Lossing unforgettably captured pre-Civil War America, when NYC numbered 300,000 people, and steamboats and railroads plied the Hudson River and its banks. The Hudson Valley was pastureland and farmland surrounding a few sleepy villages and a handful of bustling river ports, and Revolutionary War exploits were still a hot topic of conversation.
This book is the full personal account of Dr. Livingstone's historic travels across the continent of Africa based on his personal journals. While Livingstone is looked upon as an explorer in an age of explosive geographical and cultural discovery, the fact is often overlooked that Livingstone was first and foremost a Missionary of the Gospel, and his travels were missionary journeys. As Livingstone himself puts it in his introduction to this work, "The perfect freeness with which the pardon of all our guilt is offered in God's book drew forth feelings of affectionate love to Him who bought us with His blood, and a sense of deep obligation to Him for His mercy has influenced, in some small measure, my conduct ever since." This is the heart of the man whom God sent. "This book will speak, not so much of what has been done, as of what still remains to be performed, before the Gospel can be said to have been preached to all nations." After 150 years this statement is still true of all true Gospel outreach. This is the story of the labors to which the Love of Jesus compelled a great man. This is the story of first contact with African tribes, and first charting into the interior of the great Dark Continent. This is, first and foremost, the story of the Gospel reaching into Africa.
The continuing Archaeological Exploration of Sardis has excavated the remains of a gold refinery at the site, dating from the sixth century BC at the very inception of bimetallic coinage.".