Biography of Henry Stanley. Nitron fiber: production stages, properties, scope of application. Other characters

Stanley Henry Morton (real name John Rowlands, Rowlands) (1841-1904), journalist, explorer of Africa. In 1871-72, as a correspondent for the New York Herald newspaper, he participated in the search for D. Livingston; explored the lake with him. Tanganyika. He crossed Africa twice: in 1874-77 from east to west, he traced almost the entire course of the river. Congo (Zaire), explored the lake. Victoria, opened the lake. Edward, Rwenzori massif, upper reaches of the river. Nile and river basin Congo; in 1887-89 from west to east. While in the service of the Belgian king (1879-84), he participated in the capture of the river basin. Congo.

Stanley Henry Morton. Real name and surname - John Rowlands. One of Africa's greatest explorers. He crossed Africa in the equatorial zone, explored two great lakes - Victoria and Tanganyika, as well as the course of the Lualaba-Congo River from its headwaters to its mouth. The book "Across the Unknown Continent" (1878) has been translated into many European languages.

Henry Morton Stanley was born in Denbeagh, Wales. He was illegitimate and early years I dreamed of America, where, regardless of origin, you can make a career and get rich. In New Orleans, a 17-year-old boy found a place in one of Henry Stanley's trading enterprises and the owner liked him so much for his efficiency, intelligence and hard work that he adopted him, thanks to which John turned into Henry Morton Stanley.

When he was twenty years old, the Civil War began in the United States (1861-1865), Stanley joined the army of the Southern States and participated in the campaigns of General Johnston's army. In the battle of Gitsburg he was captured, but managed to escape.

After the end of the war, his life was similar to that which Jack London later led. As a correspondent for the New York Herald newspaper, which had the largest circulation in America, in 1867 he first came to Africa.

In 1869, Stanley was entrusted with the search for the missing Livingston. At the beginning of 1871, Stanley collected information in Zanzibar about the possible whereabouts of Livingstone. Stanley's route through Usagara and Ugogo to Tabora passed close to the route of Burton and Speke, but beyond Tabora the direct road to Tanganyika was cut off by the Wanyamwezi uprising against Arab slave traders, so the expedition had to make a detour to the south; this resulted in familiarization with the southern part of the Malagarasi basin and, in particular, the discovery of its main left tributary, the Ugalla. On November 10, 1871, Stanley's caravan entered Ujiji, where Livingstone had recently arrived from the shores of Lualaba. There a meeting of two travelers took place.

They traveled together by boat around the northern part of Tanganyika and visited the mouth of the Ruzizi. Stanley's smartly written book How I Found Livingstone (1872) was a resounding success. Despite its shortcomings (for example, maps were made based only on compass measurements), this book was a "classic" work of research on Africa. From a geographical point of view, Livingstone's search brought the discovery of the Ruzizi, a river that flows from Lake Kivu to Lake Tanganyika.

In September 1874, Henry Morton Stanley set out to "complete the discoveries of Speke, Burton and Livingstone": to eliminate the remaining ambiguities regarding the source of the Nile (especially regarding the integrity of Lake Victoria) and finally solve the Lualaba problem.

Stanley's research enterprise was funded by two major newspapers: the English Daily Telegraph and the American New York Herald. His caravan set out from Bagamoyo on November 17, 1874. Before Utogo, Stanley followed the road he was already familiar with, but then deviated from it to the north and northwest, so that, without going into Tabora, he went straight to Lake Victoria. This path, passing through still unknown regions, turned out to be extremely difficult.

Less than half of the expedition reached the lake; the rest died of hunger and disease, died in skirmishes, or simply fled. On February 27, 1875, the caravan arrived in the village of Kageyi on the southern coast of Victoria (a little east of Mwanza - the place where Speke visited in 1858).

As a result of Stanley's circular voyage around Lake Victoria, almost the entire coastline was mapped. Only the southwestern corner of the lake and the northeastern bay of Kavirondo remained unexplored (Stanley mistook the narrow entrance to it for the top of a bay that does not protrude deeply into the land, which appears in this place on his map). Having crossed the lake to Buganda, Stanley spent several months there, preparing for an overland journey to the west, where, according to local residents, the large lake Muta-Nzige was located. Lake Albert, discovered by Baker, was known by similar names (Luta-Nzige, Mvutan-Nzige), and Stanley had no doubt that this was what they were talking about.

