Original subtitles

In the middle of the 19th century, England was at the height of her empire, with colonies

which extended around the world.

British expansionism was at its zenith, and many brave men took to exploring in an attempt

to find a hitherto undiscovered territory over which Great Britain could lay claim.

Among these men were an American journalist and a British missionary who, although they

would surely have won famous individuals, have become inseparably linked by history.

This then is a tale of remarkable determination and courage, the story of Henry Morton Stanley

and Dr David Livingston.

Henry Morton Stanley was rather unkindly described by no lesser person than Queen Victoria as

a determined, ugly little man with a strong American twang.

However his accent was misleading.

For although Stanley had spent a good deal of time in the United States, he had even fought

on both sides of the Civil War, he was born in Denby and South Wales probably on the 28th

of January 1841.

The doubt about the date of his birth reflects an uncertainty about his origins and the whole

of his early life.

For as he became successful, he developed a tendency to cloud the truth, and became a

master in the art of reinventing himself.

It is known for certain that Stanley was the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Parry and a farmer

called John Rowlands.

At birth the lad was named after his father, but in his youth changed his name to suit

the circumstances in which he found himself.

By the time young John was six, his family were too poor to continue to support him,

and so he was sent to the workhouse at St. Asif, where he stayed for nine years.

In a letter written later in his life, Stanley gave this description of his early days.

I am the illegitimate child of Elizabeth Parry and John Rowlands of the digs.

I was a wafe cast into the world treated as circumstances developed themselves.

Neither of my parents ever dained to take the slightest motion of me.

This wafe now becomes a burden, an annual expense, the amount of which is just a tenth

of the sum I yearly spend on choice of animals.

This wafe must be got rid of.

But how?

What a pity he did not die.

This wafe, this boy Rowlands, this Stanley is he who addresses you now.

At the age of fifteen, the boy ran away and sought the help of his cousin Moses Owen,

who took him on at Brinford School.

In 1858, John ran away to Liverpool in the hope that his uncle would be able to help him

to a better job.

When no work was forthcoming, the youth signed as a cabin boy on a ship called the Windermere,

and sailed for New Orleans.

This is where his connection with America began.

On reaching the new world, young John jumped ship rather than face the rigors of a return

journey home.

He soon found employment as a junior clerk in an office in the town, but before long became

restless again, and befriended a cotton merchant by accosting him in the street with the words,

Do you want a boy sir?

The man's name was Henry Stanley, and after some weeks he adopted the young ragamuffin,

and before long, young John began calling himself Henry Stanley after his benefactor.

In spite of the elder Stanley's generosity, the youth soon started skipping off for days

at a stretch, provoking a row between the two of them.

Soon, young Henry, as he now was, left altogether.

For a short while, Stanley held down a clerical job in Arkansas, but the civil war between

the Confederates of the south and the Yankees in the north was already brewing, and many

young men were beginning to enlist.

This was something Stanley avoided, until a girl of whom he had become particularly fond

sent him a petticoat through the post.

Forced thus to prove his manhood, Stanley joined up to fight for a country in which he had

the status of illegal alien.

He had not been a soldier very long, when, during a battle known as the Pittsburgh Landing,

he was captured by the Yankees.

Stanley later remembered,

with my musket on the trail.

I found myself in active motion, more active than I would otherwise have been, perhaps,

because the captain had said, now, Mr Stanley, if you please, step briskly forward.

This singling out of me wounded my amor prop, and sent me forward like a rocket.

In a short time, we met our opponents in the same formation as ourselves, and advancing

most resolutely.

We threw ourselves behind such trees as were an heiress, fired, loaded, and darted forward

to another shelter.

Presently, I found myself in an open, grassy space, with no convenient tree or stump near.

Half a dozen of the enemy were covering me at the same instant, and I dropped my weapon

in contently.

Two men sprang at my collar and marched me un-resisting into the ranks of the terrible

Yankees.

I was a prison.

The terrible Yankees intended to put their captive to good use, and Stanley was drafted

into the Federal Army.

However, he was soon overtaken by a fearful bout of dysentery, and was eventually sent

home to Liverpool.

From here, he made his way to his mother's house, where his grudging parent gave him some

food, one shilling, and told him to be gone.

