The Personal Life of David Livingstone eBook

William Garden Blaikie
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 677 pages of information about The Personal Life of David Livingstone.

The Personal Life of David Livingstone eBook

William Garden Blaikie
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 677 pages of information about The Personal Life of David Livingstone.
others, that raised his indignation.  “Good Bishop Mackenzie,” he wrote to his friend Mr. Fitch, “would never have tried to screen himself by accusing me.”  In point of fact, a few years afterward the Portuguese Government, through Mr. Lacerda, when complaining bitterly of the statements of Livingstone in a speech at Bath, in 1865, referred to Mr. Rowley’s letter as bearing out their complaint.  It served admirably to give an unfavorable view of his aims and methods, as from one of his own allies.  Dr. Livingstone never allowed himself to cherish any other feeling but that of high regard for the self-denial and Christian heroism of the Bishop, and many of his coadjutors; but he did feel that most of them were ill-adapted for their work and had a great deal to learn, and that the manner in which he had been turned aside from the direct objects of his own enterprise by having to look after so many inexperienced men, and then blamed for what he deprecated, and what was done in his absence, was rather more than it was reasonable for him to bear[65].

[Footnote 63:  Writing to Mr. Waller, 12th February, 1863, Dr. Livingstone said:  “I thought you wrong in attacking the Ajawa, till I looked on it as defense of your orphans.  I thought that you had shut yourselves up to one tribe, and that, the Manganja; but I think differently now, and only wish they would send out Dr. Pusey here.  He would learn a little sense, of which I suppose I have need myself.”]

[Footnote 64:  Mr. Rowley afterward (February 22, 1865) expressed his regret that this letter was ever written, as it had produced an ill-effect.  See The Zambesi and its Tributaries, p. 475 note.]

[Footnote 65:  It must not be supposed that the letter of Mr. Rowley expressed the mind of his brethren.  Some of them were greatly annoyed at it, and used their influence to induce its author to write to the Cape papers that he had conveyed a wrong impression.  In writing to Sir Thomas Maclear (20th November, 1862), after seeing Rowley’s letter in the Cape papers, Dr. Livingstone said:  “It is untrue that I ever on anyone occasion adopted an aggressive policy against the Ajawa, or took slaves from them.  Slaves were taken from Portuguese alone.  I never hunted the Ajawa, or took the part of Manganja against Ajawa.  In this I believe every member of the Mission will support my assertion.”  Livingstone declined to write a contradiction to the public prints, because he knew the harm that would be done by a charge against a clergyman.  In this he showed the same magnanimity and high Christian self-denial which he had shown when he left Mabotsa.  It was only when the Portuguese claimed the benefit of Rowley’s testimony that he let the public see what its value was.]

Writing of the terrible loss of Mackenzie and Burrup to the Bishop of Cape Town, Livingstone says:  “The blow is quite bewildering; the two strongest men so quickly cut down, and one of them, humanly speaking, indispensable to the success of the enterprise.  We must bow to the will of Him who doeth all things well; but I cannot help feeling sadly disturbed in view of the effect the news may have at home. I shall not swerve a hairbreadth from my work while life is spared, and I trust the supporters of the Mission may not shrink back from all that they have set their hearts to.”

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The Personal Life of David Livingstone from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.