The campaign began in November 1875, and in the spring of 1876 Stanley went through the northern and western regions of Unyamwezi to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. He established its exact contours (34 thousand square kilometers) by going around its shores on a ship. Stanley discovered a bay in the northwest of the lake, separated from its main part by the long and narrow Ubvari peninsula, and named it after Burton.

On September 4, 1876, Stanley crossed the lake and from Tanganyika moved down the valley of the Lwama River and reached its mouth - it turned out to be a tributary of the Lualaba. The pale gray Lualaba stream, a kilometer and a half wide, curved from south to northwest. “It’s my duty to follow it to the sea, no matter what obstacles stand in my way.”

Below the waterfalls named after him, Stanley found out that the locals no longer call the river Lualaba, but “Ikutu-ya-Kongo”. All doubts that Lualaba and Congo were the same river were dispelled. Stanley established this when he traced the entire course of the Congo below Ruby. Having described a gigantic arc "in the heart of the Black Continent", he entered the Atlantic Ocean on August 8, 1877, 999 days after leaving Zanzibar. In addition to the Ruby River, he discovered and examined the mouths of a number of other tributaries of the Congo, including the large right Aruvimi and two left ones - the Ruki and the Kasai. The total length of the route, according to his calculations, was 11.5 thousand kilometers.

Stanley's trans-African journey immediately put him among the most prominent researchers of the "Dark Continent". Assessing the results of this expedition in 1877 in “Messages”, A. Petermann emphasized as Stanley’s main merit that he connected the disparate links of the study of Africa - the routes of his predecessors, who stormed the “white spot” in the equatorial part of the continent from the north, south, east and the west.

The results of Stanley's research in the Great Lakes region were impressive; an even greater achievement was the solution to the Lualaba problem. The arc-shaped middle course of the Congo appeared on the map for the first time.

In 1879, already in the service of the Belgian King Leopold II, Stanley began to seize the Congo Basin. Trying to get ahead of the French competitor Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza who came from the north, Stanley put together and bargained for Leopold II a personal colony, the likes of which had never been seen in recent history. In 1884, when Stanley left the Congo Basin, this entity was recognized as the "Congo Free State" by most countries in the world and remained virtually the personal domain of the king until 1908. Only an international scandal, which revealed monstrous abuses, forced Leopold to transfer most of his possessions to the Belgian state.

In the second half of the 80s, the attention of the world press was attracted by the fate of Emin (real name Eduard Schnitzer), the governor of the Equateur province of Sudan, who found himself cut off from Egypt by the Mahdist uprising. Stanley, who led an expedition organized specifically for this purpose by a “rescue committee” created in London, managed to rescue Emin. This second trans-African journey for Stanley also turned out to be fruitful for geography. The main scientific result of the first stage associated with the Congo Basin was a complete study of the Aruvimi River (in the upper reaches called Ituri). Stanley's hike along the Aruvimi was also of interest as the first pedestrian crossing of the "great forest of the Congo" in the history of European exploration of Africa.

The second stage of the journey, in the area of the Nile lakes, was marked by even greater achievements. The discovery of the third highest mountain range in Africa, the Rwenzori (5109 meters), was completed, seen by Stanley in 1876 only from afar. The traveler had no doubt that he had discovered the very “Mountains of the Moon” that Ptolemy had once reported about. In June 1889, Lieutenant W. J. Stairs, a member of the Stanley expedition, made the first ascent of Rwenzori, rising, according to his calculations, to an altitude of 3245 meters above sea level and determining the height of the nearest snowy peak (not the highest) at 4445 meters.

An important geographical result of Stanley's expedition was the solution to the Muta-Nzige problem. After Jesse and Mason determined that this lake could not be part of Albert Nyanza, the question arose of which hydrographic basin it belonged to. Stanley established a connection between Lake Edward and Lake Albert via Semliki.

On 4 May 1904, Stanley's wife buried him in Westminster Abbey. However, the deceased had no doubt that he would be laid to rest next to Livingston.

