Livingstone and the Exploration of Central Africa

David Livingstone [1813-1873], pioneer medical missionary and explorer is probably the best known of Victorian missionaries. This biography is a “cheap edition” of a volume that originally appeared as part of a series about the world’s greatest explorers and was republished in this format to mark the centenary of Livingstone’s birth. My thanks to Redcliffe College for providing me with a copy to digitise. This book is now in the public domain.

Sir H.H. Johnston [1858-1927], Livingstone and the Exploration of Central Africa. London: George Philip & Son, Ltd., 1912. Hbk. pp.372. [Click to download complete volume in PDF]

Contents

Publisher’s Note

1. Central Africa – Natural History
2. Central Africa – Human History
3. The Hour and the Man: Livingstone’s Upbringing
4. First Impressions of the Missionary Life
5. Marries, Teaches, and is Troubled
6. The Boers, “God’s Chosen People”
7. Mission-Work; Its Failures and Successes
8. Missionary Becomes Explorer
9. Betshuanaland
10. Fever, Tsetse-Fly, and Horse-Sickness
11. From the Zambesi to Angola
12. From Loanda to Quilimane – Across Africa
13. The Zambesi
14. Livingstone Returns to England
15. The Second Zambezi Expedition
16. Last Visit to England
17. Four Great Lakes and a Mighty River
18. The Manyema and Their Land
19. Stanley Relieves Livingstone
20. The Death of Livingstone

Chapter 1: Central Africa – Natural History

The history of the southern half of the African continent has widely differed from the northern portion as regards the manner and period in which it has been explored and made known by rates higher than the Negro. More than that, the Negroes inhabiting the long half of the Dark Continent which lies to the south of an irregular border-line commencing at the Cameroons of the West Coast, and passing across the continent to the East Coast at Mombasa, present two very distinct language-stocks, which are totally unrepresented in the northern half of Africa For convenience, I shall call this line dividing Northern from southern Africa the “Bantu Border line,” because it coincides exactly ·with the northern limit of the Bantu language-field. [Continue reading]