David livingston and his discoveries in south africa. David livingston short biography

Youth

By the middle of the 19th century, the main features of northwestern Africa had been clarified. The British were exploring the part of the mainland lying to the south. Here, the largest researcher began his missionary work Central Africa David Livingston.

David was born in the village of Blantyre into a poor Scottish family and at the age of 10 began working in a weaving factory. But he independently learned Latin and Greek, as well as mathematics. This allowed him to enter the University of Glasgow and study theology and medicine there, and Livingston received his doctorate. And in 1838 he was ordained a priest.

First African expeditions

In 1840 Livingston, who dreamed of studying Asia, was supposed to go to China, but the Opium War broke out, and David ended up in South Africa with a religious and social mission. In 1841 he landed in Altoa Bay, inhabited by the Bechuan tribe (the future Benchuanaland territory in South Africa). He quickly learned their languages, won their respect. In July 1841 he arrived at the Moffetan mission on the border of the Cape Colony, and in 1843 founded his own mission at Colonberg.

In June 1849 Livingston, accompanied by African guides, was the first of the Europeans to cross the Kalahari Desert and explore Lake Ngami. He met the Bushmen and Bakalahari tribes. In 1850 he wanted to establish a new settlement on the shores of an open lake. However, this time he took his wife Mary and children with him. In the end, he sent them back to Scotland so that they would not suffer from the terrible conditions of life. In 1852 Livingston embarked on a new journey. It penetrated the Zambezi River basin and in May 1853 entered Minyanti, the main village of the Makololo tribe. There the missionary fell ill, but Chief Sekeletou did his best to save Livingstone.

Victoria Falls

The traveler, who received the well-deserved nickname "Great Lion" from grateful Africans, climbed up the Laibe River and reached the Portuguese colony - the city of Luanda on the Atlantic coast. The main scientific result of this trip was the discovery of Lake Dilolo, lying on the divide between two river basins: one of them belongs to Atlantic Ocean, the other to Indian. The western runoff of the lake feeds the Congo river system, the eastern one - the Zambezi. For this discovery, the Geographical Society awarded Livingston the Gold Medal, but this opinion was reached somewhat earlier by the purely armchair scientist Murchison.

Further Livingston decided to try to find a more convenient road to the ocean - to the east. In November 1855, a large detachment, led by Livingstone, set out on a journey. Two weeks later Livingston and his companions landed on the banks of the Zambezi River, where they saw a grandiose waterfall up to 1000 m high, which the Africans called "Mosi wa Tunya" (‘thundering water’) Livingston named this waterfall after the English Queen Victoria. Today, near the waterfall, there is a monument to the Scottish explorer, on the pedestal of which Livingstone's motto is written: "Christianity, Commerce and Civilization".

Expedition to the Zambezi Valley

In May 1856 Livingston reached the mouth of the Zambezi. So he completed a grandiose journey - he crossed the African continent from the Atlantic to Indian Ocean... Livingston was the first to come to the correct idea of ​​Africa as a continent that looks like a flat dish with raised edges towards the ocean. In 1857 he published a book about his travels.

The British government intended to use Livingston's authority among Africans, so he was appointed consul of the Zambezi region, and in March 1858 he again went to Africa (taking his wife, brother and son with him), where in 1859 he discovered Lake Nyasu and Lake Shirwu. In 1861 he explored the Ruvuma River. However, in April 1862 Livingston lost his wife and then his eldest son. Then he sells his old steamer in Bombay.

Search for the source of the Nile

But there was still a vast unoccupied territory on the map of Africa. Livingston believed that the Nile had its source at the source of the Lualaba. But he also performed a humanitarian mission: in Zanzibar, he asked the Sultan to stop the slave trade. All this brought Livingstone to the region of the great African lakes. Here he discovered two new large lakes - Bangweulu and Mweru and was going to explore Lake Tanganyika, but suddenly the traveler fell ill with tropical fever.

