Meanwhile, a sensible impulse was given to the _scientific_ enthusiasm for Livingstone by the arrival of the report of a great meeting held in Africa itself in honor of the missionary explorer. At Cape Town, on 12th November, 1856, His Excellency the Governor, Sir George Grey, the Colonial Secretary, the Astronomer-Royal, the Attorney-General, Mr. Rutherfoord, the Bishop, the Rev. Mr. Thompson, and others, vied with each other in expressing their sense of Livingstone's character and work. The testimony of the Astronomer-Royal to Livingstone's eminence as an astronomical observer was even more emphatic than Murchison's and Owen's to his attainments in geography and natural history. Going over his whole career, Mr. Maclear showed his unexampled achievements in accurate lunar observation. "I never knew a man," he said, "who, knowing scarcely anything of the method of making geographical observations, or laying down positions, became so soon an adept, that he could take the complete lunar observation, and altitudes for time, within fifteen minutes." His observations of the course of the Zambesi, from Seshéke to its confluence with the Lonta, were considered by the Astronomer-Royal to be "the finest specimens of sound geographical observation he ever met with."
"To give an idea of the laboriousness of this branch of his work," he adds, "on an average each lunar distance consists of five partial observations, and there are 148 sets of distances, being 740 contacts,--and there are two altitudes of each object before, and two after, which, together with altitudes for time, amount to 2812 partial observations. But that is not the whole of his observations. Some of them intrusted to an Arab have not been received, and in reference to those transmitted he says, 'I have taken others which I do not think it necessary to send.' How completely all this stamps the impress of Livingstone on the interior of South Africa!... I say, what that man has done is unprecedented.... You could go to any point across the entire continent, along Livingstone's track, and feel certain of your position[49]."
[Footnote 49: It seems unaccountable that in the face of such unrivaled testimonies, reflections should continue to be cast on Livingstone's scientific accuracy, even so late as the meeting of the British Association at Sheffield in 1879. The family of the late Sir Thomas Maclear have sent home his collection of Livingstone's papers. They fill a box which one man could with difficulty carry. And their mass is far from their most striking quality. The evidence of laborious, painstaking care to be accurate is almost unprecedented. Folio volumes of pages covered with figures show how much time and labor must have been spent in these computations. Explanatory remarks often indicate the particulars of the observation.]
Following this unrivaled eulogium on the scientific powers of Livingstone came the testimony of Mr. Thompson to his missionary ardor:
'I am in a position to express my earnest conviction, formed in long, intimate, unreserved communications with him, personally and by letter, that in the privations, sufferings, and dangers he has passed through, during the last eight years, he has not been actuated by mere curiosity; or the love of adventure, or the thirst for applause, or by any other object, however laudable in itself, less than his avowed one as a messenger of Christian love from the Churches. If ever there was a man who, by realizing the obligations of his sacred calling as a Christian missionary, and intelligently comprehending its object, sought to pursue it to a successful issue, such a man is Dr. Livingstone. The spirit in which he engages in his work may be seen in the following extract from one of his letters: 'You kindly say you fear for the result of my going in alone. I hope I am in the way of duty; my own conviction that such is the case has never wavered. I am doing something for God. I have preached the gospel in many a spot where the name of Christ has never been heard, and I would wish to do still more in the way of reducing the Barotse language, if I had not suffered so severely from fever. Exhaustion produced vertigo, causing me, if I looked suddenly up, almost to lose consciousness; this made me give up sedentary work; but I hope God will accept of what I can do.'