By working as a deckhand, he was able to make his way back to America, this time to New

York.

He endured a brief spell on dry land, clarking in a judge's chambers, but soon moved on

again, and listing for three years in the Federal Navy in July 1864.

True to form, Stanley did not stay the course, but within seven months, he had deserted.

In June 1865, Stanley first started to dabble in journalism when he became an attache on

the Missouri Democrat.

He was not a staff reporter, and so was therefore paid only by results.

He concocted a plan that would guarantee results, and help him to combine this work

with what he was coming to love most of all.

Travel.

Stanley decided he should go and report on the gold rush.

By the August of that year, he had crossed America and reached San Francisco, before

heading off to where the action appeared to be in Denver, Colorado.

Here he conceived the plan to go around the world reporting ad hoc on the way, and so

he and a friend left America and headed for Smyrna.

Unfortunately, his party was attacked by brigands, and one of the members was raped, and so,

with all ever longing stolen, the trip was cut short and Stanley made a brief return to

Wales.

Stanley travelled from Denby to London, thence to New York, and finally back to Missouri.

Here Stanley became interested in the plight of the Red Indians, who were resisting the

advance of the new railroad through Kansas and Nebraska.

He accompanied them on their campaign, and although not a sensational story in itself,

he wrote movingly about it.

This gave him enough confidence to apply for, and win, a job on the New York Herald.

Stanley's first year there was successful.

Again, he worked at his own expense, covering the war between the British and the Abyssinians.

His reward was to be taken on as a full-time member of the journalistic staff.

On October 16, 1869, the proprietor of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, summoned

Stanley to his office.

There was growing international concern about the fate of the British explorer, Dr. David

Livingston, who had disappeared into Central Africa more than two months before, and had

not been heard of since.

This was the matter that Bennett wished to discuss with his employee.

His words were characteristically brusque.

I will tell you what you will do.

Draw a thousand pounds now, and when you've gone through that, draw another thousand, and

when that's spent, draw another thousand, and when you've finished that, draw another

thousand, and so on, but find Livingston.

David Livingston was a Scot, born in Blantyre on 19 March 1813.

He came from Humboldt, but ancient stock, and said that...

One great grandfather fell of the battle of Colodont, fighting for the old line of kings.

One grandfather was a small farmer in Oliver, when my father was born.

His father was a grocer, and when his son was ten, he sent him to work for Montythan

Company, owners of the Blantyre Cotton Works.

Here the lad's job was to crawl between the huge machines, making sure that there was

an adequate supply of smooth thread for all the spindles on the spinning jinnies.

But already David longed to better himself.

Was that part of his first week's wages that he didn't have to give to his parents,

he bought a copy of Ruderman's Rudiments of Latin, and started a long period of self-education.

His mother was loving and tender to him, while his father seems to have been the typically

stern Victoria part of Emilius.

Livingston recalls that...

He deserves my lasting gratitude and homage, for presenting me from infancy, the continuously

consistent pious example.

At the age of twenty-one, the young Livingston decided to make more of his life than was

possible at the Cotton Works.

Always devoutly religious, he made up his mind to become a missionary, and as missionaries

were required to have some form of useful training in addition to their faith, he began

saving his wages to pay for eighteen months study in medicine.

He trained for four years from 1836 until 1840, until he was qualified as a doctor,

and accepted into the London Missionary Society.

To put Livingston's venture into context, it is necessary to see what Africa of the

1840s looked like.

The coast was relatively settled, but most of the interior was impenetrable, largely because

of the difficulty in navigating the rivers.

The Niger, the Nile, the Congo, and the Zambezi had kept their secrets from the white man.

The north of the country and the east coast from Mombasa to Sufala was in Arab hands.

The south-west and the south-east were made up of the Portuguese colonies of Angola and

Mozambique, and the south was held by the Dutch in their Cape Colony.

However, the centre lay tantalisingly unclaimed.

In the 1840s, most of Africa was still trading in slaves, but in 1834, Great Britain made

the decision to cease trafficking in human lives in all the colonies throughout her empire.

Having freed them, many religious groups now burned with a desire to convert the newly

emancipated Africans, while at the same time, appropriating their land.

The main impetus for colonialism in the Victorian period really came from two sources.

