Driven To Discover

David Livingstone’s legacy is controversial but his story is still extraordinary

- STEPHEN ROBERTS

A REMARKABLE Scottish missionary and explorer, he displayed immense courage and fortitude, A buoyed by religious fervour and trenchant ideals. Although he was very much a scion of the times that made him, his legacy was to be both good and bad for the parts of Africa he explored.

His name was David Livingstone and he died 150 years ago in May. Born the second of seven in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire on March 19, 1813, to teetotal Sunday school teacher and travelling salesman Neil Livingstone (1788-1856) and Agnes née Hunter (1782-1865), David was raised amid penury, piety, strict discipline and the gospel of hard work. He attended the village school and from the age of 10 worked in a Blantyre cotton mill, 12½ hours a day, six days a week. That he was atypical was shown when he used some of his first week's wages to purchase a Latin grammar book. He also became proficient in theology, botany and maths.

It was writing by German missionary Karl Gützlaff (1803-51) that inspired Livingstone's missionary zeal. He also dedicated himself to medicine and having qualified from Glasgow University in 1840, was prevented from sailing to China by the Opium War. So he looked at another continent, inspired by Dr Robert Moffat (1795-1883), a missionary in Southern Africa.

Ordained by the London Missionary Society in November, 1840, Livingstone was impatient, reaching Simon's Bay in March 1841, then Kuruman (Moffat's mission) in the July. Within a year he had explored further north than any European before him. His linguistic abilities proved invaluable as native dialects assailed his senses. In 1843 he founded his own mission at Kolobeng, well over 500km (300 miles) north-east of Kuruman. The following year he was savaged by a lion, suffering wounds to his left arm, but recovered within three months.