Livingstone's River Adventure

BBC Four Collections -

specially chosen programmes from the BBC archive.

For this collection, Sir David Attenborough

has chosen documentaries from the start of his career.

More programmes on this theme, and other BBC Four Collections,

are available on BBC iPlayer.

On August 4th, 1851, an obscure Scots missionary

and a white hunter arrived here from South Africa.

For weeks past,

they'd been travelling through unknown territory in South Africa.

They had come up and fringed the eastern edge of the Kalahari Desert,

and on that day, they arrived here on the far south bank of this river.

It was very windy, and there were a lot of waves on the river.

They had considerable difficulty in getting a canoe to bring them over.

But when at last they got to this village, they were greeted

with astonishment and surprise.

Hundreds of people gathered round to look at them,

for theirs were the first white faces that had ever been seen here.

This place is called Sesheke, and the big river they call the Liambi.

The Scots missionary was overjoyed to see it,

for although its lower reaches and its mouth on the east coast of Africa

had been known for centuries, this was the first time

that it had been identified in the centre of the continent.

They still call it the Liambi today,

but the name we know it by better is the Zambezi.

David Livingstone was born on 19th March, 1813,

at Blantyre on the banks of the Clyde near Glasgow.

His father worked in the cotton mill, and as a child of ten,

David was sent to work there, too.

He had been reared in a devoutly religious home,

and when he was 21, he decided to become a medical missionary.

With his meagre savings and help from his family,

he paid for courses in medicine and divinity

at Anderson College, Glasgow.

While he studied, he was accepted by the London Missionary Society.

Robert Moffat, the most celebrated missionary of the time,

fired Livingstone's imagination with stories of the great work

waiting to be done in unknown Africa.

Livingstone determined to help.

And so, in 1840, he sailed for Cape Town,

joined Moffat at his mission, Kuruman,

and as soon as he could, set out for the unknown north.

LION ROARS

As a result of this mauling by a lion,

he was never again to have the full use of his left arm.

His wounds were so severe, he had to return to Kuruman to convalesce.

There, he fell in love with Moffat's daughter, Mary.

On 2nd January, 1845, they were married in the Little Mission Church

and soon afterwards, accompanied by his bride, he returned north,

preaching, studying native languages and customs,

building missions and raising a family.

In June 1849, he set out on an expedition to cross the Kalahari.

The natives said it was impossible, but Livingstone did it

and reached Lake Ngami, the first of his great discoveries.

He was determined to follow up this triumph,

but to do so, he would have to leave his young family.

He decided to send them back to England.

"When my children ask me, 'When shall we return to Kuruman?' he wrote,

"I must reply, 'Never. The mark of Cain is on your foreheads.

"'Your father is a missionary.'"

Then, he set out again for the unknown north.

On November 19th, 1853, he was back here in Sesheke

and fired with a great ambition. Until that time,

it had been widely believed that central Africa was covered

by a large desert, a sort of southern Sahara.

Livingstone already knew otherwise and he saw the Zambezi River

as a great avenue up which the civilising influences of Christianity

and trade might spread in order to combat the evil of slavery

that was already rampant among the tribes of central Africa.

So he formed an astonishingly bold plan.

He determined that, alone, except for his African paddlers and porters,

he would travel up the Zambezi towards its source

and then strike out for the west coast of Africa.

Once there, he would return down the Zambezi back here to Sesheke,

and continue on downstream to the mouth of the Zambezi

and the Indian Ocean. It was a journey of not less than 3,000 miles.

Much of the country he would be going through was unknown.

Many of the tribes he would meet doubtless would be hostile.

Perhaps no-one but Livingstone would have dared to have such a bold dream.

Certainly, no-one knew better than he of the dangers

and the difficulties involved.

And so began the long obsession with the Zambezi

that was to dominate so much of Livingstone's life.

An obsession that at first was to lead to spectacular success

and worldwide fame and then to bring him failure,

deep personal grief, and finally, to mark

the beginning of the long tragedy that was to cloud his last years.