The first was the Mission Resil, the attempt to civilise the world, which was very prevalent

at the time, and the second was commercial.

I think what you need to remember is that in the Victorian period there was an extraordinary

release of energy.

Things were changing all around.

There were new ideas, new scientific ideas.

There was a new strength of commerce.

People felt confident.

They thought they were going to change the world.

They thought they were going to make the world a better place, or remodel it in their

own image.

I think that kind of exuberance spilled over.

Of course, they saw other parts of the world, which in their view needed to be civilised,

such as Africa and India and China of all places.

And I think that they set out to do it with Great zeal.

And that's really the origins of colonialism.

Of course, it did have enormous commercial advantages as time went on.

But those seriously were the origins.

It was in this spirit that many Europeans set out to explore what was known as the Dark

Continent.

And in March 1841, Dr David Livingston joined their ranks.

The London Missionary Society posted him to Curraman to assist the founder of a small

mission there, a man called Robert Moffatt.

It was a landscape that Moffatt described as being filled with the smoke of a thousand

villages where no missionary had ever been.

In spite of this potential, Livingston arrived to find that only 40 converts had been made,

and that Moffatt was absent.

Livingston quickly became disenchanted and longed to establish his own base.

He confided in a letter to one of his sisters.

I would never build upon another man's foundations.

I shall preach the gospel beyond every other man's line of things.

Livingston began the first of several journeys into the interior, and by June 1843, he had

travelled 805 kilometres up country, intending to establish a forward mission post at Mabotsa.

In November, he returned to Curraman to find that Moffatt had returned, bringing with him

his daughter Mary.

A mutual affection grew up between the two young people, and in May 1844, Livingston

asked her to be his wife.

When accompanying him under the harshest conditions, Mary bore him six children, Agnes,

Robert, Thomas, Anna Maria, Oswald, and a baby who sadly died.

For three years after their marriage, the Livingston's moved from post to post.

Until in 1846, they settled in Chihuahni, and encamped 65 miles north of Mabotsa.

Here David did all he could to convert Chief Sachele and his tribe, even following them

to a new camp at Colobang, when the water source in Chihuahni ran dry.

In 1849 and 1850, Livingston made two trips from Colobang across the Kalahari, experiences

which were to change him from a missionary to an explorer.

Sponsored by an enthusiast named William Cotton Oswald, between April and September

1851, Livingston set out to establish the existence of the land full of rivers, which

he believed to lie north of the Zuga River.

His instinctive curiosity aside, he was still looking for a suitable place to establish an

inland mission, and writing from the shores of Lake Angami, he noted,

A salubrious spot must be found before we convention to form a settlement, but that alone

will not suffice.

For Colobang is 270 miles by the Troquemeter from Kurama, and late near me by the same

instrument is 600 miles beyond this station.

We must have a passage to the sea, on either the eastern or the western coast.

The passage to the sea was to be a recurrent theme with both Livingston and Stanley for

many years after.

By the 19th of June, Livingston and his party had reached the Chobie River, and made contact

with Chief Zebatwani, leader of the friendly Makolo people.

Unfortunately, Zebatwani died three weeks after their arrival, but not before he'd given

them tantalizing details about a great river in the vicinity.

Thinking this might be the key to the passage to the sea, Livingston and Oswald left their

party, including Mary and the children, and began their search.

On the 4th of August, they reached the Appas Ambusy River.

They soon found that Central Africa was not the barren desert of popular imagination,

but fertile land with considerable sources of water.

One burning motivation that drove Livingston forward in his explorations was his desire

to stamp out slave trading, building on the good work that the government at home had

done in abolishing it within the empire.

Livingston hoped that the rivers he discovered would become established trade routes for other

commodities, and thus lessen the dependence of Central Africa on the buying and selling

of human beings.

In 1849, the Royal Geographical Society awarded David a gold chronometer watch for his discoveries,

and the following year, a royal premium of 25 guineas for his charting of Lake Ngami.

But the best was undoubtedly yet to come.

From November 1853 until May 1856, alone except for a handful of porters, Livingston undertook

an amazing journey.

Travelling for more than 6,500 kilometres of largely unexplored land, we crossed Africa

coast to coast, passing through Angola, Zambia and Mozambique.

