The first thing I did when researching this piece of writing was to look at a modern physical map of South Africa and envision that the urban areas and the modern road network shown thereupon were on a thin film that could be peeled away. What remained on the under layer were the physical features such as the coastline, rivers, escarpments and mountain ranges. It was a clean canvas on which I could put settlements on, but before I could do this I had to determine a date in history. I chose the year of 1841 as that was when the young David Livingstone, 28 years of age, first set foot on African soil.
Young David Livingstone
Livingstone is best remembered as the intrepid explorer who mapped out vast tracts of central Africa and who was thought lost in 'Darkest Africa' and then found on the shore of Lake Tanganyika at Ijiji (on 10th November 1871) by Henry Morton Stanley; his greeting to Livingstone of “Dr. Livingstone I presume?” has become one of most hackneyed (done to death) sayings in the English language.
When Dr. Livingstone came to Africa it was to be as a medical missionary, recruited by the London Missionary Society (LMS) and sent to join Robert Moffat at the Kuruman Mission, to preach the Gospel to...