Livingston and Stanley

Due to illness, the great explorer lost the ability to walk and expected death. Suddenly he was helped by the expedition of Henry Morton Stanley, specially sent in search of Livingston by the American newspaper "New York Herald". Livingston recovered and, together with Stanley, explored Lake Tanganyika in the Unyamwezi area. Stanley offered Livingston to return to Europe or America, but he refused. Soon David Livingston again fell ill with malaria and in 1873 he died near the village of Chitambo (now in Zambia) near Lake Bangweulu, which he discovered.

The value of discoveries

Livingston devoted most of his life to Africa, having covered over 50 thousand km on foot. He was the first to vigorously defend black African populations in such a high level... The Africans loved and revered Livingston very much, but his life tragedy was expressed in the fact that the discoveries of the great explorer were used by greedy British colonialists such as Cecil Rhodes, who were trying to subjugate territories from Egypt to South Africa to the British colonial empire. However, this fact only adds to the greatness of Livingstone among the rest of the travelers.

A city in Malawi is named after David Livingstone.

Vote Herbert

David Livingston (Life of an African Explorer)

Herbert Wott

David Livingston

The life of an African explorer

Abridged translation from German by M.K.Fedorenko

Candidates of Geographical Sciences M. B. Gornung and I. N. Oleinikov

The outstanding Scottish geographer David Livingston spent more than thirty years among Africans, studied their customs and languages, lived their lives. Learning from childhood hard work and poverty, he became a passionate champion of social justice and humanism, an opponent of the slave trade, racism and the cruelty of the colonialists.

Arriving in Africa as a missionary, Livingston, unlike most of his brothers, soon realized that the introduction of local residents to world civilization must begin with material culture... The search for ways to the peoples of inner Africa led him to major geographical discoveries.

D. Livingston - an outstanding traveler and humanist of the 19th century

THE FACTORY WORKER BECOMES A DOCTOR AND A MISSIONARY

Stubborn scotsman

Around South Africa on a bullock cart

Adventure with a lion

Christian slave hunters

Leader Sechele adopts Christianity

MISSIONARY BECOMES A TRAVEL RESEARCHER

Livingston's first discovery of Lake Ngami

Great Chief Sebituane

Death of Sebituane

FROM CAPE TOWN TO ANGOLA

Boer attack on Kolobeng

Lions, elephants, buffaloes, rhinos ...

Visiting Makololo

Through unknown lands to the west coast

End of the earth!

FIRST EUROPEAN CROSSING AFRICA

Return of makololo

Mozi oa tunya - "thundering steam"

From Victoria Falls to the Indian Ocean

Sixteen years later - home

CELEBRITY

IN THE FIGHT AGAINST SLAVERY

Bypassing the thresholds

Discovery of Lake Nyasa

Livingston Kept Promise "Ma-Robert" Drowns

Livingstone frees slaves

Slave Hunters at Lake Nyasa

1862 - the unfortunate year

Deep disappointment and frustration

"Captain" Livingston

PASSED AND NEW PLANS

SEARCHING FOR RIVERS

Bad choice

Blood Trail of Slavers

"... As if a death warrant has just been read to me ..."

Discovery of lakes Mweru and Bangweolo

Neil or Congo?

Nyangwe Carnage

"Dr. Livingston, I suppose?"

The last trip

Susi and the Plague

Burial in the Westminster Abbey

Afterword

Notes (edit)

________________________________________________________________

David Livingston - an outstanding traveler and humanist of the 19th century

It is characteristic of the destinies of truly great people that their names do not fade over time. On the contrary, interest in them is growing, and even not so much in their affairs as in their life and individuality. 1983 marked the 110th anniversary of the death of David Livingston. In our time, interest in his personality flared up with new strength, after all, right now the formation of an independent Africa and a reassessment of the history of the continent, with which almost the entire life of Livingston is connected, is taking place.

Livingston's activities in Africa were scrupulously recorded by him in three books that make up the traveler's invaluable literary heritage. In our country, interest in Livingston was always very great and his books were translated into Russian almost immediately after their publication in England, and then repeatedly reprinted *.