So often ill with malaria, Livingston still managed to make a series of excellent maps,

proving his ability as a navigator.

David began this epic adventure by following the Upper Zambezi River as far west as he could.

On the 31st of May 1854, he reached Luanda, having taken 210 days, instead of a projected

148.

He spent four months in Luanda, taking the opportunity to write letters to his family,

and send reports of his progress to the Royal Geographical Society.

In the September of 1854, he set off eastwards, aiming to return to the Upper Zambezi and

follow it all the way to the Indian Ocean.

It took him a year to cross Angola, where he came to the disappointing conclusion that

it would never become a trade route because of the number of Tetsi fly, which would be

fatal to any oxen carrying the loads.

On the 17th of November 1855, he came face to face with a phenomenon that the local natives

called Mosi O'atunya, or the smoke that thunders.

Livingston recorded his impressions.

You cannot imagine the glorious loveliness of the scene from anything in England.

The falls, if we may so term a river, leaping into a sort of straight jacket, abounded on

three sides by forest-covered ridges about 400 feet in height.

Numerous islands are dotted over the river above the falls, and both banks and islands

are adorned with a silver vegetation of great variety of colour and form.

You look, and look again, and hope that seems lovely enough to arrest the Geasar Angels.

They never vanish from the memory.

Livingston renamed Mosi O'atunya the Victoria Falls.

For six months after this momentous discovery, he continued to follow the Zambis eastwards

into Mozambique, finally reaching the Indian Ocean on the 20th of May 1856.

From here, he returned home to England for the first time in 16 years, having been awarded

in his absence the highest honour in the gift of the Royal Geographical Society, their gold

medal.

Livingston returned to a hero's welcome, capturing the sense of national glory that

was evident in such enterprises as the Great Exhibition of 1851.

He provided Britain with a series of exploits of which he felt she could be proud.

Now as to the Victorian enthusiasm for exploration, explorers, heroes and so on, and villain

symbols.

As I said before, there was this extraordinary explosion of enthusiasm and energy in the Victorian

period.

The scientists were making breaking new ground, and there was the genuine belief that science

was going to solve all the world's problems.

There was this great upwelling of religious fervour which had developed on the back of

that, although that said there was also a great ferment of ideas and debates between the

agnostics and the Christians and so on and so forth.

But the world to the Victorians was really their oyster, and in terms of Africa in particular,

they got this great dark continent which was a mystery, and it was still an extraordinary

mystery at the time.

It's very difficult for us to imagine in the late 20th century, but really it was only

the margins of Africa that were known at the time, the coast, the north and the south.

Nobody really knew what was in the centre.

They believed, or many people believe, that it was desert.

They simply didn't know.

So of course these explorers were contributing to this feeling of mission, if you like.

The information that they were bringing back was of genuine interest.

These were real mysteries that were being solved by mainly men, heroic people putting

their own lives at risk to discover the world, bring back the influence.

I think Victorians in some ways were a little bit like children.

There was this great new toy which was there for them to play with, which is perhaps to

downplay some of the darker sides of what they were up to.

I mean I don't want to make any pretense through it entirely benign, but nevertheless

there was this great excitement that the world was opening up for them in all sorts of ways.

I think that explorers such as Livingston contributed to that feeling very broadly, and that's

why they were made heroes.

For a year he toured the country making speeches and finishing off his book, Missionary Travels

and Research in South Africa, which quickly became a bestseller, thereby funding the

next project which he was preparing.

David wanted to open the lower Zambis to steamship traffic, to enhance trading opportunities,

and also to establish a mission to convert the Macololo tribe.

He believed that once they'd been taught to grow cotton, sugar and indigo, there would

be no further need for slaving.

Livingston's attitudes towards slavery were really quite significant.

He was very unusual for his time in that he didn't regard the Africans in any way in

anything like a patronizing manner.

He saw the Africans as being equal, and it's significant, the number of commentators have

remarked on the fact that when he undertook his expeditions, the natives he took with

him weren't porters, they weren't servants or slaves, but he regarded them as companions,

as friends, and he told them many times that they could stay or leave at their choice.

It was entirely up to them.

That said, of course, when some of his companions did say that they wanted to leave and go home,

he was quite disappointed, and they stayed when this all was disappointment.

