Stanley Finds Livingstone at Ujiji

Born in 1813 into a cotton factory community in Blantyre, Scotland, David Livingstone began his working life as a child laborer. He began mill work as a child, around the age of ten, and endured long working days while pursuing studies in his spare hours, eventually reconciling science and religious faith through the theological writings of Thomas Dick. Helped by his earnings from mill work, Livingstone studied medicine at Anderson's University in Glasgow before gaining clinical experience at hospitals in London. After training under the London Missionary Society and earning qualification as a medical practitioner in 1840, he turned toward southern Africa under the encouragement of Robert Moffat.

Arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in 1841, Livingstone pushed inland past established settlements to establish pioneer mission stations. He survived a severe lion mauling at Mabotsa in 1844 that permanently impaired his left arm, yet continued traveling widely across the Kalahari region. Although his pastoral work yielded few conversions, Livingstone increasingly viewed trade, exploration, and the promotion of legitimate European commerce as the only viable instruments to undermine the regional slave trade. Between 1852 and 1856, assisted by Kololo leaders and guides, he crossed the African continent from the Atlantic port of Luanda to the Indian Ocean at Quelimane, an arduous journey during which he charted the Zambezi River.