* In 1857, Livingston's first book, A Journey to South Africa from 1840 to 1856, was published in London, and already in 1862 a Russian translation of it appeared in St. Petersburg, reissued in 1868. In 1947 and 1955, this book was published in the USSR in a new translation. Two years after the publication in London of Livingston's next book, written by him with his brother Charles, - "Voyage to the Zambezi from 1858 to 1864" - in Russia in 1867 its translation appears, and in Soviet time it was reprinted twice in 1948 and 1956. The posthumous book, The Last Diaries of David Livingston in Central Africa from 1865 to His Death, prepared for publication by Horace Waller, was published in London in 1874. In 1876, it was published in Russia short retelling of this book, and in 1968 its complete translation was published under the title " The last journey to Central Africa ".

However, now we practically do not have a simple book about Livingston, designed for the widest circles of readers, whose life is an example of courage and perseverance in achieving a set noble goal, an example of philanthropy and the fight against racial intolerance and oppression. Apart from the book by Adamovich, published in 1938 in the series "The Lives of Remarkable People" and in fact, has long become a bibliographic rarity, the Soviet reader has nowhere to learn about Livingston's life, except for the meager encyclopedic articles and information about his biography and personality, scattered in various scientific articles and books, or in the prefaces to the volumes of his diaries.

Herbert Wott's book about Livingston, published in the German Democratic Republic on the centenary of the traveler's death and re-published in Russian by the Mysl publishing house, fills this gap in our generally vast popular science literature about great travelers. In his assessments of the period of Livingston's travels, that is, the era of the beginning colonial partition Africa, Wotte proceeds from the basic provisions of Marxism-Leninism, taking positions on other issues of African history that are common to scientists socialist countries... The desire to popularize the presentation is characteristic of the entire content of Votte's book.

Biographical information about Livingston's life before his move to Africa occupies relatively little space in the book, which is understandable. Firstly, the main thing in Livingston's biography is his life and work in Africa. Secondly, the data on his early years life is really stingy, but Wotte collected almost everything known about this period of Livingston's life. On a few pages, the author was able to clearly show the beginning of the formation of the solid character of the future courageous traveler and explorer.

The rest of the book is based primarily on own materials Livingston, set out, as in the books of the traveler himself, in chronological order but in a peculiar literary manner that is typical of successful biographical books. In the last chapters of the book, Wotte almost literally uses the reports of the English newspapers in 1874 about the burial of the remains of Livingston at Westminster Abbey in London and includes sections on the African satellites of Livingston - Susi and the Plague. They are justly spoken of very warmly as people who accomplished the feat, transferring the ashes of the great traveler from the depths of Africa to the ocean.

Telling in detail about Livingston's life, Votte quite naturally did not set himself the goal of analyzing the scientific significance of his specific geographical discoveries, in particular in connection with the big picture the state of geographical exploration of Africa in the 19th century, although it touches on these issues. It seems, nevertheless, that it is useful to do it at least briefly in this preface, in order to emphasize the importance of Livingston in world science as a researcher, and not just a traveler, especially since in the history of African exploration, the middle and beginning of the second half of the XIX the century is commonly referred to as the "Livingstone period" of African exploration.

By this time, in northern Africa, only the inner, very sparsely populated areas of the greatest desert in the world - the Sahara - remained a truly "blank spot" on the map. In the west of the mainland, the most important geographical problem of the region has already been resolved - the course of the Niger River has been determined along its entire vast extent. However, south of the equator, much of Africa remained a "blank spot" on the continent's map. The origins of the Nile, the configuration of the great lakes of East Africa, the upper reaches of the Congo River, the hydrographic network of the Zambezi basin, and many other problems of the geography of this part of Africa, which then caused heated discussions among European scientists, were a mystery to science.

The "Livingstone period" of the history of African exploration, which spanned about three decades, is scientifically characterized by the fact that almost all unclear questions, the answers to which served as the basis for compiling modern map Central Africa south of the equator was allowed just then. This happened thanks to the travels of Livingston himself or research, one way or another connected with scientific activities Livingstone, with his discoveries, or with the geographic guesses expressed by him.

