Secrets of the Dead (2000–…): Season 13, Episode 2 - The Lost Diary of Dr. Livingstone - full transcript

NARRATOR: Coming up,
he was one of the world's

greatest explorers
and abolitionists.

Dr. Livingstone,
I presume.

NARRATOR: He recorded his
adventures in this faded diary.

MAN: It's a total
mishmash of text.

NARRATOR:
Now cutting-edge science

is revealing what he wrote...

And the 28th...
"eight villages in flames."

NARRATOR: and a far more
complicated man.

WOMAN: He had to work
with Arab slavers.

NARRATOR: The lost diary
of Dr. Livingstone



on "Secrets of the Dead."

Dr. David Livingstone,

the British explorer
who became a Hollywood legend.

Dr. Livingstone,
I presume.

NARRATOR: Livingstone filled in
the map of Africa.

We've never seen
a terrestrial explorer like him

and likely never will again.

WOMAN: He's kind of the ultimate
Victorian macho man.

[People screaming]

NARRATOR: His dispatches
from a horrifying massacre

shocked the world...

and led to the abolishment
of slavery,

but was Livingstone
the Victorian hero

he's made out to be?



His original field diary
contains a secret,

hidden until now.

MAN: That was the first time
that anyone had seen it

in 140 years.

NARRATOR:
This is the story of...

Over 150 years ago,
Livingstone ventured

into a land that Westerners
called the dark heart of Africa.

In 3 major expeditions,
this Christian missionary

and fearless pioneer
covered 29,000 miles,

a distance greater than
the circumference of the earth.

He hoped to discover rivers
that could become

major commercial trade routes.

He was convinced Christianity
would follow trade

and put a stop to the slavery
he despised.

In Britain and the U.S.,

slave trading
had long been abolished...

but in East and Central Africa,
it was rife.

Now a team of experts
led by Adrian Wisnicki

of the University of Nebraska
is doing groundbreaking work

into an event Livingstone
witnessed

that ultimately led to the end
of the African slave trade.

I wanted to find out
what had happened

during one of the most
important moments

of Livingstone's
final expedition.

NARRATOR: The National
Library of Scotland

holds the single largest
collection

of Livingstone materials
in the world.

Wisnicki is interested
in Livingstone's reports

of slave trading
in the center of the continent

and wants to know more.

WISNICKI: Livingstone
had been away from home

for about 6 years,
and it was at least two years

since the last letter from him
had reached the outside world.

In 1865, he set off in search
of the source

of one of the greatest rivers
on earth... the River Nile...

but by 1871, to the American
and British public,

Livingstone was all but lost.

His audience was
desperate for news,

and a U.S. newspaper journalist
set out to track him down.

I'm thankful that I'm here
to welcome you, Mr...

Stanley.

Mr. Stanley.

NARRATOR: Stanley arrived back
with an exclusive...

News of the elusive Livingstone,

and with hot property...
Livingstone's latest journal...

within its pages,
a shocking story.

It describes how slave traders
massacred innocent villagers

in Nyangwe, a village
deep in Central Africa.

WISNICKI:
So one day, Livingstone

is leaving the market,
and just as he's doing so,

3 traders come
into the marketplace with guns.

At that moment,
an altercation breaks out.

[Gunshot]

[People screaming]

The traders begin
firing into the crowd.

People start running
in every which direction.

Some are jumping into the river.

The traders keep shooting
and shooting.

It's a horrific massacre.

The traders kill some 300 or 400
men, women, and children

in the span of a few hours.

NARRATOR: The massacre
appalled Livingstone.

His account horrified
Western audiences

and provoked the British
government to step in

and stop the slave trade,

allowing European powers
to colonize the continent...

but the journal
Stanley carried back

might not reveal
the whole story.

When Wisnicki looked deeper
into the events at Nyangwe,

he found something curious.

There were several accounts
of the massacre,

and they were all different.

WISNICKI: In the journals
published

after Livingstone's death
and edited

by his friend Horace Waller,
there was one variation.

