What Really Happened When Stanley Met Livingstone
Traveling 29,000 miles back and forth across Africa, David Livingstone was horrified by the Arab Muslim slave trade. His letters, books, and journals stirred up a public outcry to abolish slavery. Livingston often passed caravans of 1,000 slaves tied together with neck yokes or leg irons, marching single file 500 miles down to the sea carrying ivory and heavy loads. Slaves who complained were speared and left to die, resulting in slave caravans being traced by vultures and hyenas feasting on corpses.
Livingstone was so loved by Africans that when they found him dead in 1873 near Lake Bangweulu, kneeling beside his bed after suffering from malaria, they buried his heart in Africa. His body was sent, packed in salt, back to England to be buried in Westminster Abbey.