In the course of his travels, Livingstone not only "deciphered" the complex pattern of the hydrographic network. white spot"in the center and in southern Africa, but for the first time he told the world many details about the nature of this territory. After the first big trip that swept the Zambezi basin, he made the most important scientific conclusion that inland Africa is not a system of mythical uplands, like for a long time was supposed to be a huge plateau with raised edges, steeply dipping towards the ocean coast. The Zambezi River was first mapped showing the places where the largest tributaries flow into it. The outlines of Lake Nyasa, of which the Europeans had only a vague idea. of the largest waterfalls in the world.

David Livingston is a Scottish missionary who has dedicated his life to the study of Africa. He went down in history as a man who filled many blank spots on the map of this continent, and as a tireless fighter against the slave trade, who enjoyed great love and respect from outside. local population... Livingstone was granted missionary status in November 1840, and in the spring of 1841 found his first trip to Africa. In 1849, he was the first European to cross the Kalahari Desert and discover Lake Ngami at the edge of the Okavango swamps.

In June 1851, passing northeast of the Okavango swamp, Livingston first reached the Linyanti River (lower reaches of the Kwando, the largest right tributary of the Zambezi) and in the village of Sesheke met the ruler of the Makololo (Kololo) Sebetwane people. Soon after their meeting, the chief Sebetvane died, passing power to his son Sekelet, who also became a friend of the Scottish missionary. Livingston considered the Makololo to be extremely suited for missionary work and the adoption of Christianity.

In November 1853, with a detachment of 160 Makololo Aborigines in 33 boats, Livingston began sailing up the Zambezi across the flat, savanna-covered plain. His goal was to find ways from the lands pricked to the Atlantic coast, from where it would be more convenient to trade with the outside world and fight the slave trade, and the path would be more convenient than the southern route through the territory of the Boers and the Kalahari. Accompanied by a group of makololo, Livingston first went down in boats along the Kwando River to its confluence with the Zambezi, after which the expedition set off against the current to the upper reaches of the river. A month later, the boats had to be abandoned, as the numerous rapids and the beginning of the rainy season made movement on the river too dangerous.

By February 1854, Livingston, with a small detachment (he let most of the people go along the road), reached a small left tributary of the Zambezi - Shefumage. Along its valley, the detachment moved to a slightly noticeable watershed at 11 ° S. sh., behind which all streams did not flow in southbound as before, but in the north. Later it turned out that these were rivers of the Congo system.

On March 31, 1854, the traveler reached the Portuguese colony - the city of Luanda on the Atlantic coast. On September 20, he set off with his makololo companions back to Linyanti, where they arrived only on September 11, 1855.

2 Victoria Opening

David Livingston decided to try to find a more convenient road to the ocean - to the east. On November 3, 1855, a large detachment, led by a missionary, set out on a journey. Further travel down the Zambezi was made possible thanks to the support of the makololo leader Sekeletu. He provided the expedition with porters, donkeys and provisions, provided it with a supply of glass beads and ironwork that could be used as a means of payment, and also allocated a large shipment of ivory for the trade. Sekeletu personally accompanied the expedition to the most outstanding, in his opinion, geographical site.

Two weeks later Livingstone and his companions landed on the banks of the Zambezi River next to a grandiose waterfall up to 1800 m wide and up to 120 m high, which the Africans called "Mosi wa Tunya" (Thundering Smoke). This Falls Livingston, who saw it the first of the Europeans, named after the English Queen Victoria.

Two aborigines, Takeleng and Tuba Makoro, accompanied directly to the Livingstone Falls. They swam from the headwater to the island of Kazeruku (now - Livingston Island), located at the very crest of the waterfall, and the traveler was able to look into the boiling abyss and survey almost the entire system. “Crawling with fear to the cliff, I looked down into a huge crack that stretched from coast to coast of the wide Zambezi, and saw a stream thousands of yards wide plunge down a hundred feet and then suddenly collapse in a space of fifteen to twenty yards ... witnessing the most wonderful sight in Africa! ”wrote Livingston.

