The story of David Livingstone

The story of David Livingstone by Vautier Golding is a biographical narrative for young readers written in the early 20th century. It recounts the life and expeditions of the Scottish missionary-explorer who crossed vast regions of Africa, mapped rivers and lakes, and campaigned relentlessly against the slave trade, presenting him as a model of courage, service, and faith.

The opening of the narrative follows Livingstone from a childhood in a Scottish mill, where he self-educated and chose to become a doctor-missionary, to his early African years, disillusionment with coastal mission routines, and resolve to pioneer inland. It sketches his treks with William Cotton Oswell across the Kalahari to Lake Ngami, his coast-to-coast journey that revealed the Zambesi and the Victoria Falls, and his aim to end slavery by opening trade routes via the Shiré and Lake Nyassa. It then covers the troubled Zambesi Expedition—faulty steamers, rescues of enslaved captives, the Ajawa clash, and the death of his wife—followed by recall, his audacious ocean voyage in the tiny Lady Nyassa, and a return to press the anti-slavery cause. Finally, it recounts his grueling, nearly solitary push to locate the great river sources amid betrayal, theft of medicines, fever and hunger, discoveries of Lakes Moero and Bangweolo, and the Lualaba massacre that galvanized British action against slavery, ending with his collapse at Ujiji just as H. M. Stanley arrives with relief.