Reprinted from the site http://100top.ru/encyclopedia/

Biography

Henry Morton Stanley - born in the town of Denbeagh in Wales. He was the illegitimate child of the 18-year-old daughter of a poor farmer, Betsy Parry, and John Rowlands, the son of a wealthy farmer who lived next door. To go to work, Henry's mother had to give her son up to the family of a neighboring farmer Price, where little John lived for several years. As a child he was given the name John Bach. He later changed his surname to Rowlands. When Betsy could no longer pay for raising her son, John was sent to a workhouse in St. Asaph, where the child remained in public care. Prison discipline reigned here. The freedom-loving Henry found himself in conflict situations more than once. John stayed in the workhouse until he was fifteen years old. In 1856, his aunt took him in and entrusted him with tending her sheep. But John was already dreaming of America, where he could make a career, get rich and escape poverty.

At the age of 17, G. Stanley joined a ship as a cabin boy and ended up in New Orleans. In New Orleans, the young man found a place in one of the trading enterprises of Henry Stanley, a merchant with a “soft heart and a hard skull,” who treated him like a son. The merchant liked John's handwriting and accepted him into his shop. John served with Stanley for three years. During this time, the owner liked him so much for his efficiency, intelligence and hard work that he promoted him from “boys” to senior clerk, and then adopted him, thanks to which John turned into Henry Morton Stanley. During the American Civil War, he volunteered for the Southern Army, ending his dreams of freedom and dignity. Henry M. Stanley participated in all of the campaigns of General Edward Johnson's army. He was captured at the Battle of Gettysburg, but managed to escape.

After his captivity, Stanley entered a simple sailor on one of the ships then operating against the South. Stanley spent three years in naval service, from 1863 to 1866. Henry Stanley became a staff correspondent in 1867. During his first big assignment - a series of reports on the “pacification” of the Indians on the western prairies - he received lessons in dealing with “primitive” peoples. Stanley concluded that "the extermination of the Indians was not primarily the fault of the whites, but was mainly a consequence of the indomitable savagery of the red tribes themselves." In his essays, Stanley demonstrated restrained sympathy for the courageous enemy, depicting events in an exciting, sentimental and at the same time superficial way - like a true war journalist. Stanley traveled to European Turkey and Asia Minor as a newspaper correspondent. In 1868, Henry Morton Stanley entered the employ of James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, which had the largest circulation in America. As a correspondent for this newspaper, he first came to Africa - as a witness to the colonial war.

The arena of action was Ethiopia, which, unlike Egypt and Sudan, still defended its independence. And with the upcoming opening of the Suez Canal, the country acquired special significance. Britain sent an expeditionary force to Ethiopia in 1867, which within a year had grown to 40,000 soldiers. The Ethiopian adventure cost at least nine million pounds and ended with the Ethiopian emperor committing suicide in the fortress of Makdela. Seven hundred Ethiopians were killed and one thousand five hundred wounded; on the British side there were two killed and several wounded. Stanley reported about this victorious campaign, so excitingly that it excited American readers. He provided such prompt information that a message about the capture of Magdala appeared in the Herald, when the British government still knew nothing about it. A clever journalist bribed a telegraph operator in Suez to convey his telegram first. In 1871, Stanley set out on behalf of the publisher of the New York Herald to look for Livingston in Central Africa, from whom there had been no news since 1869.

Explorer and colonizer of Africa

Setting out in January 1871 from Zanzibar, accompanied by a large detachment of natives, Stanley overcame extraordinary obstacles on a path on which no European had ever set foot, and reached Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika on November 3, where he found Livingstone. Together with the latter, Stanley walked around the northern part of this lake and in February 1872 came to Unyanyembe. Leaving Livingstone here, Stanley returned to Zanzibar. He described his journey in the book “How I found Livingstone” that attracted everyone’s attention (translated into Russian and many foreign languages).

In 1887, Stanley, funded by the Egyptian government, undertook a journey to free Emin Pasha. On April 30, 1887, accompanied by a detachment of natives of more than a thousand people, he set out from Stanleypool along the Congo River to where the Aruvimi flows into it, and from there, first along the latter, then through the primeval forest; After a journey full of dangers, he reached Cavalli, on the shores of Lake Albert. Only on April 29, 1888, Stanley met with Emin Pasha. Since his detachment was greatly reduced, Stanley decided to return back to Banalya on the Aruvimi River, where he left a rearguard; but in his absence the commander of the rearguard, Major Barthlo, was killed by the mutinous natives, and Stanley found the remnants of the detachment in very distress. Then he headed again to Lake Albert Nyanza, from there to Lake Albert Edward and finally, through Karagwe and Unyamwezi, he reached Bagamoyo (December 5, 1889), where he was met by Major Wisman. Stanley described this third journey in the book “In darkest Afrika” (translated into Russian).