In the books produced by Stanley

based on his discussion
with Livingstone,

there was a second variation,

and then in Livingstone's
letters,

there was a third variation.

So I started thinking to myself,

"Which is these texts
is much closer to the truth,"

to the reality as Livingstone
actually experienced it?

NARRATOR: Livingstone has
a particular way

of recording his experiences.

First, he jotted short notes
into a daily field diary.

Then at a later date,
he'd write these notes up

and create a journal.

This would be the basis
for his published books.

So to discover what really
happened in Nyangwe,

Wisnicki needed to go
all the way back

to Livingstone's
original field diary

written during the massacre.

WISNICKI: The question was,
where was the field diary

that corresponded
to the massacre?

At the National Library
of Scotland,

it was nowhere to be found...

but just 50 miles away
near Glasgow

is the David Livingstone Centre.

This was once a mill
where, as a child,

Livingstone and his family
lived and worked...

and today
the Livingstone family's

most precious possessions are
locked away in the storeroom.

Dr. Neil Wilson is
the great-great-grandson

of David Livingstone.

WILSON: Well, this
is a gold medal

presented to my
great-great-grandfather

by the Royal
Geographical Society.

It says on it,
"Terras Reclusas,"

"to lands unknown
or yet to be discovered."

NARRATOR: Among the relics
are the missing pages...

Livingstone's firsthand account
of the massacre at Nyangwe.

WISNICKI: This is Livingstone's
private diary.

He kept this with him
until he died,

and it was never intended for
anyone but Livingstone himself.

For the last 140 years, no one
has been able to read it.

The diary up until now
has kept its secrets.

NARRATOR: But this
is no regular diary.

Livingstone's handwriting
was scrawled

on old bits of newspaper.

WISNICKI: The actual physical
condition of the pages

says as much as what Livingstone
has written down.

NARRATOR: These tattered sheets
reveal that while at Nyangwe,

Livingstone had no writing paper

and was forced to improvise.

Short on ink,
he used berry juice instead.

WISNICKI: You can see
how it's faded.

So it's completely illegible.

It's a total mishmash of text.

NARRATOR: Livingstone
was the last person

able to read these words.

For Wisnicki,
it seemed like a dead end.

The truth about what happened
at Nyangwe

could remain locked
in these pages,

but there was one
possible solution.

A state-of-the-art technology
first invented by NASA

for discovering the secrets
of the solar system

could hold the key.

Multispectral imaging
could be the only way

to recover Livingstone's
handwriting

from the diary pages.

At MegaVision Studios
in Santa Barbara, California,

a pioneering team has developed
cutting-edge equipment

that can see the invisible.

So you're looking
at this area here?

Yeah, because there's
multiple layers here

and I'm really kind of curious

as to what lies
at the bottom layer,

and I think among the pages,
this is probably the page

that has the biggest
chunk missing.

NARRATOR: Ken Boydston
is the chief camera engineer.

BOYDSTON: These are very
narrow band colored LEDs

with high power so we can
illuminate large areas

in a short period of time
with bright, brilliant,

clear, and pure color.

NARRATOR: To recover
Livingstone's

faded diary entries,
the team uses LED light panels

to shine different colors,
or wavelengths, of light

onto the documents.

BOYDSTON:
The process we're using

really is intended to see things
that the human eye can see

and see those things
very, very accurately,

and then beyond what
the human eye can see,

we have LED lights that not only
shine in the visible range,

but also in the ultraviolet
and the infrared.

NARRATOR: The team takes
high-resolution

black-and-white photographs

under 12 separate
wavelengths of light,

and under each wavelength,

the diary page
reacts differently.

BOYDSTON: So when light
is shined on the document,

the document will absorb some
of the wavelengths of light,

and others get reflected.

So a red piece of ink
will reflect red light,

but it absorbs
the other colors of light.

NARRATOR: The faded handwriting
reflects some colors

and crucially absorbs others.

The more light that is absorbed,

the darker
the handwriting appears...

but Livingstone's words
are still unreadable,

buried in newspaper print.

