David Livingstone

David Livingstone

David Livingstone was one of Africa’s most important explorer. He lived from 1813 to 1873. He was originally a Scottish doctor and missionary.

Livingstone was born on March 19, 1813, in Blantyre, Scotland. In 1823 he began to work in a cotton-textile factory. While studying medicine in Glasgow, he also attended classes in theology, and in 1838 he offered his services to the London Missionary

Society. After completing hid medical course in 1840, Livingstone was later sent as a medical missionary to South Africa. In 1841 he reached Kuruman, a settlement founded in Bechuanaland, now Botswana, by the Scottish missionary Robert Moffat.

Even though the Boers, the white settler, mostly of white background were extremely hostile to him, Livingstone kept trying to make his way northward. He married Mary Moffat, daughter of Robert, in 1845.

Together, the Livingstones traveled into regions where no other European had ever been to. After crossing the Kalahari Desert in 1849, he discovered Lake Ngami. In 1851, accompanied by his wife and children, he discovered the Zambezi River. On another expedition while looking for a route to the interior from the east or west coast, he traveled north from Cape Town to the Zambezi, and then west to Luanda on the

Atlantic coast. Then, retracing his journey to the Zambezi, Livingstone followed the river to its mouth in the Indian Ocean, in this way discovering the great Victoria Falls in Zambezi.

After Livingstone's explorations, a revision of all the contemporary maps took place. He returned in 1856 to Great Britainm, where he was already acknowledged as a great explorer. He wrote a book called Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa

which made him famous. He resigned from the missionary society, and in 1858 the British government appointed him British consul at Quelimane, what is now in Mozambique, for the east coast of Africa and commander of an expedition to explore east and central

Africa. In 1859 he explored the Rovuma River and discovered Lake Chilwa. During his exploration of the country around Lake Nyasa, Livingstone became greatly concerned over the depredations on the indigenous Africans by Arab and Portuguese slave traders. In

1865, on a visit to England, he wrote Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambezi and Its Tributaries, including a condemnation of slave traders and an exposition of the commercial possibilities of the region, now mostly part of Malawi and Mozambique.