But strictly speaking, the choice was theirs.

But slavery he detested, he saw slavery everywhere.

Of course, it was quite rife at the time, mainly due to Arab and Portuguese slave

traits.

Wherever possible, certainly in the beginning, he tried to free slaves, but that resulted

in reprisals and was therefore counterproductive.

But his loathing for slavery, which he called his great saw on the world, was really what

motivated some of his later expeditions.

He was very concerned with two things.

One was, of course, the missionary aspects of his work.

But the second thing that he wanted to do was to discover and open up trade routes in

the belief that legitimate trade with the Africans would undermine the slave trade by

making it uneconomic.

And that was really one of his prime motivations, this loathing and hatred of slavery, and his

love for Africa.

Such was the esteem in which he was held, that before he set out, the government made

him British consul for the home of the Portuguese East African coast.

Unfortunately, the Zambezi expedition of 1858 to 1864 was a disaster, which failed in all

its major aims.

The loathing stone never easy to get on with, quarreled with his party especially his brother.

They discovered a loop of the Zambezi that had been missed in the previous trip by taking

a shortcut over land.

This stretch of the river turned out to contain the impassable Kebra-Basa rapids, and so the

dream of using the waterway as a trading route was dashed forever.

The natives at Machololo stubbornly refused to convert to Christianity, and worst of

all, Livingston's wife Mary, who had been working at the mission, died of a theme.

The only saving grace came when Livingston led a small party up the river Shearer, which

leads into the Zambezi, in a steamship called the Marr Robert.

One chartered the existence of another great waterfall, which they named the Murchison

Falls after the expedition sponsor.

They came upon the southernmost tip of Africa's Great Lakes, Lake Shower.

Livingston remembered.

A goodly sight it was to see, for it is surrounded by lofty mountains, and its broad blue waters

with waves dashing on some parts of its shore, look like an arm of the sea.

The natives know of no outlet.

We saw a good many streams flowing into it, for the adjacent country is well watered.

Several rivulets which we crossed unite and form the Palombe and Sombani, which flow into

the lake from the south-west.

The water of the Sherway has a bitter taste, but it is drinkable.

Fish abound, and so do alligators, an hippopotami.

As well as discovering Lake Shower, Livingston also established the existence of Lake Smalombe

and Nyassa.

But worried by failures of the enterprise, the British government felt they had no option,

but to recall him.

One of the reasons for the ignominious end to this trip was that Livingston, in his capacity

as consul, had been making known to the Portuguese his abhorrence of slaving, with which they

were still involved.

When he heard of his recall, which had been issued to prevent a diplomatic incident with

Portugal, Livingston decided that rather than sell his steamship in Mozambique, where it

would certainly be used to ferry slaves, he would sail it to the south.

He would sail it to less controversial purchases.

Although able to carry enough coal for only eight days, he sailed it 3,200 kilometers

across the Indian Ocean to Bombay.

Livingston later recounted.

We arrived in Bombay on the thirteenth instant, after a passage of 45 days from Zanzibar.

From Zanzibar we crept along the African coast in order to profit by a current of at

least a hundred miles a day.

We went along beautifully until we got past the line, then we fell in with the calms, which

continued altogether for twenty-four and a half days.

By patience and perseverance we have at length accomplished our voyage.

But now I feel as great a loss as ever.

I came here to sell my steamer.

But with this comes the idea of abandoning Africa before accomplishing anything against

the slave trade.

After Dr Livingston made his triumphant crossing over Africa from coast to coast in 1856, many

other British explorers had been drawn to expand upon his work.

Amongst them, Richard Burton, John Speake, Samuel Baker and James Grant.

The one discovery that eluded all of them, which, because of its associations with Cleopatra

and the mythology of ancient Egypt, was perhaps the most dramatically appealing, was to find

the source of the Nile.

Now this became a burning preoccupation with Livingston.

He remained in England from 1863 until 1866, when, in an attempt to raise money, he wrote

another book about his adventures on the Zambezi.

Then in the January of 1866 he arrived back in Zanzibar, determined to reach the east

coast of Lake Tanganyika, where he could use a settlement called Uggiji as a base for his

Nile explorations.

In the August of that year he reached Lake Nyasa and then went north to Tanganyika.

