Year: 1867

News has been received in England
of the murder by savages, in South
Africa, Of DR.. David Livingstone, one
of the most famous of African explor-
ers The extraordinary length Of the
period which had elapsed without news
of him gave rise some time since to
fears for his fate, and this final intelli-
gence is the first that has made its way
to Europe since. We are puzzled TO
know what can have stirred up the
natives to this butchery of a man from
whom they never had anything but
Just and kind treatment, and who had
always before had eminent success in
his dealings with them.


David Livingstone was the son Of a
Scotch small farmer, and was himself
born on his patrimonial acres, few
miles out of Glasgow, in 1915. He
was bred to be a cotton spinner, but
with the indomitable pluck common
to the Scotch peasantry he educated
himself before the age of nineteen, so
that he was able to at that time to
sink the shop and attend at the Uni
versity at Glasgow the lectures in
medicine and divinity, with the idea
of goino afterwards to China as a med
ical missionary. His project was
spoiled by the outbreak of a war be-
tween Great Britain and the fowery
kingdom by the time that he was pre-
pared with the necessary degree of
| ficentiate Of the faculty, but his idea
of travel was only diverted, not des-
| troyed, and he pitched next upon the
south of Africa, which has been the
theatre of his exploits since, and with
the history Of the exploration OF which
his name is linked as indissolubly as
that of Mungo Park with the central
deserts of that oldest, and yet worst
known, of the grand division OF the
globe. There was, indeed, a singular
series of condolences in the career of
the two. Both were Scotchmen, OF
the sons of the Lowland tenantry,
both left their country Immediately
for Africa, on the completion of the
university curriculum; both made sig
nal contributions to our knowledge,
and now we are forced to add that both
met the same fate, though the interval
was sixty years, from population
which they had always before managed
with successful address.


DR.. Livingstone was more fortunate
than Park at the outset of his labor,
for in the year 184l, just after his ar
rival in Africa, that is, he succeeded
in domesticating himself among the
Bechuanas, one Of the most benighted
of the southern tribes, and for six
years he labored there in his double
vocation of physician and priest. In
June, 1849, he set out on his first ex-
ploring expedition, and the ensuing
August reached Lake Ngami, as un-
known then as it since has been made
familiar. In 1851, after several more
expeditions ofless Importance, he made
one in which he reached the Zambesi.
In 1852 he had a casual glimpse Of civ
ilization again for. the first time in
twelve years, on a trip to Capetown,
undertaken for the purpose of sending
his wife to England. Mrs Livingstone,
be it said, was the daughter of a mis-
sionary in Africa; her husband had
met and married her IN Africa, and it
was there that she met her death some
two years since, after a participation
in nearly all the hardships of his life.


In January, 1858, DR.. Livingstone
left Capetown on the journey out OF
which he made his first book and the