The people say that it was under this tree which blew down only a year ago

that Livingstone pitched his tent.

Already, before his journey had really begun,

he was stricken by fever, and so weak that he hadn't the strength

to go out and hunt for meat for himself.

But the chief of Sesheke hospitably sent him gifts of honey and milk

and fruit and maize.

Weak though he was, Livingstone nonetheless found the strength

to preach both in the morning and the afternoon, and was listened to

by audiences of over 600.

After four days, the fever left him

and he felt strong enough to set out on his journey westwards

along the river. The list of equipment that he took with him

seems pitifully, almost ludicrously, small.

He had three muskets for his men.

A pistol, a rifle and a shotgun for himself, together with ammunition.

For food, he had 20 pounds of coffee, a few pounds of tea

and a few biscuits.

He had with him a tin containing respectable clothes,

so that he might look smart when he reached civilisation

on the west coast, another with a few books,

a sextant and a chronometer with which to plot his position

and a magic lantern with which to help him

in his preaching to the people. He also had a few medicines.

He had a horse blanket on which to sleep,

a sheepskin rug with which to cover himself

and a tent which wasn't waterproof. That was all.

He writes that he had "a secret scorn for impedimenta"

and that if he failed on this journey,

it wouldn't be through a lack of what he derisively terms "knick-knacks,

"so extensively advertised as being essential for the traveller",

but rather because he would have "lacked the pluck".

A century ago, the whole of this part of Africa

swarmed with immense herds of game -

wildebeest, sable, eland, antelope of all sorts -

and Livingstone rejoiced in the sight.

On one occasion, he lay in the grass watching game for so long

that his men, thinking he was ill,

came up and frightened the animals away.

Although he was not trained as a naturalist,

he was an acute observer and regularly noted details

of natural history that were original contributions to science.

On his previous journey to Lake Ngami,

he had discovered a completely new species of antelope, the lechwe.

Now on the Zambezi, he saw it again.

"It presents a noble appearance," he wrote,

"as it stands gazing with head erect at the approaching stranger.

"When it resolves to decamp, it lowers its head

"and lays its horns down to a level with its withers.

"It then begins a waddling trot which ends in its galloping

"and springing over bushes.

"It invariably runs to the water

"and crosses it by a succession of bounds,

"each of which appears to be from the bottom.

"We thought the flesh good at first, but soon got tired of it."

Birds, too, were a source of daily delight to him.

He counted not only the number of different species he saw,

but how many individuals of each kind.

He noted their habits, their local names

and he described in detail their colours and their shape.

In their variety and number,

he saw a manifestation of the work of the God

to whom he had dedicated his life.

"The welkin rings in the cool morning," he wrote in his journal,

"with the singing of birds which, if not so delightful

"as the merry chorus of the birds of home,

"with which I am familiar from infancy,

"at once strikes the ear by their loveliness and multifariousness

"as the embodiment of joysome hearts willing the praises of him

"who fills them to overflowing with gladness."

The Sioma Falls mark the beginning of the great plains of Barotseland.

Livingstone thought that the scenery here was the loveliest he had seen.

Men from the riverside village carried his canoes round the falls

and that night, at their request, he preached and showed them

slides of biblical scenes on his magic lantern.

Then he pushed on north, up the Zambezi, drawing this map as he went.

In spite of heavy rains and a severe bout of fever,

he travelled 400 miles in the next six weeks

and reached the town of Shinte, the capital of a great chief.

Here, he and the hundred Makololo porters who had come with him

from Sesheke were given a splendid ceremonial reception,

during which the chief received the obeisance of his head men.

Chiefs in this part of Africa are still revered,

and their people to this day pay homage in just the way that

Livingstone described - by rubbing earth and ashes on their bodies.

Livingstone was surprised to find women admitted to the meeting.

Here, however, they had much more importance in tribal life

than they were accorded further south.

