Table Of Contentdavid
livingstone
david
livingstone
david
livingstone
explorer & missionary
Sam Wellman
© 1995 by Sam Wellman
Print ISBN 978-1-61626-906-7
eBook Editions:
Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-62029-652-3
Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-62029-651-6
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“From David Livingstone, published by Barbour Publishing, Inc. Used
by permission.”
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the
King James Version of the Bible.
Cover illustration: Greg Copeland
Cover design: Kirk DouPonce
Published by Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville,
Ohio 44683, www.barbourbooks.com
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Contents
1. thirteenth Birthday ...............................7
2. reading sCienCe .................................13
3. emBraCing Christ ................................22
4. a missionary ....................................34
5. afriCa ..........................................47
6. the only mediCine ................................60
7. trouBle with lions ...............................73
8. lake ngami ......................................85
9. “we Come in PeaCe” ..............................97
10. slavers .......................................109
11. the makalolos .................................121
12. true Courage ..................................133
13. Battling Bitterness ............................144
14. the light of Christianity ........................156
15. BaCk to afriCa .................................169
16. hard years ....................................182
17. to die is gain ..................................195
afterword .......................................205
1.
thirteenth Birthday
On a hillside above the village of Blantyre in Scotland, three boys
sat in the brown winter-dead grass. It was the afternoon of March
19, 1826. It was the Lord’s Day. There was a sharp bite to the cool
air; the kind boys don’t mind at all.
One boy had tousled brown hair and hazel eyes so lively they
seemed restless even reading a book, which was exactly what he
was doing. He held a tuft of grass in his free hand. “Yes, here it is,”
he murmured to himself as he glanced from the book to the tuft
of grass and back again.
“Here is what, David? What is what, David?” asked a small
boy squirming beside him.
“It shows a picture of this very grass and gives its scientific
name, Charles.”
“Father doesn’t like you to read science,” grumbled an older boy,
who ripped up blades of grass and flipped them into the air list-
lessly.
“I don’t see the harm, John,” said the boy named David. “The
book seems very truthful to me.”
John just grunted. He was staring down at the complex of fac-
tory buildings on the river Clyde. Far down the river was the great
city of Glasgow. John never saw it. David could think of no other
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david livingstone
word to describe the look in John’s eyes but dull. John looked but
saw little. He listened but heard little. Many of the boys and the
men in the cotton factory where David and John worked had that
same dull look.
David saw John glance down toward their home in Shuttle
Row. John said, “Let’s go home. It’s almost time for cake.”
David disliked being told what to do. Oh, he didn’t mind obey-
ing his parents. It was when other boys
He no longer
told him what to do that he got very an-
screamed gry. At the cotton mill, boys were always
at tHem. His scoffing at the books he read during the
anger Had lunch break: “Why are you so high and
mighty? You’ll never be anything but a
turned to
cotton piecer like the rest of us!” That
pity for tHe
was about the only thing that really an-
poor lost
gered him. He used to scream at them:
souls.
“I can think and act for myself!” But it
didn’t stop them from needling him. He
no longer screamed at them. His anger had turned to pity for the
poor lost souls.
“Are you coming or not?” grumbled John.
“Of course,” answered David. “Come on, Charles.”
They ambled down the hill toward the village of Blantyre. John
walked ahead, intent on cake. David held Charles’s hand. They
walked under the ashes and immense oaks on the grand Bothwell
Estate. They descended a bank to reach a three-story brick tene-
ment building that was on another bank above the great cotton
factory, which was really a monotonous group of long five-story
buildings on the banks of the Clyde.
On any other day after the boys entered a turret on the tene-
ment building, they would have clomped up spiral stairs to the top
8
thirteenth Birthday
floor. But today they entered a door to the first floor. By the time
David and Charles looked down the hallway, John was darting in-
side an open door. When they reached the open door, John had
vanished within the people milling around inside the small room.
There seemed barely room to stand.
“Happy birthday, laddie!” roared Grandpa Hunter as he shook
David’s hand. “Thirteen years old.”
“Thank you, sir,” said David, humbled by Grandpa Hunter’s
eighty years. He could never see Grandpa Hunter without thinking
about the grandma he had never known, who had been dead for
over thirty years. Why had God taken one half of their holy union
so soon? Once a widower, Grandpa David Hunter gave up their
cottage and field in Airdrie and came to Blantyre to become a tailor
in the factory.
“I’ll not be outdone by a Lowlander!” bellowed Grandpa Liv-
ingstone. “Happy birthday to you, David.”
“Thank you,” said David, slightly embarrassed by Grandpa Liv-
ingstone’s pride in being a Highlander. Grandpa Hunter was prob-
ably just as proud of being a Lowlander. But David took after his
father, Neil, who confessed to feel-
david took
ing like a Highlander in his heart yet
dreamed of other lands beyond ei- after His
ther Highland or Lowland. Of course fatHer, wHo
his father, Neil, was in the room, too. confessed to
His father didn’t actually go to other
feeling like
lands like a missionary. He was only
a HigHlander
a wanderer compared to the men
yet dreamed
who worked in the factory because he
of otHer
traveled the shire to sell tea. David’s
mother was here, too. And Grandma lands.
Livingstone. After all, the celebration
9