Victoria Falls is a completely extraordinary phenomenon in nature. In the distant past, the deep tectonic forces of the Earth split the strongest rock - basalt - into boulders, and a crack 100-120 m wide from one bank to the other, 120 m deep, was formed across the Zambezi channel. rampage with a wild roar. “The entire mass of water overflowing the edge of the waterfall, three meters below, turns into a kind of monstrous curtain of snow driven by a blizzard. Water particles separate from it in the form of comets with streaming tails, until all this avalanche turns into myriads of small comets rushing in one direction, and each of them leaves behind its core a tail of white foam, ”Livingston described what he saw.

In 1857, David Livingston wrote: “No one can imagine the beauty of the spectacle compared to anything seen in England. The eyes of a European have never seen such a thing before, but the angels must have admired the spectacle so beautiful in their flight! "

3 Way to the mouth of the Zambezi

Below the falls, the Zambezi flows through a series of narrow, precipitous gorges. To bypass this difficult stretch, the expedition deviated northward and along the Batoka plateau reached the Kafue tributary of the Zambezi. Descending the Kafue again to the Zambezi, the expedition reached another significant left tributary of the Luangwa, beyond which the lands known to the Portuguese began. Refusing to explore the lower Zambezi, which had long been mapped, Livingstone followed the northern arm of the river to the ocean port of Quelimane. On May 20, 1856, Livingstone reached the mouth of the Zambezi. So he completed a grandiose journey - he crossed the African continent from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.

David Livingston(David Livingstone; English David Livingstone; March 19, 1813, Blantyre - May 1, 1873, present Zambia) - Scottish missionary, explorer of Africa.

Biography

Youth

David Livingston was born in the village of Blantyre (South Lanarkshire) to a poor Scottish family and at the age of 10 began working in a weaving factory. He independently learned Latin and Greek, as well as mathematics. This allowed him to enter the university, and for two years he studied theology and medicine, while continuing to work in a factory, after which Livingston received his doctorate.

First African expeditions

On November 20, 1840, Livingstone was granted missionary status; at the end of the same year he sailed for Africa and arrived in Cape Town on March 14, 1841.

Livingston spent the next fifteen years in uninterrupted travels in the interior regions of South and Central Africa. He had numerous skirmishes with the local Boers and the Portuguese because of their bitter resentment against indigenous Africans, and built a reputation for himself as a committed Christian, courageous explorer and ardent fighter against slavery and the slave trade. Livingston quickly learned the languages ​​of the local population and won their respect.

On July 31, 1841, Livingston arrived at Moffett's mission in Kuruman on the northern border of the Cape Colony, and in 1843 founded his own mission in Kolobeng in the Bechuan Country (tswana) (the future Bechuanaland protectorate, now Botswana). Almost immediately after his arrival, he began to carry out expeditions to the north, to unexplored by Europeans and, as it was believed, more densely populated areas, still untouched by the preaching activities of Christian missionaries. Its purpose was to propagate the faith through "local agents" - African converts. By the summer of 1842, Livingston had made his way north into the inhospitable Kalahari Desert, farther than any other European before him, becoming familiar with the local languages ​​and customs.

In 1843, he visited the settlement of the Kvena (bakwena) tribe of the Tswana people and became friends with its leader Sechele, who eventually became the first of the leaders of the Tswana tribes to convert to Christianity. Sechele gave Livingston comprehensive information about the "land of great thirst" in the north - the Kalahari - and Lake Ngami.

Livingston's missionary tenacity was put to a dramatic test in 1844 when, while traveling to Mabotsa to set up a mission there, he was attacked and seriously wounded by a lion. The injury to the left arm was then compounded by another accident, leaving it crippled for life. Livingston could no longer hold the barrel of the gun with his left hand, and was forced to learn to shoot from the left shoulder and aim with his left eye.