The main results of Stanley's three voyages

The main results of Stanley's three trips to Central Africa are as follows:

on his first trip he established that Lake Tanganyika does not belong to the Nile system;
on the second trip, the outlines of Lake Ukerewe were determined, Lake Albert Edward and the upper reaches of the Congo River were discovered, which for the first time gave a true idea of the geographical character of this part of Central Africa;
on the third trip, the course of the Aruvimi River was explored and a connection was established between lakes Albert Nyanza and Albert Edward through the Zemlyka River.

Essays

How I found Livingstone (L., 1872)
Through the Dark Continent (1878)
The Congo and the founding of its free state (1885)
In darkest Africa (1890)
My dark companions and their strange stones (L., 1893)
My early travels and adventures in America and Asia (L., 1895)

Literature

Karpov G. V. Henry Stanley. - M.: Geographgiz, 1958. (Wonderful geographers and travelers).
In the kingdom of blacks (scenes from the life and nature of Central Africa). St. Petersburg, September 12, 1905 Translation from English by M. Granstrem

Links

Henry Morton Stanley in the Around the World encyclopedia.
OUTDOORS.RU - G. Stanley. In the wilds of Africa (abridged translation by I. I. Potekhin)
Russian State Library - Henry M. Stanley. In the wilds of Africa: The history of the search, liberation and retreat of Emin Pasha, the ruler of Equatoria (translation by E. G. Beketova)

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See what "Henry Morton Stanley" is in other dictionaries:

Wikipedia has articles about other people with this surname, see Stanley. Henry Morton Stanley Henry Morton Stanley ... Wikipedia

- (Stanley, Henry Morton) HENRY MORTON STANLEY real name John Rowlands (1841 1904), explorer of Africa. Born in Denbigh (Wales) on January 28, 1841. Abandoned by his mother, he was handed over to relatives who took care of him until the age of six, and... ... Collier's Encyclopedia

Stanley, Sir Henry Morton- (real name John Rowlands) (Stanley, (Sir) Henry Morton) (1841 1904), explorer and journalist. An illegitimate child, left without parents, was brought up in a Welsh workhouse; in 1859 he fled to the USA. Was adopted by a merchant from... ... The World History

- (real name John Rowlands Rowlands) (1841 1904), journalist, explorer of Africa. In 1871 72, as a correspondent for the New York Herald newspaper, he participated in the search for D. Livingston; explored the lake with him. Tanganyika. Crossed Africa twice: in 1874... Big encyclopedic Dictionary

Stanley Henry Morton [real name John Rowlands] (28.1.1841, Denbigh, Wales, 10.5.1904, London), journalist, explorer of Africa. At the age of 17 he emigrated from Great Britain to the USA. In 1871 72 as... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

- (Stanley), real name and surname John Rowlands (Rowlands) (1841 1904), journalist, explorer of Africa. Born in the UK, lived in the USA. In 1871 72, as a correspondent for the New York Herald newspaper, he participated in the search for D. Livingston; with him … encyclopedic Dictionary

Stanley Henry Morton- (Stanley) (18411904), traveler to Africa, colonial figure. Born in the UK, lived in the USA. As a correspondent for the New York Herald newspaper in 1868, he was in Ethiopia. In 1871 he went to Africa in search. From Zanzibar S.... ... Encyclopedic reference book "Africa"

I (Stanley, born 1841) famous traveler; the son of a poor farmer D. Rowland from Vallis, he joined the ship as a cabin boy at the age of 13 and ended up in New Orleans. Here he was accepted into the service of a merchant with the surname S., who later adopted him. IN… … Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

- (real name John Rowlands; 1841–1904) – journalist, explorer of Africa. In 1871 72 as corr. gas. The New York Herald participated in the search for D. Livingston; explored the lake with him. Tanganyika. Crossed Africa twice. while in the service of... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary of Pseudonyms

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100 great travelers [with illustrations] Muromov Igor

Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904)

Henry Morton Stanley

Originally from Wales. Real name and surname: John Rowlands. One of Africa's greatest explorers. He crossed Africa in the equatorial zone, explored two great lakes - Victoria and Tanganyika, as well as the course of the Lualaba-Congo River from its headwaters to its mouth. The book “Across the Unknown Continent” (1878) has been translated into many European languages.