Throughout this period Livingston was repeatedly ill with recurring bouts of malaria and fever.

In January 1867 his medicine chest was stolen by a group of deserting porters.

However, three months later in April he reached Lake Tanganyika and for two years thereafter

nothing whatever was heard of him.

People soon began to believe that he had died and it was at this point that James Gordon

Bennett conceived the plan to send Stanley into the jungle to find him.

The last that the civilized world had heard of the old explorer was a letter written in

1869 in which he said,

James Gordon Bennett was a careful man and tried to get the best value for money whenever

he could.

He therefore didn't want to waste a grandiose foreign trip like the one he had devised

for Stanley on a single gambit.

He instructed him to first attend the opening of the Sewis Canal, then to travel up the

Nile and ride a tourist's guide to the river, then to proceed to Palestine and send

dispatches from there before visiting Constantinople, the Caspian Sea, the ruins of Persepolis,

the Euphrates and India.

From Bombay he could make his way across the Indian Ocean to Zanzibar.

Upon his arrival Stanley found that none of the financial guarantees that his employer

had promised him had been put in place.

But in spite of this, he managed to assemble a huge force.

Nearly 200 men were hired to accompany him on the thousand mile trek to Lake Tanganyika.

This number was needed to carry the six tons of supplies and equipment that Stanley deemed

necessary to take, including a Turkish carpet and an enameled bath.

Before setting out, he sent the report to the New York Herald filled with enthusiasm

and bravado.

Until I hear more of him, I'll see the long absent old man face to face, I bid you a farewell.

But wherever he is, be sure I will not give up the chase.

If alive, you shall hear what he has to say.

If dead, I will find and bring his bones to you.

Shortly after writing these words, Stanley suffered painful attacks of dysentery and

malaria.

After recovering, he was delayed for three months at Tobora by local fighting, and the

New York Herald, growing nervous, stopped honoring the liberal drafts that he was issuing.

Eventually, they were on the move again.

But still, all was not plain sailing.

At one point, he discovered a plot amongst his bearers to kill him, and he found himself

staring down the barrel of a gun.

Quickly, Stanley drew his own weapon, as he later recalled.

However was a man nearer his death than was as manny during those few moments.

But if I did not succeed in cowing this ruffian, authority was at an end.

The truth was, they feared to proceed further down the road, and the only possible way of

inducing them to move was by an overpowering force and exercise of my power and will, in

this instant.

And though he might pay the penalty of his disobedience with death.

Stanley successfully quashed the rebellion and continued the mammoth journey, often in

appalling conditions.

The party were also frequently weakened with fever.

Sometimes, they had to march up to their necks to swamps infested with leeches or crocodiles.

Stanley gives colorful descriptions of his experiences.

The decency for bad that I should strip and wade through this sedgy marsh naked.

It would have been cruel to have compelled the men to bear me across.

Nothing remained but a march on, all encumbered as I was with my clothing and accoutrements.

It was very uncomfortable, to say the least.

On November 3, 1871, Stanley's party was approximately one week's march from Uggiji,

where Livingston was known to have a base.

It was on this day that Stanley first heard the natives talking about a white man in the

region of Lake Tanganyika.

Hartley, he covered the last few miles to the lake, and exactly eight months after he

first set out.

He found himself looking down on Tanganyika.

Then he began his triumphant entry into Uggiji.

Amidst the firing of their guns and the general hubbub of their arrival, Stanley recounts

how he heard a black man addressing him in perfect English.

How do you do, sir?

To which he replied, Hello, who the deuce are you?

I am the servant of Dr Livingston.

But before I could ask any more questions, he was running like a madman towards the town.

It was the 10th of November 1871.

Stanley followed the servant until, coming towards him out of the village, he saw a shabby looking

old man, uttering the famous words.

Dr Livingston, I presume.

You have brought me new life.

You have brought me new life, sir.

The phrase Dr Livingston, I presume, has been described by at least one commentator as

a master stroke of English understatement.

I think in some ways it summarises the whole of the Victorian attitude at the time.

They were in the middle of Africa.

Livingston, it was fairly obvious who Livingston was.

It was rather polite, protocol-bound greeting.

I don't know if it's been recorded, but I can imagine them shaking hands as well.

