Livingstone, David (lĭv`ĭngstən, –stōn'), 1813–73, Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa, the first European to cross the African continent. From 1841 to 1852, while a medical missionary for the London Missionary Society in what is now Botswana, he crossed the Kalahari desert and reached (1849) Lake Ngami. He discovered the Zambezi River in 1851. Hoping to abolish the slave trade by opening Africa to Christian commerce and missionary stations, he traveled (1853) to Luanda on the west coast. Following the Zambezi River, he discovered and named Victoria Falls (1855) and reached the east coast at Quelimane, Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique), in 1856. His Missionary Travels (1857) in South Africa is an account of that journey. Appointed British consul at Quelimane, he was given command of an expedition (1857–63) to explore the Zambezi region.

Livingstone returned to England (1864) and with his brother Charles wrote The Zambezi and Its Tributaries (1865). In 1866 he returned to Africa to seek the source of the Nile. He discovered lakes Mweru and Bangweula and in 1871 reached the Lualaba tributary of the Congo River. Sickness compelled his return to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, where the journalist H. M. Stanley Stanley, Sir Henry Morton, 1841–1904, Anglo-American journalist and empire builder, b. Denbigh, Wales. Originally named John Rowlands, he took the name of his adoptive father in New Orleans, where Stanley went in 1857.
..... Click the link for more information. found him in 1871. Unable to persuade Livingstone to leave, Stanley joined him on a journey (1871–72) to the north end of Lake Tanganyika. In 1873 Livingstone died in the village of Chief Chitambo. African followers carried his body to the coast; it was sent to England and buried in Westminster Abbey. Livingstone's last journals were edited by Horace Waller (1874).

Bibliography

There are some 100 biographies of Livingstone; among them are those by J. Simmons (1955, repr. 1962), G. Martelli (1970), T. Jeal (1973), and O. Ransford (1978).

Livingstone, David

David Livingstone, oil painting by F. Havill after photographs; in the National Portrait Gallery, …

(credit: Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London)

(born March 19, 1813, Lanarkshire, Scot.—died May 1, 1873, Chitambo, Barotseland) Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa. Of working-class origins, Livingstone studied theology and medicine in Glasgow before being ordained (1840) and deciding to work in Africa to open up the interior for colonization, extend the Gospel, and abolish the slave trade. By 1842 he had already penetrated farther north of the Cape Colony frontier than any other white man. He was the first European to reach Lake Ngami (1849) and the first to reach Luanda from the interior (1854). He encountered and named Victoria Falls (1855), journeyed across the continent to eastern Mozambique (1856, 1862), explored the Lake Malawi region (1861–63), came across Lakes Mweru and Bangweulu (1867), and penetrated to points farther east of Lake Tanganyika than any previous expedition had managed (1871). His attempt to find the source of the Nile (1867–71) failed. When he was found by Henry Morton Stanley in 1871, his health was failing; he refused to leave, and in 1873 he was found dead by African aides. Livingstone produced a complex body of knowledge—geographic, technical, medical, and social—that took decades to mine. In his lifetime he stirred the imagination of English-speaking peoples everywhere and was celebrated as one of the great figures of British civilization.

Livingstone, David

(1813–1873) explorer and missionary in Africa. [Br. Hist.: NCE, 1596]

See : Missionary