338 STANLEY'S SEARCH FOR LIVINGSTONE 



No better man could have been found for the purpose intended 

 than Henry M. Stanley. A Welshman by birth, an American by adop- 

 tion, he had, in the Civil War, served on both the Confederate and the 

 Northern side, and afterwards, as the correspondent of the New York 

 Herald, had proved himself one of the most daring and successful of 

 travelers. He had gone to Abyssinia during the English war with 

 that country, and had won laurels as a war correspondent. 



Before setting out on the expedition with which we are concerned 

 he made a long and perilous journey through Turkey, Persia, Afghan- 

 istan and India to Bombay, whence he sailed for Zanzibar, arriving 

 there on the 6th of January, 1871. He had with him two men, Farqu- 

 har, a Scotch seaman, and Selim, an Arab boy, whom he had engaged 

 in Egypt as an interpreter and on whom he afterwards greatly de- 

 pended. 



Zanzibar is the gateway of Eastern Africa. Here Stanley 

 engaged his carriers and soldiers and purchased his outfit, consisting 

 largely of cloth, beads and' brass wire, the money then most current in 

 Africa. It embraced also the animals, tents, ammunition, etc., neces- 

 sary for the expedition. His comrades, in addition to the two named, 

 consisted of John W. Shaw, an English seaman, a number of soldiers 

 who had formerly served under Captain Speke, and a large number of 

 carriers and negro attendants. 



Other explorers had been in that region before him, and Burton 

 and Speke had discovered Lake Tanganyika thirteen years before. 

 The Victoria Nyanza had also been discovered, but no one knew what 

 connection there might be between these two great lakes, and the vast 

 region of Central Africa west of these lakes was utterly unknown. 

 Livingstone had traversed it in part, but what he had done was still 

 a sealed book. For a number of years he had been lost to sight in the 

 heart of Africa, no one knew if he was alive or dead, and interest in 

 his fate was so great that there could have been no more importlknt 

 mission than that given Stanley to "find Livingstone." 



We cannot describe in detail Stanley's interesting journey. Leav- 

 ing Zanzibar on the 5th of February, 1871, he soon plunge<l into 

 savage Africa. His force was divided into five caravans, sent forward 

 at intervals of a few days ; the total number of the expedition amounted 

 to nearly two hundred men. 



