DAVID LIVINGSTONE.

Missionary and Explorer.

COTLAND is not a very extended country but it has given the world unspeakable treasures. Leaving out of all question the heroes of old renown, the last century has seen a crop of magnificent men from the hills and glens of Bonnie Scotland. Robert Burns and his songs, Thomas Chalmers and his sermons, Hugh Miller and his geological researches, Thomas Carlyle and his books, and last but not least, David Livingstone and his double work, so nobly done the work of missionary and explorer.

David Livingstone was born at Blantyre, in Lanarkshire, in the year 1817. All his days from the cottage home in Blantyre to the grave in Westminster Abbey, were days filled with ceaseless toil.

An evening school furnished him with the opportunity of acquiring some knowledge of Latin and Greek, and finally, after attending a course of medicine at Glasgow University, and the theological lectures of the late Dr. Wardlaw, professor of theology to the Scotch Independents, he offered himself to the London Missionary Society, by whom he was ordained as a medical missionary in 1840. In the summer of that year he landed at Port Natal, in South Africa. Circumstances made him acquainted with the Rev. Robert Moffat, himself a distinguished missionary, and whose daughter he subsequently married. For sixteen years Livingtone proved himself a faithful and zealous servant of the London Missionary Society. The two most important results achieved by him in this period were the discovery of Lake Ngami (August 1, 1849), and his crossing the continent of South Africa, from the Zambesi (or

Leeambye) to the Congo, and thence to Loando, the capital of Angola, which took him about eighteen months (from January, 1853 to June, 1854). In September of the same year he left Loando on his return across the continent, reached Linzanti (in lat. 18° 17' s., and long. 23° 50' e.), the capital of the great Makololo tribe, and from thence proceeded along the banks c ་ the Leeambye to Quilimane in the Indian Ocean, which he reached May 20, 1856. He then took ship for England. In the meantime, Lakes Tanganyika, Victoria Nyanza, and Albert Nyanza, had been discovered by Burton, Speke, and Baker, but the true source of the Nile was still a problem. With view to its solution, Livingstone, in 1866, entered the interior, and nothing was heard of him for two years. The communications received from him afterward describe his discovery of the great water.system of the Chambeze in the elevated region to the south of Tanganyika. It flows first west and then turns northward, forming a succession of lakes, lying to the west of the Tanganyika. To determine its course after it leaves these, whether it joins the Nile, or turns westward and forms the Congo, was the grand task which Livingstone seemed resolved to accomplish or perish. Nothing had been heard of him for some time and the reports of his death were generally accepted. Mr. Stanley, of the New York Herald, was sent in search of him and boldly pushed his way from Zanzibar to Ujiji, where in 1871 he found the traveler in great destitution. On parting with Mr. Stanley, Livingstone started on a fresh exploration of the river-system of the Chambeze or Lualaba, convinced that it would turn out to be the head-waters of the Nile.

In May, 1873, Livingstone died at Ilala, beyond Lake Bemba. His body was brought to London, and on a beautiful April morning a hundred thousand people thronged the precincts of Westminster Abbey to see the coffin of the great explorer. So the long wanderings ended, and amid the dust of kings and priests and warriors of many generations the humble Scotchman lies at rest.