So most other parts of the world were occupied, colonized, civilized, before Africa was explored.  A continent one-fourth larger than our own was for centuries neglected and despised.  “Nothing good can come out of Africa” became proverbial.  Seventy years ago Africa, away from the coasts and the Nile, was almost a blank upon our maps, save for fanciful details that are ludicrously grotesque in the light of our present knowledge (1902).

Then dawned the era of David Livingstone.  Sixty-two years ago this humble Scotchman went to South Africa as a missionary.  It was not long before he became imbued with the idea that missionary service could not be projected on broad, economic, and effective lines till the field was known.  The explorer, he said, must precede the teacher and the merchant.  We can work best for Christianity and civilization after we learn what the people are and know the nature of their environment.  This was the thought that took him into the unknown; that inspired him with unflagging courage and zeal throughout twenty years of weary plodding in the African wilderness among hundreds of tribes who never before had seen a white man.  And all the years he was studying the country and winning the love of its people, his faith in Africa, in its abounding resources worth the world’s seeking, in the capacity of its people for development, steadily grew till it became the all-pervading impulse of his life.  Livingstone’s faith converted the world to the belief that, after all, there was good in Africa.

“I shall never forget,” said Stanley, one day in New York, “the time when I stood with Livingstone on the shore of Lake Tanganyika, and he raised his trembling hand above his head, leaned towards me as he looked me in the eye, and said in a voice broken with emotion:  ’The day is coming when the whole world will know that Africa is worth reclaiming, and that its people may be brought out of barbarism.  The world needs Africa; and teachers, merchants, railroads, and every influence of civilization will be spread through this continent to fit it for the place in human interests that belongs to it.’  I thought then that Livingstone was an enthusiast and a visionary; but long ago I learned to believe that every word he said was true.”

Europe and America were thrilled by the simple narrative of those twenty-two thousand miles of wanderings that brought into the light of day millions of human beings who had been as much unknown to us as though they inhabited Mars.  Livingstone did not live to know it, but it was he who kindled the great African Movement,—­an outburst of zeal for geographic discovery and economic development such as was never seen before.