To discover the truth
about what happened in Nyangwe,

the team begins
a scientific collaboration

that will last for 6 months.

By the time Livingstone
is writing this field diary,

he is out of funds
and plagued by sickness...

[Coughing]

But he still pushes on to find
the source of the Nile.

On his first two expeditions,
he had searched

for a navigatable highway
into the interior but failed.

Aware it could be
his last chance,

he must succeed this time.

Desperate, Livingstone is forced
to depend on the slave traders

for supplies and protection.

They are forging their way
into the center of Africa

on the hunt for ivory.

Joanna Lewis of
the London School of Economics

has investigated
African trading networks

in the time of Livingstone.

LEWIS: So what's happening then
in parts of Central Africa

is that Africans
are getting sucked into

this horrible vortex...
Ivory, guns, slavery.

It's a toxic mix.

Ivory in parts of Central Africa
is only 50 cents a pound.

Take it to the coast,
and it's worth about $50, $60.

So ka-ching.

NARRATOR: The international
ivory market was booming

and with it the slave trade.

The traders had a well-traveled
route from the east coast,

more than 900 miles
into the interior,

and Livingstone goes with them.

He shares their food.

They even nurse him
when he becomes sick.

On the way, they stop at
Casembe, Ujiji, and Nyangwe.

In these villages,
traders exchange

guns and cloth for ivory.

They then enslave
African villagers

to haul the ivory
back to the coast,

where it is shipped
to Europe and America

while the slaves are sent
to plantations

as far as Cuba and Brazil.

LEWIS: I think he's got
a tormented soul.

He had to live with the fact
that he had to work

with Arab slavers, that
they helped him move around,

that he had to rely on slaves.

So he had to learn
to compromise.

NARRATOR: Livingstone's
descriptions of slavery

in Africa were brought
vividly to life

in Britain and America
in magic lantern slide shows.

LEWIS: This image
is a particularly

disturbing image, actually.

You can almost hear the screams,

and this is a scene
that Livingstone described

quite a few times in his diaries
when he would come across,

particularly, women
who would be too weak or ill

to carry on, would be left
tied to trees...

and what's particularly chilling
about this, of course,

is that on the hillside there,

you can see the hyenas
coming in.

So those people that are still
alive at this point

knew that they would probably
be eaten alive

if they weren't already dead.

NARRATOR: Hundreds of thousands
of villagers were enslaved

and forced to walk all the way
to the east coast.

Many died en route.

Some were flogged to death.

Knowing the slave traders well,

Livingstone tried
to reason with them.

The demand for slaves and ivory
seemed unstoppable.

He learned to live
in this brutal environment,

but in his reports home,

he exposed the truth
about the trade.

Along with Livingstone's
descriptions,

slide show audiences were handed
some of the most brutal weapons

used to capture villagers
in Central Africa.

A mask like this
would speak volumes.

LEWIS: This is probably one
of the most hideous objects

I've ever seen, and touching
and looking at it

makes me feel quite sick.

This would have been
state-of-the-art

slave submission,
high-tech stuff.

Imagine this being put
around your head.

This would have gone into
the mouth to stop the screaming.

It's very small.

So it's suggestive of something
that was for a woman or a child.

There's no doubt about it
that this

would have caused
tremendous pain.

So it's more of an instrument
of torture, really.

It's quite shocking.

Africa was a million miles away,

but if you passed round
an object like this,

that would help bring the horror
right into the Victorian chapel,

the Victorian church hall.

So it brought Africa right
to the heart of Victorians.

NARRATOR: Livingstone first
started to publicize

the horrors of the slave trade
almost 15 years earlier

when he became
the first European

to cross Sub-Saharan Africa.

His account
of this first expedition,

"Missionary Travels
in South Africa,"

catapulted him
into the public eye.

It was a bestseller, and it
turned Livingstone into an icon.

LEWIS: It was like he'd
come back from the moon

or he'd come back from Mars

and he'd been hanging round
with Martians.

For them,
that's what it was like.

He had mingled with cannibals.

He had lived amongst the heathen
and survived.

