The Sun.
London, England, 1857-09-23 00:00:00

DB. LIVINGSTON AT EDINBURGH.

The freedom of the city of Edinburgh was con-
ferred on Dr. Livingston, the African traveller, on
Monday afternoon, in the Queen-street Hall. The
civic corporation attended in their robes, and the
hall was crowded with from 1,000 to 1,200 persons.
The burgess ticket purported to be conferred by the
Town council on Dr. Livingston in testimony of
weir admiration of the courage and undaunted per-
severance displayed by him during his journey
through South Africa, and their sense of the valu-
able services rendered by him in opening a way for
the diffusion of the blessings of Christianity and
civilisation among the inhabitants of that hitherto
tinknes-vrn land.
The LOnD PROVOST, in presenting the burgess
ticket, a-ed—l have now the honour of placing in
this burgess ticket, which contains the
your hinds'
resolution unanimously adopted by the members of
this Toi.vn-council, to mark the grateful sense enter-
tained by of your heroic efforts in the cause of
religion and civi lisation. The exertions made by you
to open a way for diffusing the blessings of Christi-
anity awl science iil central Africa have been con-
temelated by us with feelings of admiration and
gratitude. The couvtry which you have chosen
as the sphere of yonr, philanthropic labours has
long been regarded erith solicitude by the inhabi-
tants of Great Britain. Many have gone before
you and have trodden the path of scientific dis-
covery. Like you, they have made vast sacrifices
in order to explore its hidden and unapproached
recesses. To you belongs the especial honour of
being the herald of the GaeTeel of Peace to the in-
habitants of that dark and &isolate region, and at
the same time the instrument of conveying to them
a knowledge of the advantages of commerce and
civilisation. The all.important object of diffus-
ing the Gospel light is that to which your energies
have been first and chiefly devoted. You have
practically recognised the important truth that the
advantages of science are as nothing unless united
to the benign influence of our holy faith. (Loud
applause.) The example which you have thus
given will, we trust, be followed by many who
will be encouraged by what you have been enabled
to achieve. For your success in the Christian and
philanthropic work to which you are again about
to devote yourself, let me assure you that our best
wishes and most fervent prayers go along with you.
(Applause.) That your past and future efforts to
accomplish this important object may be crowne I
with signal success is the fervent prayer, not only
of us who are here met, to do you honour, but of
many not now present, whose grateful attention
excited by your past exertions will be anxiously
directed to your future efforts—efforts on which
bleasings will be invoked by your countrymen of your
own day, and which we trust and believe will be
the means of calling forth blessings on your memory
from generations yet unborn. (Loud applause.)
Happily throughout the vast extent of our country's
dominions the blight of slavery has ceased to
exist. (Applause.) It is far otherwise in the
country to which you are about to return. The
cry of injured justice may well be raised from
Africa t Europe, for we owe to her a large debt
of reparation. ey it be yours to loosen the
bands of the oppressed, and may you live to wit-
ness the approach of the time when the soil of
Africa shall be as free as that of the land which
gave you birth, and is proud to claim you as one
of her sons. (Loud and prolonged applause.)
Dr. LiverrosToer, after thanking his lordship and
the audience for his reception, and premising that
perhaps the most suitable acknowledgment he
could make would be to communicate to them a
little iuformation about Africa, said,—There is a
good deal of ignorance about Africa in England,
just as we have in Africa about England. (A
laugh.) In fact, in that respect we are very mueli
alike. I have been quite astonished at some of the
questions put to me since my return to this country.
Ono of the most common is this—would the people
of Afria be induced to cultivate the soil ? Now,
the fact of the matter is, that all the African tribes
who have it in their power cultivate the soil, ex-
cept the Bushmen, who are an exception in every
respect, and who never cultivate the soil or keep
domestic animals, and neverhave any abiding place.
Their language, too, is exceptional, but all the
other tribes. of Africa show by their language and
customs that they are one family of people. The
Africans look upon us white people as only another
tribe of men, and when I attempt to tell what their
numbers may be, they put tc me the question,
"Are they as many as a cloud of locusts 1" If I
say yes, they ask further whether, if each of the
white people were to take a locust into his hand,
they would finish the whole cloud. Of course I
say I tliink they would. Then they will add,
~
Your Queen must be very rich indeed when she
has so many people." "Oh yes," I reply, " she is
exceedingly rich and lam asked, " Has she

