The Search for Dr. Livingstone

Stanley's Livingstone Expedition

Jan 8, 2010 Loni Perry

One of the most famed expeditions in African history, Henry Morton Stanley's successful quest ended with the famous words "Dr. Livingstone, I Presume?"

Beginning of the shores of the Indian Ocean, Stanley trekked through treacherous terrain in search of Dr. David Livingstone, a man that had been given up for dead a few years before.

The Source of the Nile

Scottish born Dr. David Livingstone had begun as a Christian missionary and was first sent to Africa in 1841. When the Kolobeng mission where he worked closed due to drought he set out to explore the African interior. It was on this trip that he discovered Victoria Falls and became one of the first westerners to make a transcontinental journey across Africa. He returned to England to great fame as explorers were the celebrities of their day, became a member of the Royal Geographical Society and was appointed as Her Majesty’s Consul for the East Coast of Africa. Livingstone made another journey to search for natural resources around the Zambezi River before going in search of the source of the Nile, a question that had baffled mankind for three thousand years.

Livingstone arrived in Zanzibar on January 28, 1866 and stayed there seven weeks while he organized his caravan. They set out at the mouth of the Ruvuma River and almost as soon as the expedition began, his crew began deserting him. By the time he reached Lake Malawi on August 6, the number of his party had dwindled considerably and most of his supplies had been stolen. He headed toward the town of Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika where he sent a message to Zanzibar for more supplies. He fell ill and was forced to travel with slave traders to Lake Mweru and farther southwest where he discovered Lake Bangweulu. Upon finding the Lualaba River he believed that it was the true source of the Nile. He returned to Ujiji in March 1869 only to discover that his supplies had been stolen. With pneumonia, cholera and tropical ulcers on his feet, he once again had to rely on slave traders to get him to Bambara. He was caught there by the rainy season and forced to eat in a roped off area in the rain for the locals’ entertainment in return for food. After the wet season he returned to Ujiji.

Henry Morton Stanley

Born in 1841, Stanley was orphaned at an early age and spent his youth in the St. Asaph Union Workhouse. When he was eighteen, he headed to America where he began working for and became close friends with a trader named Henry Stanley. After the death of the trader, he took his name and fought in the Civil War with the Confederate Army, but when he was captured he joined the Union. At the end of the war, he became a journalist and after a couple other journalism jobs, he was hired by James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald.

Stanley’s Expedition to Find Livingstone

Bennett sponsored the expedition in 1869 and by March 1871 he arrived in Zanzibar with the best equipment money could buy. He faced many of the same challenges that Livingstone had, his horse and all the pack animals had died, many of his porters either deserted or came down with various tropical diseases, and Stanley himself suffered from malaria and dysentery. But unlike Livingstone, Stanley began flogging deserters, an action that he included in his diaries to cater to the Victorian masses.

It was at Ujiji that Stanley finally caught up with Livingstone on May 27, 1876, 236 perilous days after he left Zanzibar. Livingstone, now a sick and weak old man, was standing in the middle of a group of Arab slave traders when Stanley walked up to him, took off his hat and said “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” although whether or not he actually said those famous words or made them up later has been highly disputed as Stanley had torn out the pages of the diary that held his accounts of the encounter, and Livingstone never mentioned it in his version.

The Extended African Expedition

Livingstone and Stanley left Ujiji with 130 men to explore whether or not the Rusizi River flowed out of Lake Tanganyika as had been previously suspected by another British explorer, Sir Richard Francis Burton. It was during this time that Stanley attempted to talk Livingstone into returning with him to London, but he refused. Livingstone did, however, agree to travel with Stanley to Unyahyembe (now known as Tabora). From here Stanley rushed back to tell the world of his meeting with the famous Dr. Livingstone, setting a land speed record in the process. He would later return to Africa to finish the quest for the source of the Nile.

Livingstone waited in Tabora for supplies until August 25 and then headed southwest along Lake Tanganyika toward Lake Bangweulu. He then planned to go west, looking for a system of lakes and rivers flowing north. This journey never happened as he died praying beside his bed on May 1, 1873 at Chief Chitambo’s village near Lake Bangweulu. Two loyal African members of his party, Chuma and Susi, cut out and buried his heart and then took the rest of his body and his journal to the coast so it could be taken back to England where he was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Sources:

Eyewitness To History

Stanley Livingstone Expedition

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