On January 2, 1845, Livingston married Robert Moffett's daughter Mary. For seven years, despite the pregnancies and protests of her father, she accompanied Livingston on his travels and bore him four children. The Livingstons settled first in a mission in Maboza, then briefly moved to Tchonwane, and from 1847 they lived in Kolobeng. The main reason the transfer of the mission to Kolobeng was the presence there drinking water from the river of the same name, necessary for irrigation of crops. It was in Kolobeng that Sechel was baptized on the condition that he refuses to take part in any pagan ceremonies like making the rain, and divorces all his wives, leaving one. These conditions displeased some of the Tswana tribes, who considered Livingstone to be guilty of the terrible drought and drying up of the Kolobeng River, which happened in 1848 and claimed the lives a large number people and livestock. Moreover, ex-wives Sechele, who suddenly found themselves without a husband, faced significant difficulties in the patriarchal Tswana society.

In June 1849, Livingston (as a surveyor and scientist), accompanied by African guides, was the first of the Europeans to cross the Kalahari Desert and explore Lake Ngami on the southern edge of the Okavango swamps, discovered on August 1. For this discovery, he was awarded the Gold Medal and a cash prize by the British Royal Geographical Society. With this event, Livingstone's European fame and his collaboration with the geographic society, which continued throughout his life, began. The Society represented his interests in England and promoted his activities in Europe. In the Livingston Desert, he met the Bushmen and Bakalahari tribes of the Stone Age, and first introduced external world with their foundations.

David Livingston was not a pioneer in broad sense this word. He was a missionary - a staunch Christian, a fighter for human rights, for the abolition of slavery and the slave trade. ... Throughout Africa, he created an "agent network" to convert pagan Africans to Christianity. However, he collaborated with the British Royal Geographical Society, from which he received grants for his travels and was awarded the Medal for the discovery of Lake Ngami. This was in June 1849. He was the first of the Europeans to cross the Kalahari Desert and meet the Bushmen and Bakalahari tribes of the Stone Age there. Before him, no one knew about them, about their foundations and way of life.
During the expedition of 1853-1854, Livingston made another discovery - Lake Dilolo, for which he was again awarded a medal Geographical Society.
In 1855, he and his companions landed on the banks of the Zambezi River, where they saw a grandiose waterfall up to 1800 m wide and up to 120 m high, which the Africans called "Mosi wa Tunya" (rumbling water). This Falls Livingston, who saw it the first of the Europeans, named after the English Queen Victoria.
Livingston first came to the correct idea of ​​Africa as a continent that looks like a flat dish with raised edges to the ocean, and a year after returning home in 1857, he published a book about his travels, Travels and Research of a Missionary in South Africa.
During his second expedition to Africa, he discovered waterfalls on the Shire River, a northern tributary of the Zambezi. In 1863, the expedition returned to the west bank of Nyasa. This time Livingston went inland. He found that the mountains that surround the lake are in fact wide plateaus that separate Nyasa from the low-lying area in the east, saturated with rivers and lakes.
Only during next three over the decades, the realization of the achievements of the expedition gradually came. She collected and made available to scientists in Europe an impressive amount scientific knowledge and observations in the field of botany, ecology, geology and ethnography.
In early 1867, he continued to advance deep into Central Africa, leading to the region of the great African lakes, where he discovered two new large lakes - Bangweulu and Mweru.
Heading southwest, Livingston discovered Lake Mweru on November 8, and Lake Bangweulu on July 18, 1868.
On March 29, 1871, Livingston reached the Congo tributary Lualaba near the Nyangwe, the extreme northwestern point of his African travels. Not a single European had gone so far to the west in these parts by that time.
On May 1, 1873, he died near the village of Chitambo (now in Zambia) near Lake Bangweulu, which he discovered. The cities of Livingstonia in Malawi and Livingston (Maramba) in Zambia, as well as waterfalls in the lower reaches of the Congo and mountains on the northeastern shore of Lake Nyasa, are named after David Livingston. Blantyre, Malawi's largest city with a population of over 600,000, was named after Livingstone. The mineral livingstonite, a double sulfide of mercury and antimony, is named in his honor.