I think in a way it just summarises the Victorians, their love of protocol, their love of adventure,

the great man lost for two years, discovered, and there was this great, understated, very

polite greeting, which in a way summarised everything that the Victorians stood for in

the period.

In all probability, Stanley saved Livingston's life.

Two months earlier, the doctor had returned to UGG to collect supplies, only to find that

they had been stolen by the bearers to trade for ivory.

He was suffering from dysentery and internal bleeding, and told Livingston, I felt I was

dying on my feet.

He finally arrived laden with provisions, even the bottle of champagne with which to

toast the success of his venture.

He also had the medicines which Livingston needed to restore his poor health.

Once he had recovered, the doctor invited his rescuer to stay on and attempt the joint

exploration of the far side of Lake Tanganyika in an attempt to reach the Lualaba River.

However, Stanley had other ideas.

He wanted to squeeze as much information as possible from the old man, then hurry home

to write his story.

He politely declined the offer.

I serve a hard task master.

I should say that Bennett would never forgive my running away from my duty to him.

From what I know of him, he would be grudge, even my few days stay here.

When Livingston prevailed upon him, Stanley agreed to stay for a while.

A fortunate decision as he was soon ill with a very serious bout of malaria, Livingston

described his symptoms.

Mr. Stanley has a severe fever.

With great pains in the back, loins.

An emetic helped a little.

But Mr. Stanley is so ill, he had to be carried in a cot.

Stanley gave the patient view of his illness.

I did not much regret its occurrence.

Since it made me the recipient of the very tender and fatherly care of that good man

whose companion I had become.

I loved him as a son and would have done for him anything of the most feeling.

When Stanley was recovered, Livingston did manage to persuade him to make a small trip

and they spent three months together canoeing up the northern side of Lake Tanganyika.

When it was time to return to civilization, the reporter tried desperately to persuade

Livingston to accompany him, as the doctor later recalled.

Mr. Stanley used some very strong arguments about my going home, recruiting my strengths,

getting artificial teeth and then returning to finish my task.

He behaved as a son to a father, truly overflowing in kindness.

A good lord, remember, and be gracious unto him in life and in death.

On the 14th of March, 1872, the two men finally departed.

Stanley left Livingston with enough medicine and supplies for four months and took with

him all the doctor's journals and reports.

He also promised to send him some reliable porters.

The journalist described the leave-taking.

The man lifted their voices in his song.

I took long looks at Livingston to impress his features thoroughly on my memory.

When Stanley sent the promised porters up country to the doctor, he sent with them a letter.

My dear doctor, that a few amongst men I have found I got so much love as yourself.

I am happy in doing your service, for then I feel I am not quite parted from you.

I wish it were a series of services, but for then I would feel as if I were with you all

the time.

But if not that, I feel a sort of presence that I shall see you again, I should be tempted

to return and take one more look and pass a few more hours.

But gods will be done, and England and America expect their people to do their duty.

For a beloved friend, Stanley.

With the safe arrival of Stanley's trustworthy bearers, the intrepid doctor began preparations

for what was to be his last march.

On the 25th of August 1872, he set out for Lake Banguoylu, which he'd first discovered

four years earlier.

On that occasion, he had not made accurate maps of the southern area of the lake, a

mistake that was to costume his life.

Livingston believed that the source of the Nile was a western branch of the Luolaba River,

which laid to the west of the lake.

By December 1872, the doctor was floundering through the swamp lands that he'd failed

to mark on his maps of the southern shores of Banguoylu, suffering severely from dysentery.

His two companions, Susie and Tumor, often were obliged to carry him across flooding

rivers and cogmires in appalling weather.

Rain.

Rain, as if it never tired.

Livingston remarked in his journal.

On January 1873, five days after his 60th birthday, although he was growing steadily

weaker, he wrote defiantly,

Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair.

Four months later, he was in such pain that he was unable even to ride a donkey and had

to be carried into Chief Chitambo's village on the Luolaba River by his servants.

The following day, he was well enough to ask for some boiled water and a dose of camomel.

His last words to Susie were,

All right, you can go now.

For a minute they watched him.

He did not stir, there was no sign of breathing.

Then one of them advanced softly to him and placed his hands to his cheeks.

It was sufficient.

