Part 9
There were now fifty-four in his party--twenty-three Frenchmen, eighteen braves, ten squaws to do the cooking, and three papooses. When they got back to Fort Breakheart, La Salle gave up building a ship, as he had decided to make the voyage down the Mississippi in canoes. There was plenty of game along the river, and in its muddy waters they caught catfish six feet long and weighing about two hundred pounds. They saw wild beans along the banks with stalks “as big as your arm,” reminding one of the tale of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” They had varied experiences with the different tribes of Indians--Chickasaw, Arkansas, Natchez--along their course, and found that the “man-eating monsters” described by the Illinois chief were only alligators. When at last they reached the mouth of the Father of Waters, there was no whirlpool to swallow them down; but the river calmly divided into three mouths, each leading into a broad expanse of salt water which, they learned, was not the Pacific Ocean but the Gulf of Mexico. On a hill near by, La Salle raised a wooden pillar on which he nailed the coat-of-arms bearing the lilies of France, and buried near it a leaden plate on which letters were engraved to tell future comers that the whole country drained by the Mississippi belonged to France.
At last, the patient worker and traveler had triumphed. He went back to Paris and reported all he had done in the name of his beloved king and country. Robert Cavelier de la Salle had done a greater thing than he realized. One hundred and twenty years later, Napoleon, Emperor of the French, sold to the United States the territory of Louisiana, claimed by La Salle, which is now half of the great republic. This was an achievement which meant more than the discovery of an outlet to China. Although a boat may be sailed through long rivers and short canals from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, this fact is hardly thought worthy of mention in these days. A far greater benefit to America and the whole world was achieved by Robert La Salle, because he enabled the French government to give to the United States her broad empire of the west.
LIVINGSTONE, THE WHITE MAN OF THE DARK CONTINENT
Little Davie Livingstone was a queer, quiet Scotch laddie. His father was a high-minded man, but he was so poor that he had to take Davie out of the village school when he was ten. In those days, the early part of the nineteenth century, children began to work when they were very young. So Mr. Livingstone sent the lad to work, with other boys of his own age, as a piecer in a cotton mill. David worked from six in the morning till eight at night, stopping only for lunch.
With his first week’s wages the ten-year-old boy bought a Latin grammar. He was so eager to learn that he went to night school from eight to ten at night. He studied till midnight, and even later, when his mother did not take his books away and send him to bed. His great desire was to be a missionary. So he took up other languages besides Latin, and such studies as would fit him for missionary work. As soon as he was able, he went to London and
elsewhere to study, working part of the time, to earn enough to pay his way.
On a visit to London Livingstone met Doctor Moffat, a leading missionary in South Africa, and soon decided to work in Africa himself. He had prepared himself to help men’s bodies as well as their souls. So he went first as a medical missionary.
Doctor Livingstone’s first mission station, or center, was seven hundred miles farther north than Doctor Moffat’s, in a region which was dangerous because of savage men, wild beasts, and, worst of all, an unhealthful climate. In this lonely place the new missionary began to tell the ignorant black people about the one true God. He cured them of their illnesses, and showed them how to dig canals and build dams to water their little farms. He also taught them to till these farms in a better way than they had known.
In the region there were many lions. One day, when the missionary was out with a band of natives, he met one of the big beasts. Livingstone and one of his black men shot at the lion, which sprang up with a roar and bounded into the bushes, through the circle the men had made around him. Then two more lions appeared. Before Livingstone could reload his gun, he saw one great brute with bristling mane and angry eyes springing upon him. Its weight bore him to the earth. The lion seized his shoulder with jaws strong enough to carry off an ox. When some one asked him afterward what he thought just then, Doctor Livingstone replied, “I was wondering what part of me he would eat first.” In a letter the doctor described this adventure:
“With his terrible roar sounding in my ear, the lion shook me as a dog does a rat; but, strange to say, I felt neither pain nor fear, though fully conscious of all that passed. As I turned to escape the weight of his paw, which was resting on my head, I saw his eyes turn toward Mebalwe [one of the natives], who was about to fire, but his gun missed fire in both barrels. Instantly the lion quitted his hold of me and leaped on Mebalwe, biting him badly in the thigh; then he dashed at another man who was about to attack him with his spear. But at that moment the previous shots the lion had received took effect and he dropped to the ground dead.”
Livingstone was bitten in eleven places, his arm was badly mangled, and bones were broken in several places. It was many months before he was well. The broken arm was always weak, and he bore the marks of that big lion’s teeth to his dying day.
