Three years later he
married Mary Smith, who was henceforth to be his companion in all his
journeys, and to face, with a courage not less than his own, the
tropical heat, the poisonous insects, the savage beasts, the fierce
natives of a territory untrod by the white man, and who had to do all
this in a day before medicine had discovered cures for jungle-sickness
and poisons, before invention had improved methods of travel, and before
knowledge had been able to prepare maps or to write guides.
It was the daughter of Mary Moffat who became the wife of the greatest
of all explorers, David Livingstone, and who like her mother, was to set
her foot where no white men or women had stood before.
Their first home was at Mabotsa, about two hundred miles from what is
now the city of Pretoria. But soon Livingstone began the series of
journeys which was to make his name famous. With his wife he travelled
in a roomy wagon, drawn by bullocks at a rate of about two miles an
hour. But they often suffered intensely from the heat and the scarcity
of water. Then the mosquitoes were always troublesome, and frequently
even the slow progress they were making would be interrupted by the
death of one of the bullocks, killed by the deadly tsetse. At other
times they would halt before a dense bunch of trees, and would have to
stop until a clearing had been cut through.
Such was the life of Mrs.
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