Chapter 13

(T. A. I.)

1Properly the word should be spelled, as it was originally, “mistery;” it comes through the O. Fr.mestier, modernmétier, from Lat.ministerium, service, employment, and meant a trade or craft, and hence the plays acted by craftsmen and members of gilds were called “mystery plays” (seeDrama). For the word meaning a hidden or secret rite, with which this has so often been confused, seeMystery.

1Properly the word should be spelled, as it was originally, “mistery;” it comes through the O. Fr.mestier, modernmétier, from Lat.ministerium, service, employment, and meant a trade or craft, and hence the plays acted by craftsmen and members of gilds were called “mystery plays” (seeDrama). For the word meaning a hidden or secret rite, with which this has so often been confused, seeMystery.

LIVIA DRUSILLA(c. 55B.C.-A.D.29), Roman empress, was originally the wife of Tiberius Claudius Nero, by whom she had two sons, Drusus and Tiberius (afterwards emperor). But she attracted the attention of the future emperor Augustus, who in 38 compelled her husband to divorce her and married her himself, having first got rid of his own wife Scribonia. Her two sons, at their dying father’s request, were entrusted to the guardianship of Augustus, to whom she bore no children. Livia was suspected of committing various crimes to secure the throne for Tiberius, whereas Augustus naturally favoured the claims of his blood-relatives. The premature deaths of his nephew Marcellus (whom he had at first fixed upon as his successor) and of his grandsons Gaius and Lucius Caesar, the banishment of his grandson Agrippa Postumus, and even his own death, were attributed to her. But in any case Augustus’s affection for his wife appears to have suffered no diminution up to the last; by his will he declared her and Tiberius (whom he had adopted inA.D.4) his heirs; Livia inherited a third of his property; she was adopted into the Julian gens, and henceforth assumed the name of Julia Augusta. The senate also elected her chief priestess of the college founded in honour of the deified Augustus. She had now reached the summit of her ambition, and at first acted as joint-ruler with Tiberius. Tiberius, however, soon became tired of the maternal yoke; his retirement to Capreae is said to have been caused by his desire to escape from her. Livia continued to live quietly at Rome, in the full enjoyment of authority, until her death at an advanced age. Tiberius appears to have received the news with indifference, if not with satisfaction; he absented himself from the funeral, and refused to allow her apotheosis; her will was suppressed for a long time and only carried out, and the legacies paid, by Caligula.

See Tacitus,Annals, i. v.; Dio Cassius liii. 33, lv. 14-22, lviii. 2, lix. 2; Suetonius,Tiberius, 50, 51; J. Aschbach,Livia, Gemahlin des Kaisers Augustus(1864); V. Gardthausen,Augustus und seine Zeit, i. 1018 foll., ii. 631 foll.

See Tacitus,Annals, i. v.; Dio Cassius liii. 33, lv. 14-22, lviii. 2, lix. 2; Suetonius,Tiberius, 50, 51; J. Aschbach,Livia, Gemahlin des Kaisers Augustus(1864); V. Gardthausen,Augustus und seine Zeit, i. 1018 foll., ii. 631 foll.

LIVINGSTON, EDWARD(1764-1836), American jurist and statesman, was born in Clermont, Columbia county, New York, on the 26th of May 1764. He was a great-grandson of Robert Livingston, the first of the family to settle in America (seeLivingston, William, below). He graduated at Princeton in 1781, was admitted to the bar in 1785, and began to practise law in New York City, rapidly rising to distinction. In 1795-1801 he was a Republican representative in Congress, where he was one of the leaders of the opposition to Jay’s treaty, introduced the resolution calling upon President Washington for all papers relating to the treaty, and at the close of Washington’s administration voted with Andrew Jackson and other radicals against the address to the president. He opposed the Alien and Sedition Laws, introduced legislation on behalf of American seamen, and in 1800 attacked the president for permitting the extradition by the British government of Jonathan Robbins, who had committed murder on an English frigate, and had then escaped to South Carolina and falsely claimed to be an American citizen. In the debate on this question Livingston was opposed by John Marshall. In 1801 Livingston was appointed U.S. district-attorney for the state of New York, and while retaining that position was in the same year appointed mayor of New York City. When, in the summer of 1803, the city was visited with yellow fever, Livingston displayed courage and energy in his endeavours to prevent the spread of the disease and relieve distress. He suffered a violent attack ofthe fever, during which the people gave many proofs of their attachment to him. On his recovery he found his private affairs in some confusion, and he was at the same time deeply indebted to the government for public funds which had been lost through the mismanagement or dishonesty of a confidential clerk, and for which he was responsible as district-attorney. He at once surrendered all his property, resigned his two offices in 1803, and removed early in 1804 to Louisiana. He soon acquired a large law practice in New Orleans, and in 1826 repaid the government in full, including the interest, which at that time amounted to more than the original principal.