Henry Morton Stanley was born in Denbeagh, Wales. He was the illegitimate child of the daughter of a poor farmer, Betsy Parry, and John Rowlands, the son of a wealthy farmer who lived next door.

As a child, the future great traveler's name was John Batch, then he took the name John Rowlands.

In 1856, his aunt took him in and entrusted him with tending her sheep. But John was already dreaming of America, where he could make a career, get rich and escape the darkness of poverty. Like many Europeans, the boy saw the United States as “the first step on the road to dignity and freedom.”

In New Orleans, a 17-year-old boy found a place in one of the trading enterprises of Henry Stanley, a merchant with a “soft heart and a hard skull,” who treated him like a son. The owner liked him so much for his efficiency, intelligence and hard work that he promoted him from “boys” to senior clerk, and then adopted him, thanks to which John turned into Henry Morton Stanley.

When he was 20 years old, the American Civil War (1861–1865) began. He participated in all the campaigns of General Johnston's army. In the battle of Gitsburg he was captured, but managed to escape.

After his captivity, Stanley joined one of the ships that was then operating against the South as a simple sailor. Stanley spent three years in naval service, from 1863 to 1866. After the end of the war, his life was similar to that which Jack London later led. The beginning of his journalistic activity is shrouded in darkness. He became a staff correspondent in 1867. During his first big assignment—a series of reports on the “pacification” of Indians on the western prairies—he received lessons in how to deal with “primitive” peoples. Stanley concluded that “the extermination of the Indians was not primarily the fault of the whites, but was mainly a consequence of the indomitable savagery of the red tribes themselves.” In his essays, Stanley demonstrated restrained sympathy for the courageous enemy, depicting events in an exciting, sentimental and at the same time superficial way - like a true war journalist. It was as such that he introduced himself in 1868 to James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald newspaper, which had the largest circulation in America. As a correspondent for this newspaper, he first came to Africa - as a witness to the colonial war.

Stanley reported about this victorious campaign, so excitingly that it excited American readers. He provided such prompt information that the report of the capture of Magdala appeared in the Herald when the British government still knew nothing about it. A clever journalist bribed a telegraph operator in Suez to convey his telegram first.

In 1869, Bennett entrusted Stanley with the search for the missing famous explorer David Livingston. It is likely that the newspaper magnate, making such a decision, which cost him 9 thousand pounds, was counting on future readers in the UK. After all, the Herald has already proven that it is more agile than the British government. Bennett did not skimp on expenses.

At the beginning of 1871, Stanley collected information in Zanzibar about the possible whereabouts of Livingstone. Setting out from Bagamoyo on March 21, 1871, at the head of a large, well-equipped expedition, Stanley moved west to the Usagara Mountains; Along the way, he explored the Mkondoa Valley and established that this river was not a tributary of the Kingani, as Burton and Speke believed, but the upper reaches of the Wami. Stanley's route through Usagara and Ugogo to Tabora passed close to the route of Burton and Speke, but beyond Tabora the direct road to Tanganyika was cut off by the Wanyamwezi uprising against Arab slave traders, so the expedition had to make a long detour to the south; this resulted in familiarization with the southern part of the Malagarasi basin and, in particular, the discovery of its main left tributary, the Ugalla. On November 10, 1871, Stanley's caravan entered Ujiji, where Livingstone had recently arrived from the shores of Lualaba. There the meeting of two travelers to Africa took place.

Stanley supplied Livingston various items basic necessities, including medicines that he especially needed, and the old traveler perked up again. In November-December 1871, they traveled together by boat to the northern part of Tanganyika and visited the mouth of the Ruzizi, finally establishing that this river flows into the lake and does not flow out of it. One of the local chiefs informed them that the Ruzizi originated in Lake Kivo (i.e. Kivu), much smaller in size than Tanganyika; he heard nothing about the huge body of water that Baker placed on his map directly north of Tanganyika, from which Stanley correctly concluded that “Sir Samuel Baker will have to reduce Alberta Nyanza by one, if not two degrees of latitude.”

At the very end of December 1871, both travelers left Ujiji and arrived in Tabora in February 1872.

Stanley's smartly written book How I Found Livingstone (1872) was a resounding success. It was published four weeks after Stanley returned to the United States, and this circumstance alone characterizes the energy of the author. From the point of view of geographical science, Livingstone's search brought the discovery of the Ruzizi, a river that flows from Lake Kivu to Lake Tanganyika.