While recovering from his wounds, Livingstone made the long journey to the home of Doctor Moffat, and married that gentleman’s daughter Mary. Miss Moffat was born in South Africa, so that she knew the language and ways of the people. This made her a true helpmeet to her husband in his noble work.
Livingstone called himself “Jack-of-all-trades.” “I read in journeying,” he wrote, “but little at home. Building, gardening, cobbling, doctoring, tinkering, carpentering, gun-mending, farriering (horse-doctoring and shoeing), wagon-mending, preaching, schooling, lecturing in divinity to a class of three, fill up my time.”
When Livingstone reached the country of one of the black tribes, thousands of miles to the north, all the people of the region, numbering six or seven thousand, poured out to see the white man. The missionary was greatly relieved to find that the chief of this region, who was only eighteen years old, was disposed to be friendly. The white man and his party were well cared for and given plenty of good food, of which they were badly in need. They were nearly starved, because unfriendly natives on the way had refused to sell them food. In regions where the Arab slave-traders had robbed, killed, and carried away and sold many of the natives, the people were afraid of Livingstone, for they thought all white men must be robbers and murderers. But in reality the brave Scotch missionary was a great worker against the slave-trade, writing and saying all he could to make people in Europe and England know how wicked it was.
Although Livingstone journeyed about so much, travel was very hard and dangerous. He and his faithful men often had to go up to their necks in swamps where the hot, moist air was filled with poisonous insects, and to cross rivers in great peril from the crocodile and hippopotamus. Not only did Livingstone have numerous hairbreadth escapes from lions, elephants, and other wild beasts, but he was many times stricken with the terrible African fever. Because of his wonderful recoveries the natives thought his life was charmed, and they were afraid he was a wizard who worked cures by magic from the devil. But the good doctor soon won their friendship by his great kindness to them.
Livingstone traveled thousands of miles by water, in clumsy boats. He wrote to a friend, describing the life on one of these river trips:
“We rise a little before five, when it is daylight. While I am dressing, the coffee is made, and after I have filled my little coffeepot, I leave the rest for my companions, who eagerly swallow the refreshing drink. Meanwhile the servants are busy loading the boats, which done, we embark. The next two hours, while the men row swiftly onward, are the pleasantest of the whole day. About eleven we land and eat our luncheon, which consists of what is left from supper the evening before, or of zwieback with honey and water.
“After resting for an hour we enter the boats again, and take our places under an umbrella. The heat is oppressive, and as I am still weak from my recent attack of fever, I cannot go ashore and hunt. The rowers, who are exposed to the sun without cover, drip with sweat and begin to tire by afternoon. We often reach a suitable spot to spend the night two hours before sundown, and as we are all tired, we gladly make a halt.
“As soon as we are ashore the men cut grass for my bed and poles for my tent. The bed is then made, the boxes with our supplies piled on each side of it, and lastly the tent is stretched above. Four or five paces in front of it a huge fire is lighted, beside which each man has his own place, according to the rank he occupies. Two of the Makololos are always at my right and left, both in eating and sleeping, while Machana, my head boatman, lies down before the door of my tent as soon as I go to bed.
“A space beyond the fire is staked out for the cattle, in the shape of a horseshoe. The evening meal consists of coffee and zwieback, or of bread made from maize or Kaffir corn, unless we are lucky enough to shoot something to supply us with a pot of meat. We go to bed soon after, and silence descends upon the camp. On moonlight nights the fire is allowed to go out.”
While Livingstone was exploring to the northward, he discovered the great cataracts of the Zambesi, which are even higher and wider than Niagara. He named them Victoria Falls in honor of the queen of England. He also found the lakes from which the Zambesi flows into the eastern sea and the Congo into the western, on opposite sides of the continent of Africa. The two rivers are like two long watersnakes with their tiny tails close together, but their wide-open mouths thousands of miles apart.
Doctor Livingstone had sent his wife to England for the benefit of her health and to educate their children. The people there were greatly pleased with the results of Livingstone’s labors in Africa, for all of the country discovered by him would belong to Great Britain. So the British government gave him its support and paid him a small salary for the work he was doing for science and for the world. By this time other missionaries had come to help save the Dark Continent. The wives of two of these were coming out from England with Mrs. Livingstone when she returned. There was great joy on both sides--that of the three husbands in the heart of Africa, and that of the three wives on their way to join them. But Livingstone and both his friends were seized with African fever, and, when their wives came, the two men missionaries had just died. Even Mrs. Livingstone, although she had been brought up in Africa, took the disease and died. The two missionaries’ wives soon returned to England, but Doctor Livingstone could not even then be persuaded to leave the needy people to go to England to rest awhile and see his now motherless children.