NARRATOR: Livingstone arrived
in Africa as a doctor

and a missionary.

While his public saw him
as a saint,

the truth was, he struggled
with missionary work.

In 30 years in Africa,

he made just one convert
to Christianity.

LEWIS: It was boring.

It was just so unglamorous,
and he didn't enjoy it.

He didn't like
the sedentary family life.

He was not cut out to be
a missionary whatsoever.

NARRATOR: The real Livingstone
was driven and ambitious,

convinced he could
open up Central Africa

to European commercial trade...

and his accounts prove
he was a cartographer

of extraordinary skill.

He charted large parts
of the continent

previously unseen
by European eyes.

Where there was once
a blank space,

he filled in the map of Africa.

One of Livingstone's
most famous discoveries

was the Victoria Falls
on the Zambezi River.

This is what Livingstone
and his party saw

almost 150 years ago in 1855.

After months of trekking,

it would have been
an awe-inspiring sight.

Explorer Russell Gammon has been
following in the footsteps

of Livingstone for 25 years

and had investigated
his mapmaking techniques.

GAMMON: Locals use to refer
to this as Mosi-oa-Tunya,

which means
"the smoke that thunders,"

and you can see the spray
rising above the falls,

and this is visible
in the peak of the season

up to 40 miles away,
and it really does look

like a brush fire
in the distance.

NARRATOR: Victorian explorers
had no high-tech equipment.

Livingstone and his party
traveled the length

of the Zambezi River on foot
and by canoe.

GAMMON: So what we're
sitting in here

is a traditional dugout canoe...

Or makoro, as it's called
in these parts...

Made out of a hollowed-out
tree trunk,

and it's a very effective
way to travel.

It's the way that Livingstone
would have traversed

most of these waterways.

It's obviously very buoyant

and inherently
not brilliantly stable,

but it's a bit
like riding a horse.

Once you get used to it,
it's fine.

NARRATOR: This is the island
of Kalan.

In his bid to map a navigatable
route through Africa,

Livingstone camped here
on his way up river.

He used a marine sextant

to determine the island's
longitude and latitude

and so his exact position
on the earth.

A sextant measure the angle
of the sun above the horizon.

By taking a measurement
at the same time every day,

Livingstone could determine
how the angle had changed

and from this work out how far
he had traveled east or west.

What we want to do
is rise the sextant up

and, first of all,
look for a horizon line,

and we bring the arm forward
like this,

and you can see
the mirror angle changing,

and what I'm seeing
looking through here is,

looks like the sun
is actually coming down

until it settles on the horizon,
which is roughly about there,

and then you'd read off here

your degrees, minutes,
and seconds.

So when we look at his record

of the latitude
that he recorded,

we can now measure them
very accurately

just using a handheld GPS.

So according to him,
we were south 1751'54",

and according to our GPS,
we're 1751.91.

So he was pretty accurate
in his measurements.

NARRATOR: That's an error
of just less than half a mile.

GAMMON: Geographers at that time
believed that most

of the interior of Africa
was a desert.

So the existence
of these rivers alone

was startling new information.

NARRATOR: But for the lauded
explorer Livingstone,

the bubble was about to burst.

The pocket map he drew
on this first expedition

appears to prove the Zambezi
was the trade route

he was searching for.

He had accurately charted
hundreds of miles of river

but made one fateful decision.

This dotted line marks
a shortcut he took over land

at the urging of locals.

By not traveling
that stretch of the river,

he missed a major obstacle...

A series of rapids impossible
to navigate by boat.

It was a disastrous oversight
with fatal consequences.

On a second trip financed
by the British Foreign Service,

he returned to the Zambezi
to prove he could travel

the length of the river
by steamboat,

opening up
major trading opportunities.

Livingstone was followed
by a large party,

but the rapids
blocked their route.

At the mercy
of the extreme conditions,

one by one, they died,

including
Livingstone's wife Mary.

When news of the men, women,
and children that had perished

reached Britain,
Livingstone got the blame.

GAMMON: In 3 years, they spent,
I think, £100,000

of British taxpayers' money,

didn't make it more than
300 miles up the river.