In September 1874, Henry Morton Stanley showed up in Zanzibar. This time he set himself the task of “completing the discoveries of Speke, Burton and Livingstone”: to eliminate the remaining ambiguities regarding the source of the Nile (especially regarding the integrity of Lake Victoria) and finally solve the Lualaba problem.

Stanley's research enterprise was funded by two major newspapers: the English Daily Telegraph and the American New York Herald. As in his previous East African journey, he was not short of funds and was able to organize a large, superbly equipped expedition. His caravan, which set out from Bagamoyo on November 17, 1874, consisted of 356 people, including 270 porters who carried, among other expedition equipment, a large collapsible sailing boat, the Lady Alice. Of the Europeans, in addition to Stanley himself, three young Englishmen took part in the expedition: Frederick Barker and the Pocock brothers - Francis John and Edward.

Before Utogo, Stanley followed the road he was already familiar with, but then deviated from it to the north and northwest, so that, without going into Tabora, he went straight to Lake Victoria. This path, which passed through areas still completely unknown to Europeans, turned out to be extremely difficult.

The caravan stretched for more than a kilometer. Copper wire, calico, bags full of beads, cowrie shells and provisions, boxes with equipment, as well as a disassembled, twelve-meter-long cedar boat "Lady Alice" - all this was carried on the shoulders of the porters. By January 1875, 89 porters had escaped, 30 had fallen ill, and 20 had died. Less than half of the expedition’s personnel reached the lake; the rest died of hunger and disease, died in skirmishes, or simply fled. One of the first victims was Edward Pocock, who died of fever on January 17, 1875.

On February 27, 1875, the caravan arrived in the village of Kageyi on the southern coast of Victoria (a little east of Mwanza, the place where Speke visited in 1858).

On March 8, 1875, Stanley, leaving the main part of the expedition in Kageyi, set sail across the lake on the assembled and launched Lady Alice. The very first days of the voyage culminated in the discovery of a large southeastern bay of the lake, which Stanley named after Spica. Having rounded the large island of Ukerewe from the west and leaving the neighboring island of Ukara on the left side, the traveler moved north along the eastern coast of Victoria, carefully marking on the map all the curves of the coastline; at the same time, he was able to verify that among the tributaries that the lake receives from the eastern side, there is not a single one of any significance (as was also indicated by the information collected by Speke).

Following along the northern and then western shores of the lake, he visited the mouths of the Katonga and Kagera; He was especially interested in the Kagera, along which he climbed several kilometers, but was unable to advance further because the current was too strong. Stanley became convinced that this river was superior in water supply to all other tributaries of Victoria and, therefore, could lay claim to the role of the main source of the Nile. On May 5 he completed his tour of the lake, arriving again at Kageyi, where he learned of Barker's death from fever on April 27.

As a result of Stanley's circumnavigation of Lake Victoria, almost its entire coastline was traced and mapped, although not very accurately. “I have not gone beyond the scope of the task assigned to me,” wrote Stanley, “namely, the exploration of the southern sources of the Nile and the solution of the problem left unsolved by Speke and Grant: whether Victoria Nyanza is one lake or consists of five lakes, as reported by Livingstone, Burton and etc. This problem has now been satisfactorily solved, and Speke has all the credit for discovering the largest inland sea on the African continent, as well as its main tributary, as well as its drainage.

Having crossed the lake with all his people to Buganda, Stanley spent several months there, getting to know the country and preparing for a new research enterprise - an overland journey to the west of Buganda, where, according to local residents, the large lake Muta-Nzige was located. Lake Albert, discovered by Baker, was known by similar names (Luta-Nzige, Mvutan-Nzige), and Stanley had no doubt that this was what they were talking about.

The campaign began in November 1875. Having climbed up the swampy Katonga valley and crossed the poorly defined watershed between it and the Rusango River flowing to the west, Stanley saw in early January 1876 far to the northwest mountain range Rwenzori - "a huge blue mass, which we were told was a great mountain in the country of Gambaragara." The traveler gave this mountain the name of Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald; its original African name, under which it appears on modern maps, was unknown to him at that time. The height of Mount Stanley was determined to be approximately 4300–4600 meters above sea level, i.e. somewhat underestimated (the highest point of Rwenzori is 5109 meters). The fact that he discovered the third highest mountain range in Africa was discovered only much later.

