David Livingstone

I left a Scottish mill town for southern Africa in 1841, a physician and missionary convinced that "Christianity, Commerce, and Civilization" might together wound the slave trade. I set up clinics, preached where I could, and learned the ground by walking it.

Across the Kalahari I reached Lake Ngami in 1849. Between 1854 and 1856 I went from the Atlantic at Luanda to the Indian Ocean at Quelimane, fixing positions by observation and note. In 1855 I came to Mosi-oa-Tunya—"the smoke that thunders"—which I introduced to European readers as Victoria Falls.

Under official charge I led the Zambezi Expedition (1858–1864) to find navigable water for lawful trade. We brought home plants, soundings, and journals, but disease, shoals, and poor judgment checked our aims. London called it failure; I called it instruction.

From 1866 I pressed inland toward the Nile’s sources and recorded the slave-raiding that fed the eastern caravan routes. My long silence drew Henry Morton Stanley to Ujiji in 1871; whatever he said, I would not go back with him. My health failed near Lake Bangweulu in 1873. Susi and Chuma bore my body to the coast, my heart resting in African soil. I knew, even then, the bitter truth: the lines I traced against bondage could be read as avenues for empire.