Indeed, Livingstone's guide for the past few days

had been the chief's niece, a strapping, rather bossy girl

whose body, Livingstone noted,

was smeared all over with a mixture of fat and red ochre

as a protection against the weather -

a necessary precaution - for, like most of the ladies,

"she was otherwise in a state of frightful nudity".

Many of the customs of the people he encountered here

horrified Livingstone, even though he was much more understanding

and sympathetic about these matters than many of his contemporaries.

In his book, he wrote, "I shall not often advert to their depravity."

He felt that little good could come from investigating in detail

the nature of their customs and beliefs.

And so he wrote little for public eyes about such things.

But it was not from ignorance.

"The more intimately I become acquainted with barbarians,"

he wrote in the privacy of his journal,

"the more disgusting does heathenism become.

"It is inconceivably vile. They need a healer.

"May God enable me to be such to them."

But the practices that so appalled him are still carried on today.

When boys are taken away to be initiated by the men

at a secret place in the bush,

the Makushi devil still appears in the half-deserted village

to taunt the abandoned mothers,

and they in turn sing in reply to placate him.

Up to this point, Livingstone and his men had been travelling in canoes,

but north of Shinte, the Zambezi swings eastward in a huge arc

and so Livingstone took a short cut over land.

For five days, he journeyed through rolling hills

until at last he saw the river once more ahead of him.

And so, Livingstone came down yet again to the Zambezi River

here at Cazombo in Angola.

This was the highest point on the river that he was to reach

and he came down across those plains over there.

He was travelling during the rainy season, and for many nights past,

he hadn't been able to get a clear view of the heavens.

On this night, he did manage to take some observations of the stars

and was much encouraged at being able to plot his position with accuracy.

He crossed the river just over there.

It took him four hours, he records in his journal,

and when he came up on this, the western bank,

he looked back and he saw those hills.

He asked one of the local people what they were and the man said, "Piri,"

so Livingstone duly noted in his journal

that these were the Piri Hills.

In fact, "piri" is just the local word meaning "a hill",

but the "Piri Hills" they've been ever since.

And from here, he continued westwards towards the coast

and Luanda, the capital of Angola.

It took him four months of hard, lonely travel

before he reached there. And by the time he got there,

he was broken in health.

He had dysentery, he had had over 30 attacks of malaria,

he was so feeble that he couldn't ride on his ox

for more than ten minutes at a time.

He was hoping that when he got to Luanda,

he would find letters from his wife, Mary, who was back in England,

and from his children, but there were no letters for him when he got there.

There were, however, a number of English ships

including a British cruiser, HMS Polyphemus.

The captain of the Polyphemus

offered Livingstone an immediate passage back home.

To a man who had been travelling for over 14 years in central Africa,

who was broken in health,

such an offer must have been almost unbelievably attractive.

And yet Livingstone refused it,

because to accept it would mean breaking faith with the Makololo men

who had come with him all the way from Sesheke on the Middle Zambezi.

It never occurred to him that he could desert them.

"Without me," he said, "they will never find their way back home."

So he stayed in Luanda to try and regain his health.

He stayed there for nearly four months, and then once more,

with the Makololo, he turned his back on the sea and on England

and marched back into central Africa and the Middle Zambezi.

For much of the way, he was able to follow his previous route,

but it still took him five months to get back to the Zambezi.

When they did so, his men speared a hippo

and had a great feast, for it was the first meat

they had eaten for a long time, but the hippos nearly had their revenge.

Fortunately, no-one was hurt and they paddled on downriver.

They got back to Sesheke

one year, seven months after they had left it.

He was now on the verge of making the most spectacular

of all his discoveries.

When he had first arrived in Sesheke in 1851, the people had told him

of a great waterfall which they called Mosi-oa-Tunya,

"the smoke that thunders".

That lay downstream, but Livingstone's mind at the time

was set on going upstream towards the west coast

and he never investigated it.

But now, in November, 1855, he was back in Sesheke

and he was going downstream.