Life had been extinct some time and the body was almost cold.

Livingston was dead.

David Livingston's heart was removed and his body was embalmed for burial in England.

His two loyal men carried the corpse more than 2,400 kilometres to Zanzibar,

eventually arriving at the coast ten months after their beloved doctor died.

Perhaps one of the most fitting epitaphs to the great man came from the president of the Royal

Geographical Society, Sir Roderick Murchison, who said of his work that it was

the greatest triumph in geographical research which has been affected in our times.

After reluctantly leaving the good doctor,

Stanley faced a long struggle through the jungle back to the coast

to deliver the sensational news of his discovery of Livingston.

While crossing a torrential river, the unfortunate bearer who was carrying the box containing

Stanley's documents, journals and reports, and Livingston's diary, fell into the flood.

He struggled to save himself while holding the precious box above his head away from the water.

Stanley relays how, quick as a flash, he whipped out his revolver and pointed it at the beleaguered porter.

Look out, drop that box and I'll shoot you.

All the men halted in their work while they gazed at their comrade, who was thus imperiled by bullet and flood.

The man seemed to regard the pistol with the greatest awe,

and after a few desperate efforts succeeded in getting the box safely ashore.

Eventually the expedition arrived safely in Zanzibar, and from there, Stanley chartered a boat to the Seychelles.

From here he was able to send a letter to his employer James Gordon Bennett, breaking the exciting news.

Before I left Zanzibar a 13 months ago, I promised to carry out your instructions faithfully and less death,

preventably. I now write to inform you that I have redeemed that promise.

Animated only with a desire to do my duty to the New York Herald, I halted at nothing,

was ever pushing on until my men cried out in sheer fatigue, have mercy.

I cannot say that I feel much worse, though I look ten years old.

I feel pretty tired and worn out, but a few weeks good food will set me all right.

Congratulations to you on all the successful termination of the Arteus for Enterprise,

because the glory is due to the Herald. Your ever ready correspondent, Henry M. Stan.

For the workhouse boy and runaway who had ragged it around for so long before making his mark in the world,

it was a supreme moment. When he arrived at the port of Aden, he found a cable from Bennett waiting for him.

Brief as it was, its words must have been as sweet as any Stanley had ever heard.

You are now as famous as Livingston, having discovered the discoverer,

accept my thanks, and the whole world.

Although the two men were so very different from each other, Livingston, the Dower, Scott,

and Stanley, the opportunistic adventurer, they took immense pleasure in each other's company during

the brief months they spent together in the heart of the dark continent.

The characters of the two men, Stanley and Livingston, were really quite different. Livingston was an

extraordinary man, born into relative poverty near Glasgow. Started his life, his working life in

a cotton mill, spent his first wages buying a Latin grammar, and absolutely dedicated to learning

and knowledge, fired with the enthusiasm of missionaries ill by a pamphlet, which he read.

And that, of course, changed the whole course of his life. He then set out to become trained as a

doctor and ordained as a missionary, which he'd achieved by the age of 24, and then spent his life

in missionary work, absolutely dedicated to what he was doing. Stanley, on the other hand, was

considered by his contemporaries really to be quite callous and cruel. He had two major expeditions,

of which over half of the people taking part in those expeditions actually died, and he was known

to drive him very hard. His punishments were quite cruel. There was a story about a man who stole a

rifle, and Stanley had him hanged, and somebody else was flogged for stealing food and so on.

Nevertheless, he was a good explorer. There was no question of that, and he was knighted later on

in life. But the Dean of Westminster, for instance, refused to have him buried in Westminster,

in Strabby, next to Livingston, precisely on the grounds that he believed him to be a callous and

cruel man. Each man, in his different way, reflected the spirit of the age in which they lived,

and both undoubtedly made a major contribution to the study and science of geography.

Livingston and his first heroic crossing of Africa, and Stanley in later journeys,

made after the rescue of the Doctor. Indeed, between 1874 and 1877, Stanley crossed

Africa from east to west, and ten years later repeated the feat in reverse. Following the Congo

river from west to east. Even today, in a world made smaller by the miracle of modern technology,

Livingston and Stanley remained legendary figures. Their names provide the perfect

link with a distant past, and their deeds will always recall a long gone romantic age,

the age of the explorers.