On November 1, after two weeks of searching, Stanley finally reached the MalagarasiRiver. Villages lined its banks, and fish-eating birds could be seen in the shallows. The caravan restocked with food and water, but the Malagarasi offered up another challenge. Crocodiles dotted the surface as far as the eye could see, and the only way to cross was to hire locals to ferry the caravan. By sunset, all were across except the donkeys, which were to swim alongside the canoes, held by their halters.
That night, sadness permeated the caravan. All traces of melancholy vanished the next morning, however, when a passing traveler told of seeing a white man in Ujiji. The continued failure of his mission was breaking Livingstone. He set off by canoe to cross to Ujiji, hoping to find supplies from the British Consulate waiting for him.
But when he reached Ujiji, there was nothing. Livingstone now faced the desperate choice of becoming a beggar or starving to death. He spent his days in Ujiji praying for deliverance.
Rescue looked bleak. Both to the east and to the west, Arabs and Africans were fighting. The tall, dramatic former president of the Royal Geographical Society had ridden to hounds as a country squire, trekked the Alps and roamed the countrysides of England, Scotland and Russia in the name of geology.
He had recently regained his ability to speak and swallow, however, and longed to venture outside. And so, on this fall day, he impulsively took the carriage ride that would give him pneumonia and kill him two days later. History had never known an explorer like Roderick Impey Murchison. His legacy laid the groundwork for the spread of the British Empire.
His peers named 23 topographical features on six continents in his honor—waterfalls, rivers, mountains, glaciers and even an island. He longed for his friend to return.
Murchison had vowed he would not be laid to rest until that great day came. Ujiji, Tanganyika, November 10, —The Herald caravan had set forth before dawn on what Stanley hoped would be the last hours of its mission. He just wanted to get to Ujiji. But the view from the summit had taken his breath away. Lake Tanganyika sparkled below like a silver sea. No one in the town knows we are coming. A mile from town, Stanley ordered the American colors raised.
The sound of muskets firing and horns blowing filled the air. As Stanley entered Ujiji, thousands of people pressed around the caravan. Livingstone had been sitting on a straw mat on the mud veranda of his small house, pondering his woeful future, when he heard the commotion. Now Livingstone got slowly to his feet. Above the throngs of people, he saw the American flag snapping in the breeze and porters bearing an incredible assortment of goods: bales of cloth, huge kettles, tents. Livingstone pushed through the crowd and saw a tanned, gaunt man.
Stanley himself was ravaged by dysentery, smallpox and a near-fatal case of cerebral malaria, yet he continued to urge his party forward at breakneck pace.
By the time they arrived at Ujiji, a remote village in what is now Tanzania, they had crossed more than miles of territory.
Henry Morton Stanley shortly before his expedition to Africa. On November 10, , after hearing rumors of a white man living in Ujiji, Stanley donned his finest set of clothes and entered the town with a small band of followers. As crowds of locals gathered around them, Stanley spied a sickly-looking European with an unruly beard and white hair.
Livingstone, I presume? As Stanley soon learned, Livingstone had been languishing in the heart of Africa for several years. His Nile expedition had been beset by thievery and mass desertions by his porters, and a succession of tropical diseases had sapped his strength and forced him to travel with Arab slave traders.
He was wasting away in a small hut when the relief operation finally reached him. Despite his failing health, Livingstone refused an offer to return home and resumed his search for the source of the Nile. In , he began studying medicine and theology in Glasgow and decided to become a missionary doctor. In , he was posted to the edge of the Kalahari Desert in southern Africa.
In , he married Mary Moffat, daughter of a fellow missionary. Livingstone became convinced of his mission to reach new peoples in the interior of Africa and introduce them to Christianity, as well as freeing them from slavery. It was this which inspired his explorations. In and , he travelled across the Kalahari, on the second trip sighting the upper Zambezi River. In , he began a four year expedition to find a route from the upper Zambezi to the coast. Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives.
Known for his photo collages and paintings of Los Angeles swimming pools, David Hockney is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. David Bowie was an English rock star known for dramatic musical transformations, including his character Ziggy Stardust.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in In , African American abolitionist David Walker wrote an incendiary pamphlet that argued for the end of slavery and discrimination in the United States. A Zionist statesman and political leader, David Ben-Gurion was the first prime minister and defense minister of Israel.
Jacques-Louis David was a 19th-century painter who is considered to be the principal proponent of the Neoclassical style. David Ruffin was an American soul singer who rose to fame as one of the lead singers of the Temptations.
David Dinkins was the mayor of New York City from to , and he was the first Black mayor of the city. Naturalist and television personality David Attenborough is the undisputed father of the modern nature documentary.
David Livingstone was a Scottish missionary, abolitionist and physician known for his explorations of Africa, having crossed the continent during the midth century.
0コメント