As he travelled in the canoe, he had with him

this small pocket book, which is now preserved in the National Museum

here in the town of Livingstone.

In it, he noted down the bare facts of the journey.

Here is Sesheke.

These figures are the hours that he took as he went downriver.

Up here, he's noted the nature of the rocks he passes.

"Porphyry, with crystals covered with copper."

And on the end here, perhaps the conversation of his paddlers,

because he's put down a few of the local words.

"Mor - cattle. Mor mutamin - a tale bearer.

"Somri - the camel thorn."

And then, on the next page, come the details of his approach to the falls.

"Mosi-oa-Tunya bears south-southeast from Sekota islet.

"Burly baobab, very graceful palm,

"cedar and cypress form of motsouri."

"Rounded masses of tropical vegetation.

"After 20 minutes, sail thence on 16th November, 1855.

"Saw three or five large columns of vapour rising 100 or more feet."

And so he came to this spot and looked right over the very edge

of the falls, the first white man ever to do so.

Even today, this spot is seldom visited

because in order to get to it, you have to weave your way through

the rapids just above the edge of the falls, and when you contemplate

what lies immediately ahead, this can be a little alarming.

Livingstone's own comment is a typical understatement.

"For a moment," he wrote,

"I thought we were going to go right into the gulf,

"and I felt a tremor, but I said nothing

"believing I could face the difficulty as well as my guides."

Until now, he had never used anything but the local African name

for all of his geographical discoveries,

but here for the first and last time,

he broke with this rule and he called these the Victoria Falls.

He carved his initials on this tree,

initials that were later renewed by other visitors to the falls,

but now they have long since disappeared

having been overgrown by the bark.

And then, noting that this place was continually drenched by spray

from the falls, he thought it would be a good place

for a garden, so he planted apricot stones, peaches and coffee,

noting, with a rare flash of humour,

that he thought that Mosi-oa-Tunya would be a more careful nurseryman

and keep the place better watered than would his Makololo.

But since that time, hippo, whose spoor

are still very common round here,

trampled those gardens and they have disappeared, too.

In his notebook, he put down his first estimates

of the size of the falls, and perhaps because he was

so anxious not to exaggerate, he grossly underestimated.

He wrote that they were 100 feet deep.

In reality, at one end, they are twice that depth,

and at the other, over three times - 350 feet -

a fact that he was to discover when he visited the falls

five years later, leaned over the edge and dropped a plumb line

down into the chasm with some bullets tied to the end as weights.

He was equally cautious in his first notes about the length

of the falls, estimating them to be not less than 600 yards long.

They are in fact 1,900 yards in length.

In structure, they are unique, and at first sight, puzzling,

for the river plunges into a long trench in the Earth's surface,

from the middle of which a very narrow gorge leads off

to carry the waters on downstream.

Livingstone speculated in detail in his book

about the geological factors that had created this formation.

He believed that this chasm had been produced by some great earthquake

which had cracked the Earth's surface,

and that the Zambezi had then simply tumbled into the crack.

He didn't realise that this gorge has been created by the river itself,

eroding along a line of weakness crossing its bend.

Only at one point among all these mathematical facts and sober theories

does his description of this astounding place become lyrical.

"No-one can imagine the beauty of the view

"from anything witnessed in England," he wrote.

"It had never been seen before by European eyes,

"but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon

"by angels in their flight."

Below the falls, the party once more encountered huge herds of game.

Livingstone had 114 Makololo carriers with him,

and although he himself hated killing, his men had to be fed.

In the past, he had described with compassion the sufferings of animals

hunted by Africans who drove them into pits where they died

in a welter of blood and spears.

Now, his men speared a baby elephant

and then slaughtered its mother

when she tried to protect her young with her own body.

In his journal, he wrote,

"I turned away from the spectacle

"of the destruction of these noble animals

"which might be turned to such good account in Africa

"with a feeling of sickness."

They marched on downstream until they reached Zumbo.

