The success of the Victorian explorer and missionary David Livingstone's first book, Missionary Travels (1857), led to his receiving government funding in 1858 for an expedition up the Zambezi River. The trip was expected to last two years, and was intended to further commercial and scientific as well as missionary aims. However, owing to internal disagreements, illness (including the death of Livingstone's wife), drought and tribal warfare, the explorers' mission took six and a half years and achieved little apart from collecting plant and geological specimens. The upper reaches of the...