An expensive letter, we presume
Afascinatingletterby19thcentury Scots explorer Dr David Livingstone to the Prime Minister recounting a hair-raising African expedition has come to light 161 years on.
In it, he describes how he was shot at by angry tribesmen firing poisoned arrows and then surrounded by Zulus 'rattling their shields' at him. Also in his private letter to Prime Minister Lord Palmerston, he criticised the damage done by the slave trade in east Africa.
A vocal opponent of slavery, he commented on an encounter he had with a Portuguese slave ship and his desire to 'capture' it.
He wrote: "I had a strong desire to capture this vessel... Had I possessed slave papers I might have tried."
Although slavery was abolished in Britain in 1833, the Portuguese allowed it in its colonies until 1869. His report to Downing Street, dated November 12, 1861, has been put up for sale by a private collector for £20,000 with auctioneers Sotheby's.
Gabrielheaton,manuscripts specialist at Sotheby's, said: "This is a very important letter and due to its length provides a hugely detailed account of his activities exploring Africa. Furthermore, it was written to the Prime Minister of the time and it is fascinating that from a remote part of Africa he had such a direct line of communication with Lord Palmerston.” and did not see the African population as having no connection with the wider world."
Dr Livingstone, from Blantyre, South Lanarkshire, became obsessed with discovering the age-old mystery of the sources of the Nile. He believed that in doing so, the fame and influence bestowed upon him would have helped bring an end to the slave trade.
In 1858 he began a five-year expedition to east Africa on
behalf of the British government.
In one passage in his letter back to Lord Palmerston he recounted a violent meeting with the Ajawa tribe in Tanzania where he had to 'act in self defence and drive them off '.
He wrote: "Some foolish Manganja called out that one of their sorcerers had come and deprived us of the protection of our English name. We were at once surrounded – and showers of poisoned arrows shot at us. We were obliged to act in self
defence and drive them off." In another, he described a fraught meeting with some Zulus. He said: "They were as much afraid of me as our men were of them – I went to them unarmed – and because I would not sit in the sun while they sat in the shade they tried to scare me by rattling their shields, and that having no effect…they sped away up the hills as if they had seen a ghost."
Dr Livingstone worked as a missionary doctor and was posted to the edge of the Kalahari
Desert in southern Africa in 1845. In the 1850s, he became the first European to cross the width of southern Africa, encountering a spectacular waterfall he named Victoria Falls.
Dr Livingstone died from dysentery and malaria in North Rhodesia,nowzambia,in1873. His heart was buried under a Mvula tree and his remains were brought home to be laid to rest at Westminster Abbey. The letter will be sold today.