many cows ?"—a -question I really could never an-
swer (laughter) ; and then when I mention the fact.
that I have never seen the Queen they say, " What
sort of people must you be never to have seen your
chief ?" A great rainy other questions show the
same kind of ignorance respecting us. Many Euro-
pean gentlemen have gone to that country to hunt,
but, as the Africans have no idea of sport, they
wonder to see gentlemen working so hard for a lit-
tle dry antelope meat, and they put the ques'ion to
me, " Have Tarr friends no meat at home ?"
1 nigh.) Not wishing my friends to appear in such
a light, I say, " These gentlemen could have beef
every dsy of their lives if they liked ;" but they
reply tome, " Aha, you know better." (Laughter.)
In reference to the cultivation of the soil, we find
that they labour most industriously, and that the
grain they raise requires more labour than the crop
would do in this country. It is true that in the
south part of the country most labour falls to the
share of the women, but they do labour most in-
dustriously in the north, and it takes them about
eight months of the year to get their crop. In the
central parts of the country we find that they are
all anxious to trade, and knowing this, I have not
the smallest hesitation in saying that if encouraged
to cultivate the raw material for our manufactures
they would he delighted to do it. The interior
hag been hitherto shut up to us, for many of
the tribes around the borders have been most
unwilliug to allow the central tribes to get in-
tercourse with the white man ; and I am told th st in
the centre of the country many expeditions have gone
towards the sea cast, and were unable to get there

owing to there border tribes always wishing to get
the trade into their own hands. Now the object I
have in going back again is to try to make a path
from the sea to that central country. (Applause.)
On the east side of the country we have a large
rives-._.the Zambe.3e. This river does not rise where
it has been always pointed out to do in the Portia-
gueee maps. Instead of that, it rises from near the
sources of the Nile, and flows from north to south
in the centre of the country. Nearly all the river]
in that central part flow from the sides to the centre,
and there they form that large river the Zambt se,
whieh finds its way from the central valley by
MOW'S of a large fissure through a high ridge of
country, and then appears at that part which the
Pv)rtugnese maps have s'ways pointed out as its
source. It rises many hundred miles hes ond that,
and the Zarabese is, t believe, really and truly an
English discovery. My object in returning to that
country is to try to get a permanent path to that
centrall.egion from which most of the slaves have
alwayri been drawn. The native slave traders go
into ',he central country and carry our manufactures
they e, and with a few yards of cloth they purchase
sla:ves, and then take them down to the sea coast.
The people are so anxious to get our manufactures
that they part, not with their own children, but
with children kidnapped from other tribes. Now
hope to, be able to make a path up the Zambese to
the ceeitral country, and then, if we can supply the
People with our goods fur lawful commerce, we
ha* ire a fair prospect of putting a stop to the slave
teade in a very large tract of country. (Applause.)
*The people in the central part appear to be
rather of a higher grade than those near the
east. When English people think about Africa,
they. tmagine that all the Africans are like the
bii.art.iallitlf4 we have in front of the tibacconists'
4,1,1;P3- <Laughter.) This is not the case at all.
in tahteleiathweeriteal negrotype that is only to be found
part of the population. The people
~nerally
are not altogetherp pblack. 'Many of them
are of olive colour °of and usually-The:l
the colour of coffee and
V.4is lighter culler. igher. grades of society are of
Leanainginoneuthat the. type we see
on the eminent Egypt
population
o
the type of the central
shop variety. (A laugh.) These peg gto pay for their
le are mil-
ing to labour if you are
ls/Ali/1
; and I believe that capitalieta e.,pluying
)/hour and paying for it in Africa Would fins
abundant scope for our own mlnufactnre9. The
rea,on I think so is this :—Whoa T left Africa
I sew- the people busily engaged in their gard,3us,
both. wen and women, all down the Zambesa—for
'clee centre country every man has his own gar
en, and cultivates enough for his own cmsump.
tion. When we came among the Portugueie
fine
settlements my men were delighted with the
gardems and the soil, and they were very much
aetr niched the Portuguese did not cultivate more.
Well, I believe, from having seen them labour,
154 from the great anxiety manifested to collect
any lade thing they can sell, they would cultivate
cotton and other produce for our markets. When
I rer (led the Mauritius I found there a similar
spertaele. I found thislittle Island of 35 miles by
25, which is only a mass of volcanic rock, and with
P. soil not at all equal to the African soil, because
there they could sot raise sugar without guano, pro-
ducing by means of improved machinery sugar
equal to one-quarter the entire consumption of
Greg Britain. There they being their labour from