Dr David Livingstone

Dr David Livingstone (1813-1873).
- Dr Livingstone I Presume?

Dr Livingstone

Few Europeans have contributed as much to the exploration of Africa. Scotsman Dr David Livingstone was a curious combination of missionary, doctor, explorer, scientist and anti-slavery activist. He spent 30 years in Africa, exploring almost a third of the continent, from its southern tip almost to the equator.

Dr David Livingstone received a gold medal from the London Royal Geographical for being the first to cross the entire African Continent from west to east. He was the first white man to see Victoria Falls and though he never discovered the source of the Nile, one of his goals, he eliminated some possibilities and thereby helped direct the efforts of others. Although popular among native tribes in Africa, David Livingstone made enemies of some white settlers there because he learned African languages and had an unusually keen understanding and sympathy for native people and cultures. In 1843, while settling the Mabotsa valley, Livingstone shot a lion. Before it died, however, the lion attacked Livingstone, costing him the use of his left arm.

In 1865, at age 52, Dr Livingstone set out on his last and most famous journey. He soon lost his medicine, animals and porters, but struggled on almost alone. At a village on the Lualaba River he witnessed the slaughter of villagers by slave traders. The letter he sent home describing the event so infuriated the public that the English government pressured the Sultan of Zanzibar to stop the slave trade. The pressure was only partially successful. The trans-Atlantic slave trade, organised by the Portuguese, had began around 1530. In 1562 Sir John Hawkins started the English slave trade, taking cargoes of slaves from West Africa to the newly discovered Americas.

On the 10th of November 1871 in the village of Ujiji, on the east side of Lake Tanganyika, Dr David Livingstone encountered Henry Stanley. He greeted him with the (now famous) understated words: "Dr Livingstone, I presume?". Stanley had been sent by the New York Herald Tribune newspaper to help, but it had taken a year to find him. With Stanley's supplies Livingstone continued his explorations, but he was weak, worn out and suffering from dysentery. Then, on the morning of April 30, 1872, his two African assistants found him dead, still kneeling at his bedside, apparently praying when he died. They dried his body and carried it and his papers on a dangerous 11-month journey to Zanzibar, a trip of 1,000 miles. The natives buried his heart in Africa as he had requested, but his body was returned to England and Dr David Livingstone was buried in Westminster Abbey.

East Africa Askari Colonial Soldier Collection

Click here for details of the hand carved wooden Askari Soldiers, in three sizes from 17 inch to 6 foot tall

Wooden Soldier Regimental Histories

All of my wooden soldiers are made in strictly limited editions, click here for a regimental history of each soldier.