Besides all these labors, and besides the exact reports he made on the animal life, flowers, trees, rocks, and geography of that new land, he wrote books about his adventures and experiences which had an immense sale. This made him a man of considerable wealth; but, after providing well for his family and for the education of his children, he spent the greater part of his fortune--ten to thirty thousand dollars at a time--for the benefit of his black “children.”
When Livingstone did go to England, it was only for a short visit. While absent from Africa he seemed always to hear those millions of poor, ignorant people calling him. Once he purchased the parts of a little steamer and brought it back to Africa. The boat was put together and was run on some of the lakes and rivers he had discovered. The vessel proved to be a poor affair, which ran very slowly and was always breaking down. But the natives were astonished, and would have worshipped it if he had let them. As time went on, larger and better boats were sent out to him. Once he had to discharge his engineer, but he ran the steamboat himself. He found it easier, of course, to make his journeys with the help of steam, though he had to go to many places where the boats could not be taken. A writer has described a trip Livingstone and his friends made in July:
“It was now the African mid winter and the nights were very cold. The tsetse flies were more troublesome than ever. Wild beasts became more numerous every day in this uninhabited region. Herds of elephants, buffaloes, zebras, and many kinds of antelopes were frequently seen, which allowed the head of the caravan to approach within two hundred feet of them. The wild boars, of which many were seen, were very shy; while, on the contrary, troops of monkeys hastily retreated into the jungle at the sight of the travelers, chattering angrily about the coming of the white man. Guinea fowl, doves, ducks, and geese were also plentiful.
“With the darkness a new and even more numerous world of living creatures awoke. Lions and hyenas roared and howled about the camp. Unknown birds sang sweetly or screeched as if in fear, and all sorts of strange insect noises were heard.
“One day Livingstone narrowly escaped losing his life from the attack of a two-horned rhinoceros. This beast was strangely quick, in spite of its great bulk, and very savage, being one of the few animals which will attack a man without being first attacked.
“While making their way through a dense thicket Livingstone had become separated from the others, and was stooping to gather some specimen, when a black rhinoceros made a furious charge at him; but, strange to say, it suddenly stopped short, giving him time to escape. In his flight, his watch and chain became entangled in a branch and, stopping to loosen it, he saw the beast still standing in the same spot, as if held back by an unseen hand. On reaching a safe distance he uttered a shout of warning, thinking some of the party might be near; at this the rhinoceros rushed away, grunting loudly.”
While Dr. Livingstone was in England he was welcomed with highest honors. He was invited to visit Queen Victoria and her husband, the Prince Consort. But so strong was the missionary spirit in him that he preferred talking to cotton spinners and the people in the slums of the East End of London. He was quite glad to go back to Africa and escape from the medals, degrees, and other great honors showered upon him.
After his return to the Dark Continent for the last time, he went farther than ever into the interior in an attempt to discover, or at least to prove, where the great river Nile begins. When he had nearly reached the goal, he was driven back by hostile tribes which had recently suffered from attacks of slave traders. At this time the Arabs who carried Livingstone’s letters down to the coast to be sent to England destroyed them all, for fear he had written to England about the slave outrages they had committed. For this reason nothing was heard of him for years. It was thought that he had been murdered by savages or had died of African fever.
At last the publisher of _The New York Herald_ sent Henry M. Stanley, the newspaper’s foreign correspondent, with all the money he needed, to find Dr. Livingstone; or, if he were no longer living, to get any records that could be found. After a long search the American newspaper man heard of a white man hundreds of miles farther in the interior. Trace and trail grew more and more distinct and at last the American company, with the American flag flying, marched up to Livingstone’s camp on the shore of one of the great lakes he had discovered. Of this meeting Stanley wrote:
“As I advanced slowly toward him I noticed he looked pale and weary. He had a gray beard, and wore a cap with a faded gold band on it. I could have run to him and embraced him, only I did not know how he would receive me; so instead I walked up to him and said, ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’
“‘Yes,’ said he with a kind smile. We both grasped hands.
“‘I thank God, Doctor, that I have been permitted to see you!’ said I, and he answered, ‘I feel thankful that I am here to welcome you.’
“I found myself gazing at the wonderful man at whose side I now sat in the heart of Africa. Every hair of his head, every line of his face, his pallor and the wearied look he wore, all told me what I had longed so much to know.”
The two explorers spent months together talking over their discoveries and experiences. Stanley had much to tell of what was going on in the world outside. Nearly all Livingstone’s store of supplies had been stolen, but Stanley had prepared for that. He insisted on providing the old missionary with everything he might need. Of Stanley’s tenderness Livingstone wrote to his daughter:
“He laid all he had at my service, divided his clothes into two heaps, and pressed one upon me, then his medicine chest, his goods and everything he had, with true American generosity. To coax my appetite he often cooked dainty dishes for me with his own hands. The tears often started to my eyes at some fresh proof of his kindness.”
