders. When

walking he has a firm but heavy tread, like that of an overworked

or fatigued man. He is accustomed to wear a naval cap with a

semicircular peak, by which he has been identified throughout

Africa. His dress, when first I saw him, exhibited traces of

patching and repairing, but was scrupulously clean.

 

I was led to believe that Livingstone possessed a splenetic,

misanthropic temper; some have said that he is garrulous, that

he is demented; that he has utterly changed from the David

Livingstone whom people knew as the reverend missionary ; that

he takes no notes or observations but such as those which no other

person could read but himself; and it was reported, before I

proceeded to Central Africa, that he was married to an African

princess.

 

I respectfully beg to differ with all and each of the above

statements. I grant he is not an angel, but he approaches to that

being as near as the nature of a living man will allow. I never

saw any spleen or misanthropy in him—as for being garrulous, Dr.

Livingstone is quite the reverse: he is reserved, if anything;

and to the man who says Dr. Livingstone is changed, all I can say

is, that he never could have known him, for it is notorious that

the Doctor has a fund of quiet humour, which he exhibits at all

times whenever he is among friends. I must also beg leave to

correct the gentleman who informed me that Livingstone takes

no notes or observations. The huge Letts’s Diary which I

carried home to his daughter is full of notes, and there are

no less than a score of sheets within it filled with observations

which he took during the last trip he made to Manyuema alone;

and in the middle of the book there is sheet after sheet,

column after column, carefully written, of figures alone.

A large letter which I received from him has been sent to

Sir Thomas MacLear, and this contains nothing but observations.

During the four months I was with him, I noticed him every evening

making most careful notes; and a large tin box that he has with

him contains numbers of field note-books, the contents of which I

dare say will see the light some time. His maps also evince great

care and industry. As to the report of his African marriage, it is

unnecessary to say more than that it is untrue, and it is utterly

beneath a gentleman to hint at such a thing in connection with the

name of David Livingstone.

 

There is a good-natured abandon about Livingstone which was not

lost on me. Whenever he began to laugh, there was a contagion

about it, that compelled me to imitate him. It was such a laugh

as Herr Teufelsdrockh’s—a laugh of the whole man from head to heel.

If he told a story, he related it in such a way as to convince one

of its truthfulness; his face was so lit up by the sly fun it

contained, that I was sure the story was worth relating, and

worth listening to.

 

The wan features which had shocked me at first meeting, the heavy

step which told of age and hard travel, the grey beard and bowed

shoulders, belied the man. Underneath that well-worn exterior

lay an endless fund of high spirits and inexhaustible humour;

that rugged frame of his enclosed a young and most exuberant soul.

Every day I heard innumerable jokes and pleasant anecdotes;

interesting hunting stories, in which his friends Oswell, Webb,

Vardon, and Gorden Cumming were almost always the chief actors.

I was not sure, at first, but this joviality, humour, and

abundant animal spirits were the result of a joyous hysteria;

but as I found they continued while I was with him, I am obliged

to think them natural.

 

Another thing which specially attracted my attention was his

wonderfully retentive memory. If we remember the many years he

has spent in Africa, deprived of books, we may well think it an

uncommon memory that can recite whole poems from Byron, Burns,

Tennyson, Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell. The reason of this

may be found, perhaps, in the fact, that he has lived all his

life almost, we may say, within himself. Zimmerman, a great

student of human nature, says on this subject “The unencumbered

mind recalls all that it has read, all that pleased the eye,

and delighted the ear; and reflecting on every idea which

either observation, or experience, or discourse has produced,

gains new information by every reflection. The intellect

contemplates all the former scenes of life; views by

anticipation those that are yet to come; and blends all ideas

of past and future in the actual enjoyment of the present

moment.” He has lived in a world which revolved inwardly,

out of which he seldom awoke except to attend to the immediate

practical necessities of himself and people; then relapsed again

into the same happy inner world, which he must have peopled with

his own friends, relations, acquaintances, familiar readings,

ideas, and associations; so that wherever he might be, or by

whatsoever he was surrounded, his own world always possessed

more attractions to his cultured mind than were yielded by

external circumstances.

