Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone by Martin Dugard Read Free Book Online Page B

would be moulded into a book about his search for the Source, and provide raw scientific and anthropological data to the Royal Geographical Society. But the journals, on a much deeper level, were also Livingstone’s connection to his roots. He had been a prolific reader as a boy. Through the simple act of absorbing the printed word, the first seeds of exploration were planted in the unlikely explorer over four decades earlier.
    Livingstone was born in poverty, in a three-storey tenement outside Glasgow in 1813. He was the second of seven children. His forefathers had been highland rogues before moving to the city, but the adventure gene was recessive in Livingstone’s impoverished father. While Neil Livingstone’s brothers became soldiers of fortune, he sold tea and ran a small market. He was such a zealous member of the Independent Congregational Church that he impulsively dropped the ‘e’ from the family name, imagining a connection between a ‘living stone’ and witchcraft.
    The explorer spent his childhood working fourteen-hour days inside the din and chaos of the Blantyre Works cotton mill. The introspection, stoicism and need for wideopen spaces that later became Livingstone’s trademarks could be traced to the claustrophobia of the mill, where the noise was so great that all communication was conducted at a yell. As a man, walking through Africa, he rarely spoke at all.
    Evenings in Blantyre were for school. Sunday, the only day off for the adolescent Livingstone, was for church. Afterwards, Livingstone was fond of escaping into the countryside for solitary hikes and rock hunts. The rare leisure time was passed reading. Books were readily available at the mill library. Travel books were the most popular genre in the Livingstone household, telling of a marvellous world far beyond industrial Glasgow. Among others, he read books by Australia explorer Matthew Flinders, South America explorer Francis Head and Arctic explorer John Franklin. Scottish explorers such as Mungo Park, who’d explored Northern Africa’s Niger River, and James Bruce, who emerged from his explorations of the tributary known as the Blue Nile unscathed only to die falling down a flight of stairs in the safety of his own home, were Livingstone’s early heroes.
    The two most powerful books in Livingstone’s life, however, combined adventure with Christianity. The first book was Thomas Dick’s Philosophy of a Future State , which reconciled the disparities between science and creationism. For a teenager contemplating medical school and newly passionate about Christianity, Dick’s book was a powerful affirmation that his chosen path wasn’t heretical.
    The second book, Karl von Gutzlaff’s Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China , sealed Livingstone’s fate. Gutzlaff’s tale of missionary life enchanted the twenty-one-year-old cotton spinner. Livingstone had long dreamed of a life beyond the mill and even beyond Scotland. Gutzlaff’s book showed how it could be done. After putting himself through medical school, Livingstone travelled south and entered the London Missionary Society’s seminary in suburban London. He wanted, Livingstone told his new employers, to go to China.
    But by the time he finished seminary, Britain and China had gone to war over opium. The year was 1840. Instead of China, Livingstone was given a choice between saving souls in the West Indies or in Southern Africa. He chose Africa. The dashing twenty-seven-year-old idealist, virgin, teetotaller, medical doctor and ordained minister travelled from London’s hustle-bustle to the somnolent mission station of Kuruman, six hundred miles due north of Africa’s southernmost cape. He was still suffering from his first broken heart, having being spurned by a young woman named Catherine Ridley before leaving London. Africa seemed like the ideal location in which to focus all his energies on sharing the good news about Jesus Christ, and to leave the real world’s