The Portuguese had been settled around the mouth of the Zambezi

since the 16th century, and Zumbo, 500 miles upriver,

was the farthest point that they had penetrated inland.

Here, in the 17th century, they had built a tiny fortress.

But when Livingstone reached it,

the place had already been deserted for 50 years.

It must have looked much the same then as it does today.

As he wandered around the crumbling ruins,

he asked the African inhabitants why the Portuguese had left.

The people wouldn't tell him,

but Livingstone, doubtless, knew well enough.

Hidden in the hills outside Zumbo

there still remains a hole in the rock

that can be sealed with boulders.

This is a slave pit.

In it, hundreds of Africans were kept imprisoned

until they were collected by Arab traders.

The Portuguese inhabitants of Zumbo had not only condoned this practice

but sometimes played an active part in it.

As a result, they had been in a continual state of war

with the local people.

No wonder they were eventually driven out of the settlement.

The slave trade, however, still flourished.

Arabs still travelled among the people of central Africa

setting one tribe against another, taking prisoners from both

and then leading them down to the slave markets on the coast.

The dreadful savagery and cruelty of this iniquitous practice

shocked Livingstone deeply, and its extermination

became as important an aim of his explorations

as the spreading of Christianity.

Around here, Livingstone encountered great numbers of buffalo -

aggressive creatures that could beat off a lion

and sometimes attacked men.

RUMBLE OF BUFFALO STAMPEDING

SHOUTING

The porter who was tossed in this charge, although badly hurt,

revived after what Livingstone described as "a good shampoo",

and after only a week, he was able to hunt again.

A few miles downstream from Zumbo, Livingstone ran into trouble.

During the night, his encampment was surrounded by the local people.

In the morning, he found himself threatened

by armed warriors with spears.

The local witchdoctors came out and lit fires

in which they burnt spells

and they uttered strange and horrible incantations

in an attempt to frighten Livingstone's porters.

Livingstone met the threat

with his usual mixture of piety and practicality.

He wrote in his journal,

"We resolved to wait and put our trust in him

"in whose hands lie the hearts of all men."

Then he made some preparations for any battle.

He killed an ox to give his men a good meal of red meat

and put good heart in them.

That certainly worked because one of his men said to him

in a rather bloodthirsty way, "You've seen us with elephants.

"Wait till you see what we do to men."

Livingstone himself hadn't much doubt about the outcome of any battle

because he writes rather grittily, "If the chief attacks,

"he will find that it's the worst mistake of his life".

But it didn't come to that.

The chief sent over two old men and they asked Livingstone who he was.

Livingstone replied, "I am a Lekoa," meaning an Englishman.

The old men said, "We don't know a tribe called the Lekoa.

"We thought you were Mazunga" - meaning Portuguese.

To show that he wasn't Portuguese, Livingstone bared his chest

and showed his white skin.

The old men marvelled and said they had never seen skin so white.

Surely Livingstone must be a member of that white tribe

who loved the black men.

Livingstone said that he was.

So peace was established.

The chief told him that the way down to Tete,

the Portuguese settlement 200 miles further downriver

on the north bank, over there,

was a hard trek over the mountains

and it was much easier to cross onto this southern bank of the Zambezi.

That afternoon they gave him canoes.

Livingstone and his party made the crossing.

But it was too late to get right across

so they camped for the night on one of these islands

And, just in case there was any treachery,

Livingstone and his men slept in the canoes.

The next morning, they completed the crossing.

Livingstone was so grateful to get over to this southern bank,

that he sent gifts over to the chief.

Two spoons and a shirt.

Had he but known, in crossing the Zambezi at this point

he was sowing the seeds of catastrophe.

And so the party marched on in a great semicircle,

crossing gently rolling country

and leaving the Zambezi away to the north, hidden by mountains.

Although the going was now comparatively easy,

it nevertheless took them six weeks to reach Tete.

Then, as now, the little town of Tete was clustered around its fortress.

