Description

The success of the Victorian explorer and missionary David Livingstone's first book, Missionary Travels (1857), led to his receiving government funding in 1858 for an expedition up the Zambezi River. The trip was expected to last two years, and was intended to further commercial and scientific as well as missionary aims. However, owing to internal disagreements, illness (including the death of Livingstone's wife), drought and tribal warfare, the explorers' mission took six and a half years and achieved little apart from collecting plant and geological specimens. The upper reaches of the Zambesi proved unnavigable owing to rapids and waterfalls, and the expedition was recalled. This account, published in 1865 by Livingstone (1813-1873) and his younger brother Charles, who had accompanied him, was in part an attempt to excuse the problems which had beset the expedition, and restore Livingstone's reputation in order to gain backing for further ventures.