David Livingstone

Between 1853 and 1856 Livingstone travelled from Linyanti, on the upper Zambezi, west to Loanda on the Atlantic and then back and east to Quelimane on the Indian Ocean coast. The journey was backed by the Kololo ruler Sekeletu, who supplied men and goods, and it depended on Kololo companions as interpreters and guides; on the eastward leg they led him to the waterfall known locally as Mosi-oa-Tunya, which he named Victoria Falls. He was hailed in Britain as the first European to cross the continent, though Arab and African traders had long crossed it along established caravan routes.

Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa, published by John Murray in November 1857, combined missionary narrative, travel writing and field science. Its first printing of 12,000 copies sold out before publication and a second of 30,000 followed. The book argued for mission work and trade in south-central Africa as a means against the slave trade, a programme framed in the colonial language of "Christianity, commerce and civilisation".

From 1858 to 1864 Livingstone led a government-funded expedition on the Zambezi and its tributaries. It found the Kebrabasa (Cabora Bassa) rapids impassable, explored the Shire River and much of Lake Nyasa, and sent botanical and zoological specimens to Kew and the Natural History Museum. It fell far short of its commercial aims, and several members resigned or were dismissed amid strained relations.

Livingstone reached Loanda in May 1854, ill and having used up his trade goods. According to his biographer Blaikie, he could have sailed home on a British naval cruiser; instead, in September 1854 he set out with his Kololo companions on the return journey inland, reaching Linyanti a year later. He then went on eastward and arrived at Quelimane in May 1856.

Turning back into the interior rather than taking the ship is consistent with the profile's high persistence score; his undertaking to see his companions home was also part of the decision. Persistence

Livingstone sent his astronomical readings to Thomas Maclear, Astronomer Royal at the Cape, who reduced them and in March 1854 wrote that, despite rough early readings, no explorer on record had fixed his route so precisely. Livingstone himself called his observation book "quite a mass of confusion" in 1857. In 1871-72 Henry Morton Stanley saw him make careful notes every evening and described notebooks filled with columns of figures.

Accounts from an astronomer and a journalist sit alongside the profile's detail-orientation score, while his own complaint about the notebook is a reminder that the care lay in sustained recording more than in tidiness. Detail Orientation

The Zambezi expedition rested on the hope that the river could serve as a navigable highway into the interior. When the Kebrabasa rapids proved impassable, Livingstone turned the expedition north up the Shire River, reached Lake Nyasa in September 1859, and later explored the Rovuma. Earlier, when the expedition's naval officer resigned in 1858, he had taken over navigating the steamer himself.

Redirecting the expedition once its central assumption failed offers one example behind the profile's adaptability score, although the new routes also fell short of what he had hoped. Adaptability