BIRTHPLACE OF HERO

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 13 July 1929, Page 3

BIRTHPLACE OF HERO

LIVINGSTONE’S OLD HOME ' NL.W PLACE OF PILGRIMAGE It is..expected that In the course , of this year’s .British summer the house in winch David Livingstone was born in Blau Lyre in Lanarkshire will bo opened as a. museum illustrating his life’s work. The ten acres of gPcmud around it will have been prepared for (lie use of excursions and Sunday school outings. Of the £12,000 asked for to complete this lasting and most suitable memorial £BSOO had been received a few weeks ago. The honour of Scotland, of Christianits everywhere, find of the whole modern world is in pledge to perfect this enterprise, says the “Children’s Newspaper,” for David Livingstone was unquestionably one of the greatest, most heroic, and most influential men who have ever lived. Good, pure, brave, indomitable, inspired by lofty aims, a simple, plain man who won the hearts of all who knew him, whether they were civilised or uncivilised, he lived a life of amazing toil and died a glorious death for Africa: and the change from tho Africa lie knew to the Africa of to-day in tlio regions where he laboured is more wonderful than any other piece of modern history. When David Livingstone went to South Central Africa at tho age of 27, there was scarcely a name on its map. It was unknown. When ho died at tlio age of 60, in 1873, there were very few names on the map of that region except those lie had placed there through his pioneering., and the horrible slavery lie liad revealed to the outer world was still in a large degree rampant. But such was the influence of Livingstone’s character on the downtrodden raoes among, whom lie appeared as the first white man they hacl known and such was his appeal to the white world that missionaries and Governments and pioneers concentrated on tho Dark Continent, and now there is no part of tho Africa which Livingstone revealed that is not open to ihe world and under some degree of enlightened control. There is scarcely a single district in the seemingly boneless recess of Africa into which liy adventured from which the paper quoted docs not receive letters.. Livingstone’s supreme memorial is the Central Africa that now is compared with the. region as lie found it. And the man who set this mighty •work afoot, and has left a lasting fame throughout that once hopeless region was as a boy of ten a busy worker in a cotton mill at Blantyre. Only by tiie sternest industry and study had the millboy at ten educated himself till at 25 he was an accepted missionary ; candidate, and at'27 had become a fully qualified doctor.

Livingstone’s whole life was a constant romance of sacrifice, and the close of his .story- from his death on his knees in his tent-in tho African wilds tolls burial in Westminster Abbey, “borne by faithful hands over land and sea,” lias an unparalleled beauty. In the house where Livingstone was horn that story will now be pictured for Scotland to rehearse it. . Memorials of his youth will be on the upper floor, relics of his African journeys on the first floor,, apd eight groups of coloured sculpture tableaux, one of them presented by the tribe of King Kbama.