1813-1873
Missionary And Explorer

Youthful Ambitions. The most renowned explorer of the nineteenth century, David Livingstone was born in Blantyre, Lanarkshire, in 1813. He was raised in a pious family that strictly abided by the Calvinist tenets of the Scottishestablished church. While working in a textile factory as a youth, he began studying Greek and Latin. An 1834 public appeal for medical missionaries in China caught Livingstone's imagination, and he prepared himself for the mission field by studying medicine and theology at the University of Glasgow. The Opium War (1839-1842) prevented Livingstone from going to China, but after meeting Robert Moffat (a notable Scottish missionary stationed in South Africa), he shifted his ambitions to Africa.

Africa. In November 1840 he was ordained as a medical missionary by the London Missionary Society and left for the Society's South African mission the following month. In July 1841 he reached the Kuruman station...