Almost immediately upon his arrival in Louisiana, where the legal system had previously been based on Roman, French and Spanish law, and where trial by jury and other peculiarities of English common law were now first introduced, he was appointed by the legislature to prepare a provisional code of judicial procedure, which (in the form of an act passed in April 1805) was continued in force from 1805 to 1825. In 1807, after conducting a successful suit on behalf of a client’s title to a part of the batture or alluvial land near New Orleans, Livingston attempted to improve part of this land (which he had received as his fee) in the Batture, Ste Marie. Great popular excitement was aroused against him; his workmen were mobbed; and Governor Claiborne, when appealed to for protection, referred the question to the Federal government. Livingston’s case was damaged by President Jefferson, who believed that Livingston had favoured Burr in the presidential election of 1800, and that he had afterwards been a party to Burr’s schemes. Jefferson made it impossible for Livingston to secure his title, and in 1812 published a pamphlet “for the use of counsel” in the case against Livingston, to which Livingston published a crushing reply. Livingston’s final victory in the courts brought him little financial profit because of the heavy expenses of the litigation. During the war with England from 1812 to 1815 Livingston was active in rousing the mixed population of New Orleans to resistance. He used his influence to secure amnesty for Lafitte and his followers upon their offer to fight for the city, and in 1814-1815 acted as adviser and volunteer aide-de-camp to General Jackson, who was his personal friend. In 1821, by appointment of the legislature, of which he had become a member in the preceding year, Livingston began the preparation of a new code of criminal law and procedure, afterwards known in Europe and America as the “Livingston Code.” It was prepared in both French and English, as was required by the necessities of practice in Louisiana, and actually consisted of four codes—crimes and punishments, procedure, evidence in criminal cases, reform and prison discipline. Though substantially completed in 1824, when it was accidentally burned, and again in 1826, it was not printed entire until 1833. It was never adopted by the state. It was at once reprinted in England, France and Germany, attracting wide praise by its remarkable simplicity and vigour, and especially by reason of its philanthropic provisions in the code of reform and prison discipline, which noticeably influenced the penal legislation of various countries. In referring to this code, Sir Henry Maine spoke of Livingston as “the first legal genius of modern times” (Cambridge Essays, 1856, p. 17). The spirit of Livingston’s code was remedial rather than vindictive; it provided for the abolition of capital punishment and the making of penitentiary labour not a punishment forced on the prisoner, but a matter of his choice and a reward for good behaviour, bringing with it better accommodations. His Code of Reform and Prison Discipline was adopted by Guatemala. Livingston was the leading member of a commission appointed to prepare a new civil code,1which for the most part the legislature adopted in 1825, and the most important chapters of which, including all those on contract, were prepared by Livingston alone.

Livingston was again a representative in Congress during 1823-1829, a senator in 1829-1831, and for two years (1831-1833) secretary of state under President Jackson. In this last position he was one of the most trusted advisers of the president, for whom he prepared a number of state papers, the most important being the famous anti-nullification proclamation of the 10th of December 1832. From 1833 to 1835 Livingston was minister plenipotentiary to France, charged with procuring the fulfilment by the French government of the treaty negotiated by W. C. Rives in 1831, by which France had bound herself to pay an indemnity of twenty-five millions of francs for French spoliations of American shipping chiefly under the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the United States in turn agreed to pay to France 1,500,000 francs in satisfaction of French claims. Livingston’s negotiations were conducted with excellent judgment, but the French Chamber of Deputies refused to make an appropriation to pay the first instalment due under the treaty in 1833, relations between the two governments became strained, and Livingston was finally instructed to close the legation and return to America. He died on the 23rd of May 1836 at Montgomery Place, Dutchess county, New York, an estate left him by his sister, to which he had removed in 1831. Livingston was twice married. His first wife, Mary McEvers, whom he married on the 10th of April 1788, died on the 13th of March 1801. In June 1805 he married Madame Louise Moreau de Lassy (d. 1860), a widow nineteen years of age, whose maiden name was Davezac de Castera, and who was a refugee in New Orleans from the revolution in Santo Domingo. She was a woman of extraordinary beauty and intellect, and is said to have greatly influenced her husband’s public career.

See C. H. Hunt,Life of Edward Livingston(New York, 1864); Livingston’sWorks(2 vols., New York, 1873); and Louise Livingston Hunt,Memoir of Mrs Edward Livingston(New York, 1886).

See C. H. Hunt,Life of Edward Livingston(New York, 1864); Livingston’sWorks(2 vols., New York, 1873); and Louise Livingston Hunt,Memoir of Mrs Edward Livingston(New York, 1886).

1Preliminary work in the preparation of a new civil code had been done by James Brown and Moreau Lislet, who in 1808 reported a “Digest of the Civil Laws now in force in the Territory of Orleans with Alterations and Amendments adapted to the present Form of Government.”

1Preliminary work in the preparation of a new civil code had been done by James Brown and Moreau Lislet, who in 1808 reported a “Digest of the Civil Laws now in force in the Territory of Orleans with Alterations and Amendments adapted to the present Form of Government.”