Livingstone arrived back
in Britain at the end of that.

Really, his reputation
is really tarnished

by the failure
of the Zambezi expedition.

So it was all round
a bit of a catastrophe, really.

NARRATOR: Livingstone was hit
hard by the death of his wife.

The trip also destroyed
his credibility as an explorer

and brought him to the brink
of financial ruin.

In 1865, he returns to Africa,

the white man's grave,
a third time.

It would be his last.

For Livingstone,
the dark continent

is unfinished business.

There are many reasons
for him to return...

To atone for his wife's death,

to regain his credibility
as an explorer,

and to fight slavery.

His field diary pages
could expose more

about what drove Livingstone
than ever before...

but humid conditions
in the forest,

the harsh sunlight,

and Livingstone's
writing materials

had a devastating effect
on his last diary.

Some of the most crucial parts
of the massacre story

are impossible to read.

Imaging scientist Keith Knox
was one of the first experts

to analyze the pages.

The newsprint just interferes

with your ability to see
the handwriting,

and not only can we not see it,
but it couldn't be read

140 years ago when people
first saw it.

NARRATOR: For every diary page,

12 black-and-white photographs
are taken,

one for each of the separate
wavelengths of light.

What Keith finds gives him
a glimmer of hope.

KNOX: Under the blue light,

the ink is absorbing
all the light,

and, as a result,
it appears dark

against the background
of the newspaper.

As we change the light
and move it towards the green,

this ink starts to reflect
a little more,

and it starts to have
lower contrast.

You can't see it as well.

As you get to the red,
it reflects a lot of light,

and it's practically gone,
and in the infrared...

Which the eye can't see,
but the camera can...

It's gone completely.

NARRATOR: The handwritten ink
is faintest

under long,
infrared wavelengths of light.

As light of shorter
and shorter wavelengths

is shined on the document,
the handwriting

begins to absorb more and more
until finally,

under the shortest wavelengths,
blue light,

the ink is most absorbent
and darkest.

The spectral images reveal
the handwriting

more clearly than ever before,

but Keith still faces
a major challenge.

Livingstone's words
are still completely hidden

by visual noise...
The newspaper print.

The printed ink appears clear
and black in every photograph.

KNOX: Then I began to realize
the question was not

how do you pull out
the handwriting,

but how do you push down
the newsprint.

NARRATOR: By using
the infrared image,

he can make the newsprint
disappear.

KNOX: So here's an inverted
image of the newsprint

where places which were black
are now white.

Next, Keith adds
the inverted newsprint

to a page that had
handwriting on it,

and something extraordinary
happens.

KNOX: When you do that,

the result is just
the handwriting,

and it's absolutely remarkable.

When I first saw that,
I just couldn't believe

what it was that happened
where the writing just appeared

and it was easy
and you could read it.

NARRATOR: This ingenious
algorithm works

not just on one page,
but on all of them.

KNOX: So when only writing
appeared on the screen,

that was the first time that
anyone had seen it in 140 years.

Dr. Livingstone was the last
person to have read it,

and that was truly
an amazing feeling

when I realized that happened.

You can just look at it
and read it, and the 28th...

"eight villages in flames
on the other side of the river,

"catching slaves,
or, rather free people

to be made into slaves."

NARRATOR:
Now the biggest challenge,

analysis of the diary content,
can begin.

It will take almost a year
to complete.

Livingstone's third expedition
would make or break him.

He had lost his wife
and reputation

on his previous trip.

Now he is prepared
to risk everything

to find another route
into the interior

and the source of the Nile...

but by 1871, his final mission
is falling apart,

the main reason...
His failing health.

While the traders and villagers

are able to endure
the harsh conditions,

Livingstone is plagued
by tropical diseases.

Without his doctor's training,
he would never have lived

to tell the tale
of the massacre.

He is out of medicine
and out of time.

He resorts to the local witch
doctor's medicines and cures.

It is the only way
he will survive.

[Car horn honks]

This Zambian city
is named after Livingstone.