 

The study of Dr. Livingstone would not be complete if we did not

take the religious side of his character into consideration. His

religion is not of the theoretical kind, but it is a constant,

earnest, sincere practice. It is neither demonstrative nor loud,

but manifests itself in a quiet, practical way, and is always at

work. It is not aggressive, which sometimes is troublesome, if

not impertinent. In him, religion exhibits its loveliest features;

it governs his conduct not only towards his servants, but towards

the natives, the bigoted Mohammedans, and all who come in contact

with him. Without it, Livingstone, with his ardent temperament,

his enthusiasm, his high spirit and courage, must have become

uncompanionable, and a hard master. Religion has tamed him, and

made him a Christian gentleman: the crude and wilful have been

refined and subdued; religion has made him the most companionable

of men and indulgent of masters—a man whose society is pleasurable.

 

In Livingstone I have seen many amiable traits. His gentleness

never forsakes him; his hopefulness never deserts him. No

harassing anxieties, distraction of mind, long separation from home

and kindred, can make him complain. He thinks “all will come out

right at last;” he has such faith in the goodness of Providence.

The sport of adverse circumstances, the plaything of the miserable

beings sent to him from Zanzibar—he has been baffled and

worried, even almost to the grave, yet he will not desert the

charge imposed upon him by his friend, Sir Roderick Murchison.

To the stern dictates of duty, alone, has he sacrificed his home

and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized

life. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman,

the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon—never to relinquish his

work, though his heart yearns for home; never to surrender his

obligations until he can write Finis to his work.

 

But you may take any point in Dr. Livingstone’s character, and

analyse it carefully, and I would challenge any man to find a

fault in it. He is sensitive, I know; but so is any man of a high

mind and generous nature. He is sensitive on the point of being

doubted or being criticised. An extreme love of truth is one of

his strongest characteristics, which proves him to be a man of

strictest principles, and conscientious scruples; being such, he

is naturally sensitive, and shrinks from any attacks on the

integrity of his observations, and the accuracy of his reports.

He is conscious of having laboured in the course of geography and

science with zeal and industry, to have been painstaking, and as

exact as circumstances would allow. Ordinary critics seldom take

into consideration circumstances, but, utterly regardless of the

labor expended in obtaining the least amount of geographical

information in a new land, environed by inconceivable dangers and

difficulties, such as Central Africa presents, they seem to take

delight in rending to tatters, and reducing to nil, the fruits of

long years of labor, by sharply-pointed shafts of ridicule and

sneers.

 

Livingstone no doubt may be mistaken in some of his conclusions

about certain points in the geography of Central Africa, but he

is not so dogmatic and positive a man as to refuse conviction.

He certainly demands, when arguments in contra are used in

opposition to him, higher authority than abstract theory. His

whole life is a testimony against its unreliability, and his

entire labor of years were in vain if theory can be taken in

evidence against personal observation and patient investigation.

 

The reluctance he manifests to entertain suppositions,

possibilities regarding the nature, form, configuration of concrete

immutable matter like the earth, arises from the fact, that a man

who commits himself to theories about such an untheoretical subject

as Central Africa is deterred from bestirring himself to prove them

by the test of exploration. His opinion of such a man is, that he

unfits himself for his duty, that he is very likely to become a

slave to theory—a voluptuous fancy, which would master him.

 

It is his firm belief, that a man who rests his sole knowledge of

the geography of Africa on theory, deserves to be discredited. It

has been the fear of being discredited and criticised and so made

to appear before the world as a man who spent so many valuable

years in Africa for the sake of burdening the geographical mind

with theory that has detained him so long in Africa, doing his

utmost to test the value of the main theory which clung to him,

and would cling to him until he proved or disproved it.

 

This main theory is his belief that in the broad and mighty

Lualaba he has discovered the head waters of the Nile. His