As Dr. Livingstone was again recovering from a very severe attack of fever Stanley begged him to go home to England with him for a year of rest, but the aged missionary shook his head sadly. Stanley returned to the outside world.
About a year after this, David Livingstone was found kneeling beside his bed in a hut built of bamboo poles and coarse grass. He had died while praying. Millions of natives in the heart of the Dark Continent were heartbroken when they heard of the medical missionary’s death. They spent months in wailing and mourning, for they had lost their “White Father.”
Two devoted black men carried the body of their beloved master hundreds of miles through the swamps and jungles of Africa, and placed it on shipboard, to be taken back to England. That ship was met at the English seaport by a special train heavily draped in mourning, which carried the honored remains up to London. Great Britain had strong reasons for honoring David Livingstone. He had added a million square miles to the known world, and put great lakes, rivers, mountains, and countries on the map of Africa.
There was a magnificent funeral in Westminster Abbey, where the great missionary and explorer was buried beside the sacred ashes of kings, queens, princes, and statesmen. Thus he received the highest honors England can bestow upon her most illustrious dead. On the black marble slab which marks David Livingstone’s final resting place are the last words he is known to have written. They are about the cruel slave trade:
“All I can say in my solitude is, may Heaven’s rich blessing come down on every one--American, English, Turk--who will help to heal this open sore of the world.”
PEARY, A HERO OF THE GREAT WHITE NORTH
For hundreds of years after Columbus, explorers sought the Northwest Passage through the frozen seas of North America. It was not until 1853 that such a channel was actually traced. Even then it was so filled with ice that no sailor, however brave and skilful, could make his way through. Long ago the search for the Northwest Passage gave place to the great desire and purpose to reach the North Pole.
Of course, there is no pole standing out of the northern half of the world. The axis, or axle, of the earth is only an unseen line which scientists have thought of as if it ran straight through the center of the earth. The place in the middle of the top of the globe where this line, if there were one, would come out, is named the North Pole, and the same place at the opposite end is called the South Pole.
It is easy to see how many boys could have a great longing to run away to sea and seek their fortunes in foreign lands; but it is hard to understand why any young man should wish to undertake the awful hardships of bitter cold and blizzards, with the risk of falling down ice-cracks hundreds of feet deep, and of starving or freezing to death, in trying to get to the Pole, especially when there is nothing but snow and ice to see there if he ever could find the place.
Yet, in his youth, Robert E. Peary had a strange desire to visit the Inland Ice region of Greenland. Robert was a Pennsylvania lad whose father had died when he was three. He grew up to care for his widowed mother. He went to an eastern college and was graduated second in a class of fifty-one. Then he passed the rigid tests for Engineer in the United States Navy. Like young Robert E. Lee, Robert E. Peary was first assigned to engineering duty on the eastern coast, in Florida. Then he was sent as one of a number of experts in science to survey a route through Nicaragua, as many people believed that a ship canal should run through Nicaragua rather than across the narrow isthmus where the Panama Canal was dug afterward.
So it was not until he was thirty years old that Robert E. Peary was able to realize the dream of his boyhood and explore the bleak and frozen plains even beyond “Greenland’s icy mountains.” Five years later he started out to go farther north than any white man had even been. His first attempt to reach the Pole was in 1891, when he took with him his young wife. This was the first time a white woman ever had made the journey into the unknown regions of the “Great White North.” With the Pearys in this dangerous undertaking went Dr. Frederick A. Cook, a surgeon, and Matthew Henson, the Pearys’ colored helper. On board the _Kite_--the special ship for this journey--the leader’s leg was broken by the sudden slipping of the rudder. This accident kept them from advancing farther north that fall. Through the constant care of his wife, the faithful Matthew, and Dr. Cook, Lieutenant Peary was restored to health and strength by the following spring.
Peary knew how to make the best of everything. The half year he was laid up by this accident was that of the Arctic night. For six months in the year--spring and summer--the sun in the Arctic regions can be seen moving in a complete circle up in the sky. In other parts of the world, what is called the sunset is just the turning away of one side of the earth from the sun; and sunrise is the whirling round of that side into the sunlight again. What is called night is the time when the sun is shining on the other side of the earth. But the sun moves north in spring and summer; so that during those seasons in the Arctic region it never sets, and there is daylight all the time. In the fall and winter the sun moves south, and then in the Arctic region it never rises. So there is night for six months.