On January 11, 1876, the expedition camped one and a half kilometers from the edge of the plateau, at the foot of which lay Muta-Nzige. In fact, these were two lakes connected to each other by a channel, bearing the names Edward and George on our maps. Stanley could clearly see the eastern one, the smaller one being George; he mistook it for the bay of a larger lake located further to the west, according to his ideas, the southern continuation of Albert Nyanza Baker. The traveler was not able to get to know these waters better: the leaders of the local tribes flatly refused to allow uninvited guests into their possessions. Stanley returned to Buganda and from there in February 1876 headed south to Karagwe, still hoping to reach the lake of interest by another, more southern route. However, this plan was not crowned with success: access to the countries lying to the west of Karagwe - Mpororo and Rwanda - was strictly prohibited to foreigners. As for Lake Albert, Stanley didn’t even see it. Along the way, Stanley made another geographical discovery, the value of which he never fully understood: the peak he saw in January 1876, north of his route, was part of the Rwenzori mountain range, the same Mountains of the Moon that had been sought for so long.

The ruler of Karagwe Rumanika, on the contrary, treated Stanley with the same goodwill with which he had greeted Speke and Grant, and the traveler took advantage of this favorable environment to explore Kagera. He traced the meridionally oriented middle section of the valley of this river, swampy and dotted with numerous small lakes, approximately to the confluence of its two main sources - Nyavarungu and Ruvuvu. The information he collected that Kagera receives the waters of Lake Akanyaru from the west was not entirely accurate: Akanyaru is not a lake, but a river, the main right tributary of Nyavarungu (but in the Nyavarungu and Akanyaru basins, there are indeed small lakes). Stanley also heard about the existence of another large lake further to the west (meaning Kivu), but could not find out whether it had a connection with Kagera and whether it was part of Muta-Nzige. From the Kagera Valley, Stanley, like Speke, saw the Mfumbiro (Virunga) mountains on the horizon.

At the end of March 1876, Stanley left Karagwe and a month later went through the northern and western regions of Unyamwezi to Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika.

"Lady Alice" was reassembled. The traveler made a circular voyage around Lake Tanganyika and established the exact contours of this lake (34 thousand square kilometers), walking around its shores on the ship for seven weeks (June-July). Stanley discovered a bay in the north-west of the lake, separated from its main part by the long and narrow peninsula of Ubvari, which was named after Burton.

Lukuga's research brought unexpected results. Stanley followed this river further than Cameron, and came to the conclusion that he was mistaken in believing that it drained the waters of Tanganyika: the bed of the Lukuga turned out to be completely clogged with sediment and occupied by a papyrus swamp with separate “windows” of standing water. Only later did it become clear that this flow had temporarily stopped. In 1878, two years after Stanley visited Tanganyika, lake waters broke through the dam and began flowing into Lukugu again, causing the lake level to rapidly drop.

On September 4, 1876, Stanley crossed the lake and from Tanganyika moved down the valley of the Lwama River and after 41 days reached its mouth - it turned out to be a tributary of the Lualaba. The pale gray Lualaba stream, a kilometer and a half wide, curved from south to northwest. “It is my duty to follow it to the sea, no matter what obstacles stand in my way.”

At the end of October 1876, Stanley arrived in Nyangwe. Stanley knew that to carry out this intention, he first needed to enlist the support of the Arab-Swahili traders, who extended their power along Lualaba to Nyangwe. Not short of money, unlike Livingston and Cameron, he entered into an agreement with relative ease with Hamed bin Mohammed, better known as Tippo-Tip, the most influential slave hunter and ivory miner in the area. “Finally Tippo-Tip agreed and signed the contract and I gave him a check for £1,000. On November 5, 1876, our army, numbering 700 people (Tippo-Tip's slaves and my expedition), left Nyangwe and entered the ominous northern forest regions. Stanley also purchased 18 large boats.

Having bypassed the rapids formed by Lualaba immediately below Nyangwe, on November 19 the expedition moved from the right bank to the left. Stanley, Francis Pocock (the last of the three English traveling companions to survive), Tippo-Tip and 30 oarsmen continued down the river on the Lady Alice, while the rest continued along the shore.