LIVINGSTON, ROBERT R.(1746-1813), American statesman, son of Robert R. Livingston (1718-1775; a justice of the New York supreme court after 1763) and brother of Edward Livingston (see above), was born in New York City, on the 27th of November 1746. He graduated at King’s College, New York (now Columbia University), in 1765, was admitted to the bar in 1773, and for a short time was a law partner of John Jay. In 1773 he became recorder of New York City, but soon identified himself with the Whig or Patriot element there, and was forced to give up this position in 1775. He was a member of the second, third and fourth Provincial Congresses of New York (1775-1777), was a delegate from New York to the Continental Congress in 1775-1777 and again in 1779-1780, and was a member of the committee which drafted the Declaration of Independence. He was prevented from signing that document by his absence at the time to attend a meeting of the fourth New York Provincial Congress, which on the 10th of July became the Convention of the Representatives of the state of New York, and by which at Kingston in 1777 the first state constitution was adopted, Livingston having been a member of the committee that drafted this instrument. He was the first chancellor of the state, from 1777 to February 1801, and is best known as “Chancellor” Livingston. In this capacity he administered the oath of office to Washington at his first inauguration to the presidency, in New York, on the 30th of April 1789. Previously, from October 1781 to June 1783, he had been the first secretary of foreign affairs under the Confederation, and his European correspondence, especially with Franklin, was of the utmost value in accomplishing peace with Great Britain. In 1788 he had been a member of the New York Convention, which ratified for that state the Federal Constitution. He became an anti-Federalist and in 1798 unsuccessfully opposed John Jay in the New York gubernatorial campaign. In 1801, having refused an appointment as secretary of the navy, he became minister to France on President Jefferson’s appointment. He had refused this post when Washington offered it to him in 1794. He arrived in France in November 1801, and in 1803, in association with James Monroe, effected on behalf of his government the purchase from France of what was then known as “Louisiana,” the credit for this purchase being largely his (seeLouisiana Purchase). In 1804 Livingston withdrew from public life, and after a yearof travel in Europe returned to New York, where he promoted various improvements in agriculture. He did much to introduce the use of gypsum as a fertilizer, and published anEssay on Sheep(1809). He was long interested in the problem of steam navigation; before he went to France he received from the state of New York a monopoly of steam navigation on the waters of the state and assisted in the experiments of his brother-in-law, John Stevens; in Paris he met Robert Fulton, and with him in 1802 made successful trials on the Seine of a paddle wheel steamboat; in 1803 Livingston (jointly with Robert Fulton) received a renewal of his monopoly in New York, and the first successful steam-vessel, which operated on the Hudson in 1807, was named after Livingston’s home, Clermont (N.Y.). He died at Clermont on the 26th of February 1813.

Livingston and George Clinton were chosen to represent New York state in Statuary Hall, in the Capitol, at Washington, D.C.; the statue of Livingston is by E. D. Palmer.

See Frederick de Peyster,Biographical Sketch of Robert R. Livingston(New York, 1876); Robert K. Morton, “Robert R. Livingston: Beginnings of American Diplomacy,” inThe John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph-Macon College, i. 299-324, and ii. 34-46; and J. B. Moore, “Robert R. Livingston and the Louisiana Purchase,” inColumbia University Quarterly, v. 6 (1904), pp. 221-229.

See Frederick de Peyster,Biographical Sketch of Robert R. Livingston(New York, 1876); Robert K. Morton, “Robert R. Livingston: Beginnings of American Diplomacy,” inThe John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph-Macon College, i. 299-324, and ii. 34-46; and J. B. Moore, “Robert R. Livingston and the Louisiana Purchase,” inColumbia University Quarterly, v. 6 (1904), pp. 221-229.

LIVINGSTON, WILLIAM(1723-1790), American political leader, was born at Albany, New York, probably on the 30th of November 1723. He was the son of Philip Livingston (1686-1749), and grandson of Robert Livingston (1654-1725), who was born at Ancrum, Scotland, emigrated to America about 1673, and received grants (beginning in 1686) to “Livingston Manor” (a tract of land on the Hudson, comprising the greater part of what are now Dutchess and Columbia counties). This Robert Livingston, founder of the American family, became in 1675 secretary of the important Board of Indian Commissioners; he was a member of the New York Assembly in 1711-1715 and 1716-1727 and its speaker in 1718-1725, and in 1701 made the proposal that all the English colonies in America should be grouped for administrative purposes “into three distinct governments.”

