Livingston, Robert R.
Robert R. (1746-1813), an American statesman. He was a member of the celebrated Livingston family of New York. He was an older brother of Edward Livingston. He was graduated at King's College, now Columbia, at the age of nineteen, and began the practice of law in New York. He held office under the city, but was removed by British influence on account of his Revolutionary sympathies. In 1776 he was a member of Congress, and was appointed on the famous committee that reported the Declaration of Independence. He was also a member of the convention that drafted a state constitution for New York. He was the first chancellor of the state of New York, in which capacity he administered the oath of office to the first president of the United States. In 1801 he was appointed minister to France by President Jefferson. He was the latter's chief agent in the purchase of Louisiana. Like his brother, Livingston was a man of uprightness and patriotism. He was glad and proud to serve his country, but was not greedy for office. In 1804 he withdrew from public life and spent his remaining years in travel and in promoting agriculture. One of his latest services, showing an interest in the public welfare, was the assistance of Robert Fulton in the construction of the first steamboat to navigate the Hudson River.
Livingstone, David, a celebrated African missionary and explorer. He was born March 19, 1813, at the village of Blantyre, Scotland. He died May 1, 1873, at Chitambos village in interior Africa. His parents belonged to the best class of Scottish peasantry. He was bred to the trade of weaving. An anecdote illustrative of David's character is told of his early boyhood. His master having spread a web of cloth on the village green to bleach, desired David to hold one end while they stretched it out, that it might measure as much as possible. David, considering the stretching dishonest, rather than comply, suffered himself to be dismissed. At the age of twenty-three he was able, by strict economy, to undertake a portion of a college course. He had an ambition to go as a missionary to a foreign land. In 1838 he went up to London and was accepted by the missionary society. He then entered upon a special course of preparation in theology and medicine, saying shrewdly that the best way to reach men's souls lay through their bodies. Livingstone's heart was set on going to China, but it was thought best to send him to Africa. In 1841 he landed at Algoa Bay, east of Capetown, and proceeded northward 700 miles to the station of Kuruman, about 250 miles north of the present city of Kimberley. The greater part of the trip may be made now by rail, but it was then a tedious inland journey with oxen through a land infested by lions and occupied by wild beasts and scarcely less wild natives. An ox was likely to drop dead at any time from fever contracted by the bite of the tsetse. At Kuruman he joined the missionaries, Hamilton and Moffat.
Livingstone's labors in Africa may be divided into four periods. The first was devoted to missionary work, the others to exploration with a view to opening up the country for missionary effort. As soon as he had taken time to look about and learn the language of the natives, he founded a station 200 miles northeast of Kuruman, on the headwaters of the Limpopo River, and conducted thither his wife, Mary Moffat, the daughter of his Kuruman host. While here his left arm was crushed by a lion. He had a knack of gaining the confidence of the natives, and removed his station forty miles northward and again forty miles westward, followed each time by the native tribe among which he had settled. In 1849 he was visited by two English sportsmen, Messrs. Oswell and Murray, and with them undertook a journey northward. They crossed the Kalahari Desert and, August 1st, reached Lake Ngami, one of the fountains of the Zambesi River, then seen for the first time by white men. The next year he returned with his family to the lake and attempted to reach a region 200 miles beyond, but was deterred by the sickness of his children. A year later he discovered the main stream of the Zambesi. He now decided to send his family to England, and went with them to Cape Town. He saw them safely aboard ship and again turned his face northward.
With the aid of native helpers, and no longer harassed by fears for the safety and health of wife and children, he now made two notable trips: one to the northwestward, in which he succeeded in reaching Loanda, a Portuguese town on the Atlantic coast, shown on the schoolboy's map of Africa, and one to the eastward, in which he discovered the famous falls of Victoria in the Zambesi and traced that river to its mouth at the Indian Ocean. These journeyings from ocean to ocean occupied two years and a half. He then took ship for home, arriving December 12, 1856, sixteen years after his departure. He wrote an account of his experience, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. It was told in simple language, but it stirred up a wonderful interest in that region. It is still one of the most trustworthy and interesting books of travel ever written. Accounts of the deserts, rocky ridges, grassy plains, lakes, rivers, the habits of the ostrich, gemsbok, gnu, giraffe, lion, hippopotamus, and crocodile, travel on foot and on oxback, by cart and by raft, the mist-enveloped falls of Victoria, the huts and customs of the natives, flowers, trees, and the ravages of the tsetse fly and fever, are given in an unpretentious way that carries the impression of truthfulness. Livingstone's Travels, as the volume is called usually, is an excellent boys' book. No better picture of the region when first seen by white men could be desired.
Livingstone allowed himself little more than a year for rest. March 10, 1858, he set sail for the mouth of the Zambesi, this time with a government appointment as consul and commander of a party of men bent on an exploration of the Zambesi basin. A party of missionaries followed soon after. Livingstone located them as well as he could. He and his party discovered and surveyed Lake Nyassa. In 1862 he returned to the mouth of the river to welcome Mrs. Livingstone, who had come out, bringing with her a river steamer of stout construction, built after a plan furnished by him with the money derived from the sale of his Travels. He named the boat the "Lady Nyassa," and made trips of considerable length. Meanwhile the missionaries mentioned were carried off by fever, and Mrs. Livingstone died. In 1864 the intrepid explorer was recalled to England. The government seemed disappointed in the results of the expedition, and the missionary people were discouraged with the failure of the mission. Livingstone now wrote a second volume, entitled Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries. It presented a sad picture of the slave trade.
In 1865 the British Geographical Society and private friends united to send Livingstone out on a third trip of exploration. The government granted $5,000 and gave him a consul's commission. He arrived at Zanzibar by way of Bombay, January 28, 1866. He set out in search of the headwaters of the Nile, the "fountains" of Herodotus. He was unheard of so long that the civilized world grew uneasy. James Gordon Bennett, proprietor of the New York Herald, sent an expedition in search of him under Henry M. Stanley. Stanley reached him in the interior in October of 1871, and left him in March of the following year. Livingstone, encouraged by the supplies brought him by Stanley, set out with renewed courage. He became involved in swamps, however, and his strength gave out. His followers placed him in a litter and toiled forward. Early on the morning of May 1st his colored boys found "the great master," as they called him, kneeling by the side of his couch, dead. The faithful blacks took up his body, reverently cared for it as best they could, and carried it with his books and instruments clear to the coast of Zanzibar. His remains were borne with honor to England and placed with mourning amid the nation's great in Westminster Abbey. He kept up his notes and diary to April 27th, within forty-eight hours of his death. The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa were edited by an old friend, making the third volume from the traveler's pen.
Dr. Livingstone's labors did much to suppress the Arab slave trade, and to extend British influence in Africa. His memorial tablet, a black slab in Westminster, bears the words: "For thirty years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and abolish the desolating slave trade of Central Africa."