Today in towns like this,
local herbalists

still use the age-old traditions
of witch doctors.

Dr. Lawrence Dritsas
has been researching

the diseases Livingstone
encountered.

DRITSAS: Looking
in a place like this,

we're looking back and seeing
the kind of information

he was getting when he was
talking to African doctors

and learning about what they
were using for fever,

for diarrhea, for malaria
and all these things.

Hello.
Hello.

[Speaks foreign language]

How are you?

Fine. And you?

Fine.
Fine, fine.

What kind of medicines
do you have here?

What kind of diseases
can you cure?

Headache, pains,
diarrhea, antidiabetes.

NARRATOR:
These are the same plants

Livingstone would have used.

DRITSAS: If I have
chills and fever,

what should I take?

What do you have here for me?

You take this one, and you cut.

After you cut, you boil it.

OK. This is
for fever?

Yeah.
Yes.

Is it strong?

Yeah. It's strong.

OK.

It's nice, actually.

Yeah.
It's nice. Yeah.

Yeah. I guess there's
something in that tannins

in particular that will come out

when you make a tea,
but then by breathing it,

there'll be some oils
coming out of the wood

and other things that would
be drawn out by boiling.

[Breathing deeply]

For how long should I
be breathing this for?

No. Just do twice.

Just twice. OK.
Yeah.

Ha! Thank you.

DRITSAS: Livingstone
did exactly the same thing.

In fact, at one point, he talks
about being stewed in vapor

and smoked like a red herring
when he had a really bad fever

and he decided to try what the
local doctor could do for him.

NARRATOR: Using a combination
of his medical training

and the local African
herbal remedies

keeps Livingstone on his feet.

DRITSAS:
Livingstone never wanted

to denigrate African medicine.

He wanted to see what they did,
what was in it,

what was in the plants
they were using,

and see if they could
actually be combined

with Western medicine.

Some of the drugs
that they discovered

and some of the herbs
that they use

are actually still used today
in Western medicine.

NARRATOR: On this
final expedition,

he suffers
his most severe attack

of one particularly deadly
type of fever... malaria.

150 years ago,
malaria was a mystery

to doctors in Africa
and the West.

On earlier expeditions
along these same riverbanks,

Livingstone recorded suffering
from malaria dozens of times.

He needed
an effective treatment.

Livingstone was concerned
about malaria

because the instance of malaria
really could affect

the way his work could be done.

It affected the way
he could travel.

If he had to lie down
and recover for a few days,

this slowed him down.

[Exhales]

NARRATOR: As he travels,

he makes a groundbreaking
observation.

He realizes that mosquito-ridden
swamplands are malarious.

Livingstone develops
his own medicine

and pioneers a systematic dosage
which helps keep him alive.

The main ingredient was quinine,

found in the bark of the
South American cinchona tree.

DRITSAS: What Livingstone
discovered was that quinine

didn't prevent malaria
from occurring.

It didn't prevent his companions
from getting fever,

but what it did work as
was a cure.

NARRATOR: Using quinine
and a laxative,

Livingstone creates a mixture
he believes

will clear the system
of toxic fever.

DRITSAS: In order to make
his rouser pills,

Livingstone combined quinine
with some calomel...

Which is mercurous chloride,

which we would consider
poisonous today...

Also some ground-up rhubarb root
and some jalap

and with a bit of tincture
of cardamom,

and he could put it all together
into a pill,

and these came to be known
as rousers

because they got you back up.

They roused you when a fever
had put you down.

NARRATOR: In a high dosage,
quinine stops malarial parasites

from multiplying
inside the body.

Branded back home
as the Livingstone Rouser,

it was marketed and sold
for 40 years.

It would protect
British soldiers,

colonialists,
and merchants from malaria

and allow them to build
the largest empire of the age.

Towards the end
of his third expedition,

he has run out of rousers,
and he is still no closer

to finding the source
of the Nile.

Malnutrition has loosened
some of the teeth in his gums,

and he has not choice
but to extract them himself.

Oh!

[Spits]

NARRATOR: Consumed
by his mission, he presses on

to the village of Nyangwe.