William Livingston graduated at Yale College in 1741, studied law in the city of New York, and was admitted to the bar in 1748. He served in the New York legislature (1759-1760), but his political influence was long exerted chiefly through pamphlets and newspaper articles. The Livingston family then led the Dissenters, who later became Whigs, and the De Lancey family represented the Anglican Tory interests. Through the columns of theIndependent Reflector, which he established in 1752, Livingston fought the attempt of the Anglican party to bring the projected King’s College (now Columbia University) under the control of the Church of England. After the suspension of theReflectorin 1753, he edited in theNew York Mercurythe “Watch Tower” section (1754-1755), which became the recognized organ of the Presbyterian faction. In opposition to the efforts of the Anglicans to procure the establishment of an American episcopate, he wrote an openLetter to the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord, Bishop of Llandaff(1768), and edited and in large measure wrote the “American Whig” columns in theNew York Gazette(1768-1769). In 1772 he removed to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where after 1773 he lived on his estate known as “Liberty Hall.” He represented New Jersey in the first and second Continental Congresses (1774,1775-1776), but left Philadelphia in June 1776, probably to avoid voting on the question of adopting the Declaration of Independence, which he regarded as inexpedient. He was chosen first governor of the state of New Jersey in 1776, and was regularly re-elected until his death in 1790. Loyal to American interests and devoted to General Washington, he was one of the most useful of the state executives during the War of Independence. While governor he was a frequent contributor to theNew Jersey Gazette, and in this way he greatly aided the American cause during the war by his denunciation of the enemy and appeals to the patriotism of his countrymen. He was a delegate to the Federal Constitutional Convention of 1787, and supported the New Jersey small-state plan. In 1754 he joined with his brother, Philip Livingston, his brother-in-law, William Alexander (“Lord Stirling”) and others in founding what is now known as the Society Library of New York. With the help of William Smith (1728-1793), the New York historian, William Livingston prepared a digest of the laws of New York for the period 1691-1756, which was published in two volumes (1752 and 1762). He died at Elizabeth, New Jersey, on the 25th of July 1790.

See Theodore Sedgwick, Jr.,Life of William Livingston(New York, 1833); and E. B. Livingston,The Livingstons of Livingston Manor(1910).

See Theodore Sedgwick, Jr.,Life of William Livingston(New York, 1833); and E. B. Livingston,The Livingstons of Livingston Manor(1910).

His brother,Peter van Brugh Livingston(1710-1792), was a prominent merchant and a Whig political leader in New York. He was one of the founders of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), was a member of the New York Council for some years before the War of Independence, a member and president of the First Provincial Congress of New York (1775), and a member of the Second Provincial Congress (1775-1776).

Another brother,Philip Livingston(1716-1778), was also prominent as a leader of the New York Whigs or Patriots. He was a member of the New York Assembly in 1759-1769, a delegate to the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, a member of the Continental Congress from 1774 until his death and as such a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and in 1777-1778 was a member of the first state senate.

William’s son,(Henry) Brockholst Livingston(1757-1823), was an officer in the American War of Independence, and was an able lawyer and judge. From 1807 until his death he was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, and he wrote political pamphlets under the pen-name “Decius.”

LIVINGSTONE, DAVID(1813-1873), Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa, was born on the 19th of March 1813, at the village of Blantyre Works, in Lanarkshire, Scotland. David was the second child of his parents, Neil Livingston (for so he spelled his name, as did his son for many years) and Agnes Hunter. His parents were typical examples of all that is best among the humbler families of Scotland. At the age of ten years David left the village school for the neighbouring cotton-mill, and by strenuous efforts qualified himself at the age of twenty-three to undertake a college curriculum. He attended for two sessions the medical and the Greek classes in Anderson’s College, Glasgow, and also a theological class. In September 1838 he went up to London, and was accepted by the London Missionary Society as a candidate. He took his medical degree in the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow in November 1840. Livingstone had set his heart on China, and it was a great disappointment to him that the society finally decided to send him to Africa. To an exterior in these early years somewhat heavy and uncouth, he united a manner which, by universal testimony, was irresistibly winning, with a fund of genuine but simple humour and fun that would break out on the most unlikely occasions, and in after years enabled him to overcome difficulties and mellow refractory chiefs when all other methods failed.

Livingstone sailed from England on the 8th of December 1840. From Algoa Bay he made direct for Kuruman, Bechuanaland, the mission station, 700 m. north, established by Robert Moffat twenty years before, and there he arrived on the 31st of July 1841. The next two years Livingstone spent in travelling about the country to the northwards, in search of a suitable outpost for settlement. During these two years he became convinced that the success of the white missionary in a field like Africa was not to be reckoned by the tale of doubtful conversions he could send home each year—that the proper work for such men was that of pioneering, opening up and starting new ground, leaving native agents to work it out in detail. The whole of his subsequent career was a development of this idea. He selected the valley of Mabotsa, on one of the sources of the Limpopo river, 200 m. north-east of Kuruman, as his first station. Shortly after his settlement here he was attacked by a lion which crushed his left arm. The arm was imperfectly set, and it was a source of trouble to him at times throughout his life,and was the means of identifying his body after his death. To a house, mainly built by himself at Mabotsa, Livingstone in 1844 brought home his wife, Mary Moffat, the daughter of Moffat of Kuruman. Here he laboured till 1846, when he removed to Chonuane, 40 m. farther north, the chief place of the Bakwain or Bakwena tribe under Sechele. In 1847 he again removed to Kolobeng, about 40 m. westwards, the whole tribe following their missionary. With the aid and in the company of two English sportsmen, William C. Oswell and Mungo Murray, he was able to undertake a journey to Lake Ngami, which had never yet been seen by a white man. Crossing the Kalahari Desert, of which Livingstone gave the first detailed account, they reached the lake on the 1st of August 1849. In April next year he made an attempt to reach Sebituane, who lived 200 m. beyond the lake, this time in company with his wife and children, but again got no farther than the lake, as the children were seized with fever. A year later, April 1851, Livingstone, again accompanied by his family and Oswell, set out, this time with the intention of settling among the Makololo for a period. At last he succeeded, and reached the Chobe (Kwando), a southern tributary of the Zambezi, and in the end of June reached the Zambezi itself at the town of Sesheke. Leaving the Chobe on the 13th of August the party reached Cape Town in April 1852. Livingstone may now be said to have completed the first period of his career in Africa, the period in which the work of the missionary had the greatest prominence. Henceforth he appears more in the character of an explorer, but it must be remembered that he regarded himself to the last as a pioneer missionary, whose work was to open up the country to others.