As Livingstone neared it, he was so weak from exhaustion and starvation

that he could scarcely walk.

So the Governor of Tete sent out a party of men with a hammock

to carry the explorer into town across those plains.

His great journey was now virtually over

for, although the coast still lay some 200 miles away,

the way there was comparatively well known

and there were several Portuguese settlements that could give him help.

So, Livingstone stayed here and rested for six weeks

to try and regain his strength.

Then, leaving his Makololo porters here

with the promise that he would be back to collect them

to take them back home to the centre of Africa,

Livingstone got into a canoe and sailed down to the coast.

He reached Quelimane on the coast on 20th May, 1856.

His great journey had taken him almost three years.

He had walked across a continent.

He had filled in huge spaces on the map.

He had brought back detailed and accurate observations

of the animals and the plants,

the rivers and the rocks, the people and the climate.

And he had done it alone.

It was perhaps the greatest journey

in the whole history of African exploration.

At the coast, a British man o' war was awaiting him to take him home

and when he got home, he was given a hero's reception.

The Royal Geographical Society presented him with its gold medal.

The Royal Society elected him a fellow -

the highest academic honour of all.

Queen Victoria received him at the Palace

and the public mobbed him in the streets.

He wrote an account of his travels

in a book that instantly became a bestseller

and went through eight editions.

He was made a Freeman of the cities of London, Glasgow and Edinburgh,

and learned scientific societies vied with each other

to persuade him to take part in their excursions.

He preached before huge congregations at Oxford and at Cambridge

and in a sermon that stirred all Britain,

he called for help in the fight against slavery.

"I beg to direct your attention to Africa," he cried,

adding prophetically, "I know that in a few years

"I shall be cut off in that country which is now open.

"Do not let it be shut again.

"Do you carry on the work that I have begun?

"I leave it with you."

The whole world was at his feet.

But from now on, the fates seemed to turn against him.

The London Missionary Society, in whose service he had crossed Africa,

decided that it was time that he stopped his wanderings

and settled down on a mission station somewhere.

But Livingstone's heart was still here on the Zambezi.

For one thing, his Makololo porters were waiting here in Tete for him.

And, for another, he had not yet demonstrated conclusively

to the world that the Zambezi was navigable -

that it was, indeed, God's highway to the centre of the dark continent.

So Livingstone resigned from the Missionary Society

and instead took an appointment from the Foreign Office

as her Majesty's Consul to the Coast of East Africa.

And once more he set out for the Zambezi.

This time, instead of having a band of African tribesmen with him

he had six Europeans -

a geologist, a botanist, a naval officer as a navigator,

a marine engineer, an artist - Thomas Baines -

and his brother Charles,

whose function was somewhat vaguely described as being "moral agent".

And instead of canoes, they had a metal ship

that was brought out from Scotland in parts and assembled on the coast.

They called the ship after Livingstone's wife.

Down in South Africa, she had been known to the local people

not by her own name but the name of her firstborn son.

So they called the ship the Ma Robert.

And it was this very different collection of people and equipment

who, on September 8th, 1858,

anchored down in the Zambezi, here below this fortress in Tete.

His reunion with the Makololo was heart-warming.

They rushed into the river and carried him ashore singing.

Livingstone was in tears.

But from then on, everything seemed to go wrong.

In the hot, sultry climate tempers frayed.

Livingstone, who had such astonishing influence over Africans,

seemed to have no talent for leading men of his own race

and the expedition was rent with quarrels.

The naval commander refused to take orders and had to be dismissed.

Livingstone's brother Charles

did little except spread malicious gossip among the party.

Baines began to paint a series of pictures of Tete

and its festivals, that are splendid evocations

of the curious, hybrid society created here by the Portuguese.

But Livingstone considered that this was a waste of time,

and the two men quarrelled bitterly.

The Ma Robert consumed such prodigious quantities of wood

that they had to refuel with maddening frequency.

Yet her engines were so feeble

that she couldn't keep up with a native canoe.