Wisnicki compares the account
of the massacre in the diary

with Livingstone's
published account.

A very different picture
of Livingstone begins to appear.

WISNICKI: As he stays
in the village,

he inches closer and closer
every day

to the edge of a moral abyss,
of a kind of moral darkness.

He turns to methods that
are similar in their violence

to those of the traders.

NARRATOR: Livingstone is waylaid
in the slave trader village

of Nyangwe for 6 months.

He is almost broke,

and most of his followers
have deserted him.

He sends for new men,
and 10 freed slaves arrive.

He calls them
his Banian servants.

He's still hunting
for the source of the Nile,

but it's only possible
with the cooperation

of the slave traders.

LEWIS: I think on a scale
of obsession with regard

to finding the Nile
on a scale of one to 10,

he was probably 12
at this point.

NARRATOR: And all the time
in Nyangwe, trouble is brewing.

One of the most powerful
slave traders of the region,

Dugumbe, is in town.

He discovered his most senior
and trusted slave

has been dealing behind his back
with the local villagers.

Unconcerned
by Livingstone's presence,

he sends his gunman
to the market

to teach the villagers a lesson.

LEWIS: Livingstone was wandering
in the market.

It seems to be the case that
he enjoyed going to the market.

There were lots of women
and children.

So it's shopping day, lots
of things to look at, to see.

Ha ha ha!

NARRATOR:
He sees Dugumbe's men with guns.

[Gunshots]

[People screaming]

LEWIS: Quite innocently, then,
he get caught up in fighting,

shots being fired.

People panic.

Women struggle to get to
the shore, get to their canoes,

and many, many drown...

and he is witness to this.

This is certainly
what Stanley writes

and very much presents
Livingstone as having to look

at this atrocity
that was so unspeakable.

Livingstone described it
as being in hell,

this horrendous event
which he can do nothing about.

NARRATOR: In haste,
hour by hour,

Livingstone pours his account
onto the newspaper pages

of his field diary.

Later, he creates
the cleaned-up, edited version

destined for publication.

Now the newly deciphered pages
bring to light

for the first time the private
words of David Livingstone.

The massacre had a huge impact

on Livingstone's
personal feelings.

He lost the ability to function

because of what he witnessed
in the massacre.

NARRATOR: And it's
the events that occur

just before the massacre
that really draw Wisnicki's eye.

These pages expose Livingstone's
deepest anxieties.

[People screaming]

[Gunshots]

Livingstone was powerless
to stop the massacre,

but he was now so close
to the traders,

they didn't even care he
was witness to the slaughter.

He had, until now, turned
a blind eye to their immorality.

The diary pages show
the massacre makes him

desperate to cover his tracks.

WISNICKI: In order to downplay
some of the violence

with which he'd become
associated,

he also tried to downplay
the violence of his followers.

NARRATOR: It's no secret that
Livingstone had great difficulty

controlling his rebellious, new
Banian servants...

but what this diary page shows
is that while in Nyangwe,

these servants
behave like criminals.

When an ivory deal goes wrong
in a nearby village,

the traders beg Livingstone
to send his Banian servants

to the rescue, but he refuses.

He writes, "I refuse
to send my slaves"

"because they would only add
to the confusion and murder.

"If they go anywhere,
I must go with them,

for murder is certain."

NARRATOR: The Banians may have
once been slaves,

but as freed men,
they are far from victims.

The Banian servants
are former slaves,

but now they've been liberated,
but they remain corrupt.

They remain violent
and dangerous.

The fact that they can't
be changed,

that their fundamental character
remains the same,

is troubling for Livingstone
as a committed abolitionist.

NARRATOR: So troubling,
Livingstone removes

the word "murder"
from the published version.

WISNICKI: He's editing
his diary because

in his obsessive quest to find
the source of the Nile,

he strayed from his principles

and he doesn't want
people at home to see that.

NARRATOR: And there's another
passage in the field diary

that exposes how far he has come
to acting like the slave traders

in the build-up to the massacre.

