How I Found Livingstone - Henry M. Stanley (best ereader for comics txt) 📗
- Author: Henry M. Stanley
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of the man as I have seen him, not as he represents himself; as
I know him to be, not as I have heard of him. I lived with him
from the 10th November, 1871, to the 14th March, 1872; witnessed
his conduct in the camp, and on the march, and my feelings for
him are those of unqualified admiration. The camp is the best
place to discover a man’s weaknesses, where, if he is flighty
or wrong-headed, he is sure to develop his hobbies and weak side.
I think it possible, however, that Livingstone, with an
unsuitable companion, might feel annoyance. I know I should do
so very readily, if a man’s character was of that oblique
nature that it was an impossibility to travel in his company.
I have seen men, in whose company I felt nothing but a thraldom,
which it was a duty to my own self-respect to cast off as soon
as possible; a feeling of utter incompatibility, with whose
nature mine could never assimilate. But Livingstone was a
character that I venerated, that called forth all my enthusiasm,
that evoked nothing but sincerest admiration.
Dr. Livingstone is about sixty years old, though after he was
restored to health he appeared more like a man who had not passed
his fiftieth year. His hair has a brownish colour yet, but is here
and there streaked with grey lines over the temples; his whiskers
and moustache are very grey. He shaves his chin daily. His eyes,
which are hazel, are remarkably bright; he has a sight keen as a
hawk’s. His teeth alone indicate the weakness of age; the hard
fare of Lunda has made havoc in their lines. His form, which
soon assumed a stoutish appearance, is a little over the ordinary
height with the slightest possible bow in the shoulders. When
walking he has a firm but heavy tread, like that of an overworked
or fatigued man. He is accustomed to wear a naval cap with a
semicircular peak, by which he has been identified throughout
Africa. His dress, when first I saw him, exhibited traces of
patching and repairing, but was scrupulously clean.
I was led to believe that Livingstone possessed a splenetic,
misanthropic temper; some have said that he is garrulous, that
he is demented; that he has utterly changed from the David
Livingstone whom people knew as the reverend missionary ; that
he takes no notes or observations but such as those which no other
person could read but himself; and it was reported, before I
proceeded to Central Africa, that he was married to an African
princess.
I respectfully beg to differ with all and each of the above
statements. I grant he is not an angel, but he approaches to that
being as near as the nature of a living man will allow. I never
saw any spleen or misanthropy in him—as for being garrulous, Dr.
Livingstone is quite the reverse: he is reserved, if anything;
and to the man who says Dr. Livingstone is changed, all I can say
is, that he never could have known him, for it is notorious that
the Doctor has a fund of quiet humour, which he exhibits at all
times whenever he is among friends. I must also beg leave to
correct the gentleman who informed me that Livingstone takes
no notes or observations. The huge Letts’s Diary which I
carried home to his daughter is full of notes, and there are
no less than a score of sheets within it filled with observations
which he took during the last trip he made to Manyuema alone;
and in the middle of the book there is sheet after sheet,
column after column, carefully written, of figures alone.
A large letter which I received from him has been sent to
Sir Thomas MacLear, and this contains nothing but observations.
During the four months I was with him, I noticed him every evening
making most careful notes; and a large tin box that he has with
him contains numbers of field note-books, the contents of which I
dare say will see the light some time. His maps also evince great
care and industry. As to the report of his African marriage, it is
unnecessary to say more than that it is untrue, and it is utterly
beneath a gentleman to hint at such a thing in connection with the
name of David Livingstone.
There is a good-natured abandon about Livingstone which was not
lost on me. Whenever he began to laugh, there was a contagion
about it, that compelled me to imitate him. It was such a laugh
as Herr Teufelsdrockh’s—a laugh of the whole man from head to heel.
If he told a story, he related it in such a way as to convince one
of its truthfulness; his face was so lit up by the sly fun it
contained, that I was sure the story was worth relating, and
worth listening to.
The wan features which had shocked me at first meeting, the heavy
step which told of age and hard travel, the grey beard and bowed
shoulders, belied the man. Underneath that well-worn exterior
lay an endless fund of high spirits and inexhaustible humour;
that rugged frame of his enclosed a young and most exuberant soul.
Every day I heard innumerable jokes and pleasant anecdotes;
interesting hunting stories, in which his friends Oswell, Webb,
Vardon, and Gorden Cumming were almost always the chief actors.
I was not sure, at first, but this joviality, humour, and
abundant animal spirits were the result of a joyous hysteria;
but as I found they continued while I was with him, I am obliged
to think them natural.
