who was the first leader of the universities mission to central africa
Universities' Mission to Central Africa To advance these goals, it sought to send a mission led by a bishop into Central Africa; Charles Mackenzie was duly consecrated in 1860 and led an expedition in 1861 up the Zambezi into the Shire Highlands.[3] This first expedition was more or less disastrous.[4] The area chosen as a base, near Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi), proved highly malarial; Bishop Mackenzie died there of the disease on 31 January 1862, along with many local people and three others among the tiny missionary party.[5][6] Early conversion efforts from this base yielded little result, and supplies ran out or were destroyed during a period of famine.[7] The mission then withdrew from the area, abandoning the graves of the missionaries who had died there,[8] and though it established a new presence in Zanzibar many years passed before it returned to Malawi. Bishop Tozer, Mackenzie's successor, deemed the mission's early years "a miserable failure".[9]