Having seen his family off to England, Livingstone left Cape Town on the 8th of June 1852, and turning north again reached Linyante, the capital of the Makololo, on the Chobe, on the 23rd of May 1853, being cordially received by Sekeletu and his people. His first object was to seek for some healthy high land in which to plant a station. Ascending the Zambezi, he, however, found no place free from the tsetse fly, and therefore resolved to discover a route to the interior from either the west or east coast. To accompany Livingstone twenty-seven men were selected from the various tribes under Sekeletu, partly with a view to open up a trade route between their own country and the coast. The start was made from Linyante on the 11th of November 1853, and, by ascending the Liba, Lake Dilolo was reached on the 20th of February 1854. On the 4th of April the Kwango was crossed, and on the 31st of May the town of Loanda was entered, Livingstone, however, being all but dead from fever, semi-starvation and dysentery. From Loanda Livingstone sent his astronomical observations to Sir Thomas Maclear at the Cape, and an account of his journey to the Royal Geographical Society, which in May 1855 awarded him its patron’s medal. Loanda was left on the 20th of September 1854, but Livingstone lingered long about the Portuguese settlements. Making a slight détour to the north to Kabango, the party reached Lake Dilolo on the 13th of June 1855. Here Livingstone made a careful study of the hydrography of the country. He “now for the first time apprehended the true form of the river systems and the continent,” and the conclusions he came to have been essentially confirmed by subsequent observations. The return journey from Lake Dilolo was by the same route as that by which the party came, Linyante being reached in the beginning of September.

For Livingstone’s purposes the route to the west was unavailable, and he decided to follow the Zambezi to its mouth. With a numerous following, he left Linyante on the 8th of November 1855. A fortnight afterwards he discovered the famous “Victoria” falls of the Zambezi. He had already formed a true idea of the configuration of the continent as a great hollow or basin-shaped plateau, surrounded by a ring of mountains. Livingstone reached the Portuguese settlement of Tete on the 2nd of March 1856, in a very emaciated condition. Here he left his men and proceeded to Quilimane, where he arrived on the 20th of May, thus having completed in two years and six months one of the most remarkable and fruitful journeys on record. The results in geography and in natural science in all its departments were abundant and accurate; his observations necessitated a reconstruction of the map of Central Africa. When Livingstone began his work in Africa the map was virtually a blank from Kuruman to Timbuktu, and nothing but envy or ignorance can throw any doubt on the originality of his discoveries.

On the 12th of December he arrived in England, after an absence of sixteen years, and met everywhere the welcome of a hero. He told his story in hisMissionary Travels and Researches in South Africa(1857) with straightforward simplicity, and with no effort after literary style, and no apparent consciousness that he had done anything extraordinary. Its publication brought what he would have considered a competency had he felt himself at liberty to settle down for life. In 1857 he severed his connexion with the London Missionary Society, with whom, however, he always remained on the best of terms, and in February 1858 he accepted the appointment of “Her Majesty’s consul at Quilimane for the eastern coast and the independent districts in the interior, and commander of an expedition for exploring eastern and central Africa.” The Zambezi expedition, of which Livingstone thus became commander, sailed from Liverpool in H.M.S. “Pearl” on the 10th of March 1858, and reached the mouth of the Zambezi on the 14th of May. The party, which included Dr (afterwards Sir) John Kirk and Livingstone’s brother Charles, ascended the river from the Kongone mouth in a steam launch, the “Ma-Robert”; reaching Tete on the 8th of September. The remainder of the year was devoted to an examination of the river above Tete, and especially the Kebrabasa rapids. Most of the year 1859 was spent in the exploration of the river Shiré and Lake Nyasa, which was discovered in September; and during a great part of the year 1860 Livingstone was engaged in fulfilling his promise to take such of the Makololo home as cared to go. In January of next year arrived Bishop C. F. Mackenzie and a party of missionaries sent out by the Universities Mission to establish a station on the upper Shiré.

