ence, the "advance-agent" of
discovery, settlement, and civilization. These are at last bringing the
"Dark Continent" into the light of a new day that begins to dawn in the
remotest corners of the earth.

David Livingstone was born near Glasgow, Scotland, March 19, 1813, and
he died in Central Africa April 30, 1873. After he had been admitted to
the medical profession and had studied theology, he decided to join
Robert Moffat, the celebrated missionary, in Africa. Livingstone arrived
at Cape Town in 1840, and soon moved toward the interior. He spent
sixteen years in Africa, engaged in medical and missionary labors and in
making his famous and most useful explorations of the country. His own
account of the beginnings of his work, taken from his _Missionary
Travels_, shows the sincere and simple spirit of the man, and his
natural powers of observation and description are seen in his own story
of his first important discovery, that of Lake Ngami. The narrative of
Thomas Hughes, the well-known English author, whose favorite subjects
were manly men and their characteristic deeds, follows the explorer on
the first of his famous journeys in the Zambesi Basin.

DAVID LIVINGSTONE

I embarked for Africa in 1840, and, after a voyage of three months,
reached Cape Town. Spending but a short time there, I started for the
interior by going round to Algoa Bay, and soon proceeded inland, and
spent the following sixteen years of my life, namely, from 1840 to 1856,
in medical and missionary labors there without cost to the inhabitants.

The general instructions I received from the directors of the London
Missionary Society led me, as soon as I reached Kuruman or Lattakoo,
then their farthest inland station from the Cape, to turn my attention
to the north. Without waiting longer at Kuruman than was necessary to
recruit the oxen, which were pretty well tired by the long journey from
Algoa Bay, I proceeded, in company with another missionary, to the
Bechuana or Bakwain country, and found Sechele, with his tribe, located
at Shokuane. We shortly afterward retraced our steps to Kuruman; but as
the objects in view were by no means to be attained by a temporary
excursion of this sort, I determined to make a fresh start into the
interior as soon as possible. Accordingly, after resting three months at
Kuruman, which is a kind of head station in the country, I returned to a
spot about fifteen miles south of Shokuane, called Lepelole (now
Litub