These two works, each embodying the results of years of travel and research,
entirely revolutionize all our theories as to the geographical and physical
character of Central Africa. Instead of lofty mountains and sandy deserts,
we have a wide basin, or rather series of basins, with lakes and great rivers,
and a soil fertile even when compared with the abounding exuberance
of our own Western valleys and prairies.
Barth, traveling southward from the Mediterranean, explored this region
till within eight degrees of the equator. Livingstone, traveling northward
from the Cape of Good Hope, approached the equator from the south
as nearly as Barth did from the north. He then traversed
the whole breadth of the continent diagonally from the west to the east.
His special researches cover the entire space between
the eighth and fifteenth parallels of south latitude. Between the regions
explored by Barth and Livingstone lies an unexplored tract
extending eight degrees on each side of the equator, and occupying
the whole breadth of the continent from east to west. Lieutenant Burton,
famous for his expedition to Mecca and Medina, set out from Zanzibar
a few months since, with the design of traversing this very region.
If he succeeds in his purpose his explorations will fill up the void
between those of Barth and Livingstone.
Dr. Livingstone, with whose travels we are at present specially concerned,
is no ordinary man. The son of a Presbyterian deacon and small trader
in Glasgow; set to work in a cotton factory at ten years old;
buying a Latin grammar with his first earnings; working from six
in the morning till eight at night, then attending evening-school till ten,
and pursuing his studies till midnight; at sixteen a fair classical scholar,
with no inconsiderable reading in books of science and travels, gained,
sentence by sentence, with the book open before him on his spinning-jenny;
botanizing and geologizing on holidays and at spare hours;
poring over books of astrology till he was startled by inward suggestions
to sell his soul to the Evil One as the price of the mysterious knowledge
of the stars; soundly flogged by the good deacon his father
by way of imparting to him a liking for Boston's "Fourfold State"
and Wilberforce's "Practical Christianity"; then convinced
by the writings of the worthy Thomas Dick that there was no hostility
between Science and Religion, embracing with heart and mind
the doctrines of evangelical Christianity, and resolving to devote his life
to their extension among the heathen - such are the leading features
of the early life of David Livingstone.