After exploring the river Rovuma for 30 m. in his new vessel the “Pioneer,” Livingstone and the missionaries proceeded up the Shiré to Chibisa’s; there they found the slave trade rampant. On the 15th of July Livingstone, accompanied by several native carriers, started to show the bishop the country. Several bands of slaves whom they met were liberated, and after seeing the missionary party settled in the highlands to the south of Lake Chilwa (Shirwa) Livingstone spent from August to November in exploring Lake Nyasa. While the boat sailed up the west side of the lake to near the north end, the explorer marched along the shore. He returned more resolved than ever to do his utmost to rouse the civilized world to put down the desolating slave-trade. On the 30th of January 1862, at the Zambezi mouth, Livingstone welcomed his wife and the ladies of the mission, with whom were the sections of the “Lady Nyassa,” a river steamer which Livingstone had had built at his own expense. When the mission ladies reached the mouth of the Ruo tributary of the Shiré, they were stunned to hear of the death of the bishop and one of his companions. This was a sad blow to Livingstone, seeming to have rendered all his efforts to establish a mission futile. A still greater loss to him was that of his wife at Shupanga, on the 27th of April 1862.

The “Lady Nyassa” was taken to the Rovuma. Up this river Livingstone managed to steam 156 m., but farther progress was arrested by rocks. Returning to the Zambezi in the beginning of 1863, he found that the desolation caused by the slave trade was more horrible and widespread than ever. It was clear that the Portuguese officials were themselves at the bottom of the traffic. Kirk and Charles Livingstone being compelled to return to England on account of their health, the doctor resolved once more to visit the lake, and proceeded some distance up the west side and then north-west as far as the watershed that separates the Loangwa from the rivers that run into the lake.Meanwhile a letter was received from Earl Russell recalling the expedition by the end of the year. In the end of April 1864 Livingstone reached Zanzibar in the “Lady Nyassa,” and on the 23rd of July Livingstone arrived in England. He was naturally disappointed with the comparative failure of this expedition. Still the geographical results, though not in extent to be compared to those of his first and his final expeditions, were of high importance, as were those in various departments of science, and he had unknowingly laid the foundations of the British protectorate of Nyasaland. Details will be found in hisNarrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries, published in 1865.

By Sir Roderick Murchison and his other staunch friends Livingstone was as warmly welcomed as ever. When Murchison proposed to him that he should go out again, although he seems to have had a desire to spend the remainder of his days at home, the prospect was too tempting to be rejected. He was appointed British consul to Central Africa without a salary, and government contributed only £500 to the expedition. The chief help came from private friends. During the latter part of the expedition government granted him £1000, but that, when he learned of it, was devoted to his great undertaking. The Geographical Society contributed £500. The two main objects of the expedition were the suppression of slavery by means of civilizing influences, and the ascertainment of the watershed in the region between Nyasa and Tanganyika. At first Livingstone thought the Nile problem had been all but solved by Speke, Baker and Burton, but the idea grew upon him that the Nile sources must be sought farther south, and his last journey became in the end a forlorn hope in search of the “fountains” of Herodotus. Leaving England in the middle of August 1865, via Bombay, Livingstone arrived at Zanzibar on the 28th of January 1866. He was landed at the mouth of the Rovuma on the 22nd of March, and started for the interior on the 4th of April. His company consisted of thirteen sepoys, ten Johanna men, nine African boys from Nasik school, Bombay, and four boys from the Shiré region, besides camels, buffaloes, mules and donkeys. This imposing outfit soon melted away to four or five boys. Rounding the south end of Lake Nyasa, Livingstone struck in a north-north-west direction for the south end of Lake Tanganyika, over country much of which had not previously been explored. The Loangwa was crossed on the 15th of December 1866. On Christmas day Livingstone lost his four goats, a loss which he felt very keenly, and the medicine chest was stolen in January 1867. Fever came upon him, and for a time was his almost constant companion; this, with other serious ailments which subsequently attacked him, and which he had no medicine to counteract, told on even his iron frame. The Chambezi was crossed on the 28th of January, and the south end of Tanganyika reached on the 31st of March. Here, much to his vexation, he got into the company of Arab slave dealers (among them being Tippoo-Tib) by whom his movements were hampered; but he succeeded in reaching Lake Mweru (Nov. 1867). After visiting Lake Mofwa and the Lualaba, which he believed was the upper part of the Nile, he, on the 18th of July 1868, discovered Lake Bangweulu. Proceeding up the west coast of Tanganyika, he reached Ujiji on the 14th of March 1869, “a ruckle of bones.” Livingstone recrossed Tanganyika in July, and passed through the country of the Manyema, but baffled partly by the natives, partly by the slave hunters, and partly by his long illnesses it was not till the 29th of March 1871 that he succeeded in reaching the Lualaba, at the town of Nyangwe, where he stayed four months, vainly trying to get a canoe to take him across. It was here that a party of Arab slavers, without warning or provocation, assembled one day when the market was busiest and commenced shooting the women, hundreds being killed or drowned in trying to escape. Livingstone had “the impression that he was in hell,” but was helpless, though his “first impulse was to pistol the murderers.” The account of this scene which he sent home roused indignation in England to such a degree as to lead to determined and to a considerable extent successful efforts to get the sultan of Zanzibar to suppress the trade. In sickened disgust the weary traveller made his way back to Ujiji, which he reached on the 13th of October. Five days after his arrival in Ujiji he was inspired with new life by the timely arrival of H. M. Stanley, the richly laden almoner of Mr Gordon Bennett, of theNew York Herald. With Stanley Livingstone explored the north end of Tanganyika, and proved conclusively that the Rusizi runs into and not out of it. In the end of the year the two started eastward for Unyamwezi, where Stanley provided Livingstone with an ample supply of goods, and bade him farewell. Stanley left on the 15th of March 1872, and after Livingstone had waited wearily in Unyamwezi for five months, a troop of fifty-seven men and boys arrived, good and faithful fellows on the whole, selected by Stanley himself. Thus attended, he started on the 15th of August for Lake Bangweulu, proceeding along the east side of Tanganyika. His old enemy dysentery soon found him out. In January 1873 the party got among the endless spongy jungle on the east of Lake Bangweulu, Livingstone’s object being to go round by the south and away west to find the “fountains.” The doctor got worse and worse, and in the middle of April he had unwillingly to submit to be carried in a rude litter. On the 29th of April Chitambo’s village on the Lulimala, in Ilala, on the south shore of the lake, was reached. The last entry in the journal is on the 27th of April: “Knocked up quite, and remain—recover—sent to buy milch goats. We are on the banks of the Molilamo.” On the 30th of April he with difficulty wound up his watch, and early on the morning of the 1st of May the boys found “the great master,” as they called him, kneeling by the side of his bed, dead. His faithful men preserved the body in the sun as well as they could, and, wrapping it carefully up, carried it and all his papers, instruments and other things across Africa to Zanzibar. It was borne to England with all honour, and on the 18th of April 1874, was deposited in Westminster Abbey. His faithfully kept journals during these seven years’ wanderings were published under the title of theLast Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa, in 1874, edited by his old friend the Rev. Horace Waller. In Old Chitambo’s the time and place of his death are commemorated by a permanent monument, which replaced in 1902 the tree on which his native followers had recorded the event.