And her hull was so thin that it dented with alarming ease.

And when, at last, they coaxed her upriver, beyond Tete,

to the section of the Zambezi

that Livingstone had bypassed on his way down

at the end of his previous expedition,

they came to the biggest disaster of all.

This was what he had imagined would be merely a few rapids.

This, he had planned to clear out of the way

with a few judiciously placed charges of dynamite.

This was the Kebrabasa Gorge,

as great a barrier to navigation

as the Victoria Falls themselves.

The party made several despairing reconnaissances.

Baines drew many sketches.

But the conclusion was obvious and inescapable.

They were impassable.

Livingstone saw the gorge at the end of the dry season,

when its basalt fangs are exposed.

Rocks like these stretch upstream,

creating a succession of whirlpools and cataracts

that stretch for 50 miles

and that no-one has ever managed to negotiate

in a canoe or anything else.

This discovery was a devastating blow for Livingstone.

For years, he had dedicated himself

to showing to the world that the Zambezi was,

"God's highway to the interior".

And now, the Zambezi, HIS river, had failed him.

But then, with astonishing tenacity and resilience,

he changed his field of exploration.

He retired downriver to Shupanga,

close to the junction of the Shire River and the Zambezi,

and turned his efforts into exploring north up the Shire.

The contributions he made to geographical knowledge

were of immense importance, for he discovered Lake Nyasa.

And his work laid the foundations

for what was to become Nyasaland, and is now Malawi.

But for Livingstone, one suspects, this was only second best.

In the years that followed,

disaster succeeded disaster.

The Ma Robert sank.

His own expedition was rent with bitter quarrels.

A universities expedition that came out as a result of his preaching

at Oxford and Cambridge to settle up the Shire River

was badly mismanaged and the missionaries died of fever.

And then, Mary Moffat, his wife,

came out to join him here at Shupanga.

In nearly 20 years of married life,

she'd spent barely four with her husband in a settled home.

And three months after she arrived, she died.

And so, this remote spot on the banks of his beloved Zambezi

became, for him, the saddest place in all the world.

Nine months later, Livingstone left the Zambezi for ever.

After a year in England, he returned again to Africa,

but not, this time, to the Zambezi River,

but farther north to the great lakes of Nyasa and Tanganyika.

And so began the long, lonely wanderings of his last years.

In a way, it was quite like the old times.

Livingstone was once more alone, except for his African porters,

and once more, he was striving to exterminate the slave trade.

He was now an old man,

and the long years of hard living had taken their toll.

In a letter to his daughter, Agnes, he wrote that his teeth were now

"broken through tearing at maize, and some were missing".

And with a touch of the old, sardonic humour, he added,

"If you expect a kiss from me,

"you must take it through a speaking trumpet."

Five years after he had disappeared into the interior,

Stanley came out and discovered him

living on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.

Ironically, he was now dependent for food and protection

on the very people he had come to exterminate, the Arab slavers.

Livingstone refused to return to civilisation with Stanley.

For now, he was obsessed with an idea.

He wanted to find the source of the Nile.

In fact, Burton and Speke had already discovered it,

but Livingstone refused to accept their findings.

The Arabs had told him of a hill

where four fountains or springs took their rise,

two flowing north and two flowing south,

and Livingstone was convinced that the northward-flowing ones

were the source of the Nile.

The idea obsessed him,

as he staggered and waded through the swamps.

And the day before he died,

he was carried into a village, by his porters, in a hammock.

And he summoned the elders

and he asked them if they knew of such a hill.

They didn't.

But such a place does exist.

It lies right in the heart of Africa,

and the two northward-flowing streams

are the source not of the Nile, but of the Congo.

And it could be that, in striving to reach it in his last days,

Livingstone was once more obsessed, though unwittingly,

with the river that had brought him

his greatest triumphs and his deepest tragedy.

Because the two southward-flowing streams from that hill

form this, the Zambezi.

BIRDSONG