With Schweitzer, we may remember other
African missionaries, such as David Livingstone. Livingstone was born in 1813
in Blantyre, Scotland, trained as a physician, and ordained as a missionary in
1840. His original plan was to work in China, but he was prevented from doing
so by the Opium Wars. He therefore went instead to South Africa and travelled
northward into the interior. To his countrymen, he was known chiefly as an
explorer, a surveyor, and a scientist; and his expeditions, including the
discovery of Victoria Falls in 1855, made him a national hero. In 1866 he began
an expedition seeking the headwaters of the Nile. No news of him came back for
several years, and it was thought that perhaps he was dead. A publisher sent a
correspondent, Henry M Stanley, to find him. Stanley did find him, in 1871, and
accompanied his expedition for a while before returning to report. (Stanley's
greeting, "Doctor Livingstone, I presume," is the one thing about
Livingstone that is remembered by persons who know absolutely nothing else
about him.)