To continue his journey,
he needs a canoe.

He tries to buy one from local
villagers and traders

without success.

Eventually, he makes a deal
with local chieftain Kalegna...

Excellent.
I will pay money.

NARRATOR: but Kalenga
double-crosses Livingstone.

We've got a deal.

NARRATOR: He takes his money,
but doesn't deliver.

The field diary pages show
that now Livingstone's anger

begins to boil over,

and he does something
completely out of character.

WISNICKI: You can see
an amazing change in the way

that Livingstone decides
to handle the situation.

He writes, "Men off to force
Kalenga to reason",

"if he refuses to refund,
to bind

and give him a flogging."

NARRATOR: He sends
his Banian servants,

men he knows are capable
of murder,

to mete our rough justice...

but the word "flogging"
is completely erased

from the published version
of events.

WISNICKI: He's taking
the original narrative,

and he's completely
reconfiguring it.

He's reconfiguring reality,
really.

Livingstone has gone to the edge
of an abyss.

The massacre occurs,
and it forces him

to confront the kind of person
that he's starting to become,

and at that moment,
he turns back.

For Livingstone, it's a moment
of both triumph and failure,

failure because he turns back
from the quest

that he set his heart on,

triumph because when push
comes to shove,

he makes the right decision.

NARRATOR: Sickened
by the violence

he was powerless to stop,
he could not bring himself

to deal with
the slave traders anymore.

Livingstone admits defeat.

He gives up on his dream of
finding the source of the Nile

and of regaining his great
reputation as an explorer.

He retreats east to Ujiji,
where he meets Stanley.

When Stanley
brings Livingstone's

public journal home,
it creates a press frenzy.

This cleaned-up version
of events focuses attention

not on Livingstone,
but on his account

of the horrifying massacre.

LEWIS: When the story
starts to circulate,

it's no longed
an abstract issue.

It is so real, is it so vivid,
it is so graphic,

it is a game changer
as far as actually getting

government intervention
on the ground.

NARRATOR: It gives
the abolitionists the ammunition

they need and puts the
slave trade on the front page

of every major newspaper
in the civilized world.

Livingstone's reputation soars,
but he would never benefit.

After Stanley left him
in Africa, he died.

His body was carried
back to Britain

by his African followers,

the source of the Nile
still a mystery.

GAMMON: He was determined
to do something

about the slave trade.

Coming back to Africa
at the age of 55,

it was very unlikely
that he would survive

to see his children,
but if that's the price

that he paid to see an end
of the slave trade in Africa,

I think he would have considered
that a bargain.

NARRATOR: Just one month
after Livingstone's death,

in June 1873,

Britain signed a treaty
with the Sultan of Zanzibar.

It shut down the world's last
open slave market

and ended the East African
commercial slave trade

once and for all.

Over the course of 30 years
of exploration,

Livingstone traversed the
territory of many tribal groups,

the first European to document

some of the world's
longest rivers

and largest lakes,

but his legacy would be used
as a tool for a new,

aggressive kind
of European imperialism.

His discoveries in the name
of science and humanity

would become the highways
for a new mission...

To colonize a continent,

and it would be called
the Scramble for Africa.

Digging out these
forgotten diary pages

began an incredible journey
inside the mind

of one of the 19th century's
greatest heroes.

An explorer haunted
by his obsessions

who craved personal glory,
Livingstone was no saint.

He never did find
the source of the Nile,

but whatever his methods,
he was successful

in bringing an end
to the slave trade,

beginning a new era in history.

NARRATOR: Next time,
Carthage was a mighty empire

known for its powerful
sailing fleet,

but when the empire fell,

did these seafarers
sail to the New World

long before Columbus?

WOMAN: The Amazon Basin has been
settled for 11,000 years.

But 2,000 years ago, there was
a population explosion.

MAN: Fortresses like Kuelap are
not found anywhere in America,

but archaeologists
have never considered

that its origin might be found
outside America.

NARRATOR:
Carthage's lost warriors,

on "Secrets of the Dead."

The "Secrets of the Dead"
investigation continues online.