Another thing which specially attracted my attention was his
wonderfully retentive memory. If we remember the many years he
has spent in Africa, deprived of books, we may well think it an
uncommon memory that can recite whole poems from Byron, Burns,
Tennyson, Longfellow, Whittier, and Lowell. The reason of this
may be found, perhaps, in the fact, that he has lived all his
life almost, we may say, within himself. Zimmerman, a great
student of human nature, says on this subject “The unencumbered
mind recalls all that it has read, all that pleased the eye,
and delighted the ear; and reflecting on every idea which
either observation, or experience, or discourse has produced,
gains new information by every reflection. The intellect
contemplates all the former scenes of life; views by
anticipation those that are yet to come; and blends all ideas
of past and future in the actual enjoyment of the present
moment.” He has lived in a world which revolved inwardly,
out of which he seldom awoke except to attend to the immediate
practical necessities of himself and people; then relapsed again
into the same happy inner world, which he must have peopled with
his own friends, relations, acquaintances, familiar readings,
ideas, and associations; so that wherever he might be, or by
whatsoever he was surrounded, his own world always possessed
more attractions to his cultured mind than were yielded by
external circumstances.
The study of Dr. Livingstone would not be complete if we did not
take the religious side of his character into consideration. His
religion is not of the theoretical kind, but it is a constant,
earnest, sincere practice. It is neither demonstrative nor loud,
but manifests itself in a quiet, practical way, and is always at
work. It is not aggressive, which sometimes is troublesome, if
not impertinent. In him, religion exhibits its loveliest features;
it governs his conduct not only towards his servants, but towards
the natives, the bigoted Mohammedans, and all who come in contact
with him. Without it, Livingstone, with his ardent temperament,
his enthusiasm, his high spirit and courage, must have become
uncompanionable, and a hard master. Religion has tamed him, and
made him a Christian gentleman: the crude and wilful have been
refined and subdued; religion has made him the most companionable
of men and indulgent of masters—a man whose society is pleasurable.
In Livingstone I have seen many amiable traits. His gentleness
never forsakes him; his hopefulness never deserts him. No
harassing anxieties, distraction of mind, long separation from home
and kindred, can make him complain. He thinks “all will come out
right at last;” he has such faith in the goodness of Providence.
The sport of adverse circumstances, the plaything of the miserable
beings sent to him from Zanzibar—he has been baffled and
worried, even almost to the grave, yet he will not desert the
charge imposed upon him by his friend, Sir Roderick Murchison.
To the stern dictates of duty, alone, has he sacrificed his home
and ease, the pleasures, refinements, and luxuries of civilized
life. His is the Spartan heroism, the inflexibility of the Roman,
the enduring resolution of the Anglo-Saxon—never to relinquish his
work, though his heart yearns for home; never to surrender his
obligations until he can write Finis to his work.
But you may take any point in Dr. Livingstone’s character, and
analyse it carefully, and I would challenge any man to find a
fault in it. He is sensitive, I know; but so is any man of a high
mind and generous nature. He is sensitive on the point of being
doubted or being criticised. An extreme love of truth is one of
his strongest characteristics, which proves him to be a man of
strictest principles, and conscientious scruples; being such, he
is naturally sensitive, and shrinks from any attacks on the
integrity of his observations, and the accuracy of his reports.
He is conscious of having laboured in the course of geography and
science with zeal and industry, to have been painstaking, and as
exact as circumstances would allow. Ordinary critics seldom take
into consideration circumstances, but, utterly regardless of the
labor expended in obtaining the least amount of geographical
information in a new land, environed by inconceivable dangers and
difficulties, such as Central Africa presents, they seem to take
delight in rending to tatters, and reducing to nil, the fruits of
long years of labor, by sharply-pointed shafts of ridicule and
sneers.
Livingstone no doubt may be mistaken in some of his conclusions
about certain points in the geography of Central Africa, but he
is not so dogmatic and positive a man as to refuse conviction.
He certainly demands, when arguments in contra are used in
opposition to him, higher authority than abstract theory. His
whole life is a testimony against its unreliability, and his
entire labor of years were in vain if theory can be taken in
evidence against personal observation and patient investigation.
The reluctance he manifests to entertain suppositions,
possibilities regarding the nature, form, configuration of concrete
immutable matter like the earth, arises from the fact, that a man
who commits himself to theories about such an untheoretical subject
as Central Africa is deterred from bestirring himself to prove them
by the test of exploration. His opinion of such a man is, that he
unfits himself for his duty, that he is very likely to become a
slave to theory—a voluptuous fancy, which would master him.
It is his firm belief, that a man who rests his sole knowledge of
the geography of Africa on theory, deserves to be discredited. It
has been the fear of being discredited and criticised and so made
to appear before the world as a man who spent so many valuable
years in Africa for the sake of burdening the geographical mind
with theory that has detained him so long in Africa, doing his
utmost to test the value of the main theory which clung to him,
and would cling to him until he proved or disproved it.
This main theory is his belief that in the broad and mighty
Lualaba he has discovered the head waters of the Nile. His
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