In spite of his sufferings and the many compulsory delays, Livingstone’s discoveries during these last years were both extensive and of prime importance as leading to a solution of African hydrography. No single African explorer has ever done so much for African geography as Livingstone during his thirty years’ work. His travels covered one-third of the continent, extending from the Cape to near the equator, and from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. Livingstone was no hurried traveller; he did his journeying leisurely, carefully observing and recording all that was worthy of note, with rare geographical instinct and the eye of a trained scientific observer, studying the ways of the people, eating their food, living in their huts, and sympathizing with their joys and sorrows. In all the countries through which he travelled his memory is cherished by the native tribes who, almost without exception, treated Livingstone as a superior being; his treatment of them was always tender, gentle and gentlemanly. By the Arab slavers whom he opposed he was also greatly admired, and was by them styled “the very great doctor.” “In the annals of exploration of the Dark Continent,” wrote Stanley many years after the death of the missionary explorer, “we look in vain among other nationalities for a name such as Livingstone’s. He stands pre-eminent above all; he unites in himself all the best qualities of other explorers. ... Britain ... excelled herself even when she produced the strong and perseverant Scotchman, Livingstone.” But the direct gains to geography and science are perhaps not the greatest results of Livingstone’s journeys. His example and his death acted like an inspiration, filling Africa with an army of explorers and missionaries, and raising in Europe so powerful a feeling against the slave trade that through him it may be considered as having received its deathblow. Personally Livingstone was a pure and tender-hearted man, full of humanity and sympathy, simple-minded as a child.The motto of his life was the advice he gave to some school children in Scotland—“Fear God, and work hard.”

See, besides his own narratives and W. G. Blaikie’sLife(1880), the publications of the London Missionary Society from 1840, theJournal and Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, the despatches to the Foreign Office sent home by Livingstone during his last two expeditions, and Stanley’sAutobiography(1909) andHow I Found Livingstone(1872).

See, besides his own narratives and W. G. Blaikie’sLife(1880), the publications of the London Missionary Society from 1840, theJournal and Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, the despatches to the Foreign Office sent home by Livingstone during his last two expeditions, and Stanley’sAutobiography(1909) andHow I Found Livingstone(1872).

(J. S. K.)

