During his travels as a missionary, David Livingstone beheld many previously unknown wonders of the African interior. He put Victoria Falls and Lake Ngami on the map, and was the first white man to cross the African continent. Diaries, reports and letters are combined to create a wonderful narration of Livingstone's travels in a widely unknown continent. Included in this harrowing tale is Livingstone's narrow escape from a lion's wrath, his negotiations with an African chief, and his account of the Portuguese slave traders brutally punishing slaves after their attempt to escape. The Life and African Explorations of Livingstone also reveals Livingstone's deeply-rooted Christian beliefs and the strength he took from them, strength that allowed him to live and thrive amid the hardships of equatorial Africa.
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.
What really happened to Dr. David Livingstone? The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Survivor: The Ultimate Game investigates in this thrilling account. With the utterance of a single line—“Doctor Livingstone, I presume?”—a remote meeting in the heart of Africa was transformed into one of the most famous encounters in exploration history. But the true story behind Dr. David Livingstone and journalist Henry Morton Stanley is one that has escaped telling. Into Africa is an extraordinarily researched account of a thrilling adventure—defined by alarming foolishness, intense courage, and raw human achievement. In the mid-1860s, exploration had reached a plateau. The seas and continents had been mapped, the globe circumnavigated. Yet one vexing puzzle remained unsolved: what was the source of the mighty Nile river? Aiming to settle the mystery once and for all, Great Britain called upon its legendary explorer, Dr. David Livingstone, who had spent years in Africa as a missionary. In March 1866, Livingstone steered a massive expedition into the heart of Africa. In his path lay nearly impenetrable, uncharted terrain, hostile cannibals, and deadly predators. Within weeks, the explorer had vanished without a trace. Years passed with no word. While debate raged in England over whether Livingstone could be found—or rescued—from a place as daunting as Africa, James Gordon Bennett, Jr., the brash American newspaper tycoon, hatched a plan to capitalize on the world’s fascination with the missing legend. He would send a young journalist, Henry Morton Stanley, into Africa to search for Livingstone. A drifter with great ambition, but little success to show for it, Stanley undertook his assignment with gusto, filing reports that would one day captivate readers and dominate the front page of the New York Herald. Tracing the amazing journeys of Livingstone and Stanley in alternating chapters, author Martin Dugard captures with breathtaking immediacy the perils and challenges these men faced. Woven into the narrative, Dugard tells an equally compelling story of the remarkable transformation that occurred over the course of nine years, as Stanley rose in power and prominence and Livingstone found himself alone and in mortal danger. The first book to draw on modern research and to explore the combination of adventure, politics, and larger-than-life personalities involved, Into Africa is a riveting read.
Prepare for geographical whiplash as you travel around the world with author Jeff Scoggins through his adventures as a military brat, then missionary kid turned missionary family. Hold your breath as little Jeff saws into a live bullet with a hacksaw, runs from his schoolroom to a nearby bomb shelter, takes a punch from the class bully, buys a three-hundred-dollar bunch of bananas, rows furiously down an African river to escape its crocs and hippos, and much more. Then, experience the goodness of an angel in a red Dodge pickup, listen in as Jeff's dad asks how he plans to dispose of the dead body in his trunk, and watch as he scrambles to pull up tent stakes ahead of a storm full of tornadoes. Ultimately, through the power of these short but exciting stories, you’ll discover that no earthly adventure beats the one that is living life with Jesus.
As a dutiful Victorian daughter, the author was thirty before being freed (by her parents' deaths) to do as she chose. She went to West Africa in 1893 and again in 1895, to investigate the beliefs and customs of the inland tribes and also to collect zoological specimens. She was appalled by the 'thin veneer of rubbishy white culture' imposed by British officials and was not afraid to say so.
