Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa

1857

de Beer Eb 1857 L

London: John Murray

Some 45 years after Park’s first expedition, fellow Scot and ‘medical missionary’ David Livingstone (1813-1873) embarked on his own explorations into ‘Darkest Africa’. Although Livingstone was wrong about the source of the Nile, he (re)-discovered other important geographical features such as Lake Ngami (1849), the Zambezi River (1851), and Victoria Falls (November 1855), named after Queen Victoria but previously known as Mosi-oa-Tunya (‘the smoke that thunders’). Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857) carries a striking lithograph of the Falls and the classic statement within: ‘Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.’ Livingstone was the first European to see the Falls. This first edition was purchased locally.