LIVINGSTONE MOUNTAINS,a band of highlands in German East Africa, forming the eastern border of the rift-valley of Lake Nyasa, at the northern end of the lake. In parts these highlands, known also under their native name of Kinga, present rather the character of a plateau than of a true mountain range, but the latter name may be justified by the fact that they form a comparatively narrow belt of country, which falls considerably to the east as well as to the west. The northern end is well marked in 8° 50′ S. by an escarpment falling to the Ruaha valley, which is regarded as a north-eastern branch of the main rift-valley. Southwards the Livingstone range terminates in the deep valley of the Ruhuhu in 10° 30′ S., the first decided break in the highlands that is reached from the north, on the east coast of Nyasa. Geologically the range is formed on the side of the lake by a zone of gneiss running in a series of ridges and valleys generally parallel to its axis. The ridge nearest the lake (which in Mount Jamimbi or Chamembe, 9° 41′ S., rises to an absolute height of 7870 ft., or 6200 ft. above Nyasa) falls almost sheer to the water, the same steep slope being continued beneath the surface. Towards the south the range appears to have a width of some 20 m. only, but northwards it widens out to about 40 m., though broken here by the depression, drained towards the Ruaha, of Buanyi, on the south side of which is the highest known summit of the range (9600 ft.). North and east of Buanyi, as in the eastern half of the range generally, table-topped mountains occur, composed above of horizontally bedded quartzites, sandstones and conglomerates. The uplands are generally clothed in rich grass, forest occurring principally in the hollows, while the slopes towards the lake are covered with poor scrub. Native settlements are scattered over the whole range, and German mission stations have been established at Bulongwa and Mtandala, a little north of the north end of Nyasa. The climate is here healthy, and night frosts occur in the cold season. European crops are raised with success. At the foot of the mountains on Lake Nyasa are the ports of Wiedhafen, at the mouth of the Ruhuhu, and Old Langenburg, at the north-east corner of the lake.

(E. He.)

LIVIUS ANDRONĪCUS(c.284-204B.C.), the founder of Roman epic poetry and drama. His name, in which the GreekἈνδρόνικοςis combined with the gentile name of one of the great Roman houses, while indicative of his own position as a manumitted slave, is also significant of the influences by which Roman literature was fostered, viz. the culture of men who were either Greeks or “semi-Graeci” by birth and education, and the protection and favour bestowed upon them by the more enlightened members of the Roman aristocracy. He is supposed to have been a native of Tarentum, and to have been brought, while still a boy, after the capture of that town in 272, as a slave to Rome. He lived in the household of a member of the gens Livia, probably M. Livius Salinator. He determined the course which Roman literature followed for more than a century after his time. The imitation of Greek comedy, tragedy and epic poetry, which produced great results in the hands of Naevius, Plautus, Ennius and their successors, received its first impulse from him. To judge, however, from the insignificant remains of his writings, and from the opinions of Cicero and Horace, he can have had no pretension either to original genius or to artistic accomplishment. His real claim to distinction was that he was the first great schoolmaster of the Roman people. We learn from Suetonius that, like Ennius after him, he obtained his living by teaching Greek and Latin; and it was probably as a school-book, rather than as a work of literary pretension, that his translation of theOdysseyinto Latin Saturnian verse was executed. This work was still used in schools in the time of Horace (Epp.ii. 1., 69), and, although faultily executed, satisfied a real want by introducing the Romans to a knowledge of Greek. Such knowledge became essential to men in a high position as a means of intercourse with Greeks, while Greek literature stimulated the minds of leading Romans. Moreover, southern Italy and Sicily afforded many opportunities for witnessing representations of Greek comedies and tragedies. The Romans and Italians had an indigenous drama of their own, known by the name ofSatura, which prepared them for the reception of the more regular Greek drama. The distinction between thisSaturaand the plays of Euripides or Menander was that it had no regular plot. This the Latin drama first received from Livius Andronicus; but it did so at the cost of its originality. In 240, the year after the end of the first Punic War, he produced at the ludi Romani a translation of a Greek play (it is uncertain whether a comedy or tragedy or both), and this representation marks the beginning of Roman literature (Livy vii. 2). Livius himself took part in his plays, and in order to spare his voice he introduced the custom of having the solos (cantica) sung by a boy, while he himself represented the action of the song by dumb show. In his translation he discarded the native Saturnian metre, and adopted the iambic, trochaic and cretic metres, to which Latin more easily adapted itself than either to the hexameter or to the lyrical measures of a later time. He continued to produce plays for more than thirty years after this time. The titles of his tragedies—Achilles,Aegisthus,Equus Trojanus,Hermione,Tereus—are all suggestive of subjects which were treated by the later tragic poets of Rome. In the year 207, when he must have been of a great age, he was appointed to compose a hymn of thanksgiving, sung by maidens, for the victory of the Metaurus and an intercessory hymn to the Aventine Juno. As a further tribute of national recognition the “college” or “gild” of poets and actors was granted a place of meeting in the temple of Minerva on the Aventine.

See fragments in L. Müller,Livi Andronici et Cn. Naevi Fabularum Reliquiae(1885); also J. Wordsworth,Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin(1874); Mommsen,Hist. of Rome, bk. iii. ch. 14.

See fragments in L. Müller,Livi Andronici et Cn. Naevi Fabularum Reliquiae(1885); also J. Wordsworth,Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin(1874); Mommsen,Hist. of Rome, bk. iii. ch. 14.

LIVNO,a town of Bosnia, situated on the eastern side of the fertile plain of Livno, at the foot of Mount Krug (6581 ft.). Pop. about 5000. The Dalmatian border is 7 m. W. Livno had a trade in grain, live-stock and silver filigree-work up to 1904, when a fire swept away more than 500 of the old Turkish houses, together with the Roman citadel. Remains prove that Livno occupies the site of a Roman settlement, the name of which is uncertain. The Roman Catholic convent of Gurici is 6 m. S.


Back to IndexNext