the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Encyclopedias
Livingstone, David, Ll.d.
Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
or etc., an eminent African traveller and missionary, was born March 19, 1813, at Blantyre, in Lanarkshire, Scotland. At the age of ten he became a "piecer" in a cotton factory, and for many years was engaged in hard work as an operative. An evening-school furnished him with the opportunity of acquiring some knowledge of Greek and Latin, and finally, after attending a course of medicine at Glasgow University, and the theological lectures of the late Dr. Wardlaw, professor of theology to the Scotch Independents, he offered himself to the London Missionary Society, by whom he was ordained as a medical missionary in 1840. In the summer of that year he landed at Port Natal, in South Africa. Circumstances made him acquainted with the Reverend Robert Moffatt, himself a distinguished missionary, whose daughter he subsequently married. For sixteen years Livingstone proved himself a faithful and zealous servant of the London Missionary Society. The two most important results achieved by him in this period were the discovery of Lake Ngami (August 1, 1849), and his crossing the continent of South Africa, from the Zambezi (or Leeambye) to the Congo, and thence to Loando, the capital of Angola, which took him about eighteen months (from January 1853, to June 1854). In September of the same year he left Loando on his return across the Continent, reached Linzanti (in lat. 18 17' south, and long. 23 50' east), the capital of the great Makololo tribe, and from thence proceeded along the banks of the Leeambve to Quilimane, on the Indian Ocean, which he reached May 20, 1856. He then took ship for England, where he arrived December 12 of the same year.
The reception accorded him by his countrymen was most enthusiastic. Probably no traveller was ever more affectionately honored. This was owing not merely to the importance of his discoveries, though it would be difficult to overestimate them, but to the thoroughly frank, ingenuous, simple, and manly character of the traveller. In 1857 Livingstone published his Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, a work of great interest and value. "In all his various journeys," said Sir Roderick Murchison, at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society, held shortly after Livingstone's return, "he had travelled over no less than eleven thousand miles of African territory.... By his astronomical observations he had determined the sites of numerous places, hills, rivers, and lakes, nearly all of which had been hitherto unknown, while he had seized upon every opportunity of describing the physical features, climatology, and geological structure of the countries which he had explored, and had pointed Out many new sources of commerce as yet unknown to the scope and the enterprise of the British merchant." In 1858 the British government appointed him consul at Quilimane, whither he returned in the course of the year; it also furnished him with a small steamer, that he might pursue his explorations of the Zambezi River and its tributaries.
Livingstone started up this river in January 1859, but after ascending it for over two hundred miles his farther progress was impeded by the magnificent cataracts of the Murchison. In March, following, he started for a second journey up the Shive, a branch of the Zambezi, and on the 18th of April discovered Lake Shirwa. Then followed the discovery. of Lake Nyassa on September 16. In 1864 he was ordered by the British government to abandon the expedition, and, returning to England, he published his second book of travels, entitled A Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi and its Tributaries. In August 1865, Mr. Livingstone left England on his third journey to Africa; discovered Lake Liemba in April 1867, south of Tanganyika, and going westward thence found Lake Maero on the 8th of September. But after eight years of lonely wandering in a previously unknown region, and after achieving discoveries which will permanently benefit mankind, the heroic traveller was overtaken by death. Having made repeated attempts to find the sources of the Nile, and being thwarted every time, in the last instance by severe illness, he requested his followers to take him to Zanzibar, as he was going home. After suffering intensely for several days, he died, May 1, 1873. His body was brought to England and interred in Westminster Abbey. See (Lond.) Christian Observer, January 1875, page 14; Life, by Blaikie (Lond. 1874); Waller, Last Journals (ibid. eod.).
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McClintock, John. Strong, James. Entry for 'Livingstone, David, Ll.d.'. Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/tce/l/livingstone-david-lld.html. Harper & Brothers. New York. 1870.