The river was already 1600–1800 meters wide, its banks and islands were overgrown with dense forest. In Stanley's travel notes, gradually more and more information is reported about residents living in villages protected by ditches and fences. Their huts, woven from plants, had both round and pointed roofs. The inhabitants' diet consisted of cassava and bananas, as well as what they could get through fishing and hunting. Salt, which the tribes of the Congo obtained by burning special herbs in special ovens, was especially highly valued. In addition, the successes of blacksmiths and shipbuilders were very significant: beautifully crafted weapons and boats, sometimes reaching 30 meters in length and decorated with rich carvings.

In January 1877, near the equator, Stanley discovered seven waterfalls, one after another, to which he gave his given name. Each of them had to be walked around on dry land, dragging the boats. But further downstream the waterway turned out to be free of obstacles for more than one and a half thousand kilometers. Lualaba became even wider and soon formed two, three, four and even six branches, separated from each other by numerous islands.

Below the falls, the river, which had previously followed a generally northern direction, began to deviate to the northwest, then to the west and southwest, describing a huge arc. Not far from the extreme northern point of this arc, Stanley found out that the locals no longer called the river Lualaba, but “Ikutu-ya-Kongo”. All doubts that Lualaba and Congo are the same river were completely dispelled.

At the initial stage of his voyage along Lualaba (Congo), right up to the waterfalls, Stanley had the opportunity to inspect and map the mouths of almost all the rivers flowing into it in this area. Subsequently, the same task turned out to be incredibly complicated by the enormous width of the Congo in its middle course (up to 15 kilometers in individual lake-like extensions) and the abundance of wooded islands on it, which made it difficult to view the area; It is not surprising, therefore, that some of the tributaries of the great river remained unnoticed.

Directly below the waterfalls named after him, Stanley discovered the mouth of the Lindi River flowing into the Congo on the right (on his map - Mbura). Then he discovered a much more powerful right tributary - the high-water Aruvimi, reaching more than one and a half kilometers wide at the mouth; Stanley mistakenly identified this river with the Wele of Schweinfurt. Stanley did not see the mouth of the largest right tributary of the Congo, the Ubangi, but he received some information about the existence of this river and marked the place of its confluence quite correctly.

Of the large left tributaries of the Congo in its middle reaches, Stanley was able to confidently show only two on his map - Ruki and Kwa (Kasai). True, he considered Ruki, which struck him with its abundance of water, to be identical to Kasai, but he took the real Kasai as a continuation of Kwango.

On February 18, the expedition crossed the equator again. By the end of the month, the river bed had narrowed, and Stanley feared that new waterfalls were ahead of them. But on March 12, the banks again moved widely away from each other, and a large, lake-like expansion was revealed to the travelers’ eyes, behind which began a new series of waterfalls, rapids and rapids, marking the breakthrough of the mighty river through the Atlantic mountain rampart. Unable to resist the temptation to once again immortalize his name on the map, the traveler called this extension Stanley Pool, i.e. “Stanley’s Pond”; he gave the waterfalls of the lower reaches of the Congo, already partly known to Europeans by that time, but not having a common name Livingston's name.

After Stanley Pool the river bed narrowed very quickly. The expedition the very next day found itself in front of a whole series of 32 waterfalls and rapids, ending with the Ellala rapids. Waterfalls followed one after another; the difference in height between the first waterfall and the last was more than 300 meters. Until July, people towed and dragged their boats on brushwood decks through slippery rocks, hissing water and coastal mud. Francis Pocock and Kalulu died in the process. In the end we had to abandon the boats.

The river flowed north, but beyond the equator, at Stanley Falls, it turned northwest, and even lower, having received Ruby from the east, it turned directly west. Now there was no longer any doubt that Cameron was right: Lualaba is not connected with the Nile, but most likely with the Congo, representing the upper part of the great river. Stanley finally established this when he traced the entire course of the Congo below Ruby. Having described a gigantic arc “in the heart of the Black Continent,” he came out into Atlantic Ocean August 8, 1877, 999 days after leaving Zanzibar. In addition to the Ruby River, he discovered and examined the mouths of a number of other tributaries of the Congo, including the large right Aruvimi and two left ones - the Ruki and the Kasai.

The last stage of the journey - along the rapids of the lower reaches of the Congo - turned out to be the most difficult. For the most part, the expedition moved along the right bank of the river along sharply rough terrain, in complete roadlessness.

On August 9, 1877, the expedition arrived in Boma, and three days later - in Banana on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.

Thus ended this grandiose transcontinental raid, which lasted almost three years. The total length of the path traveled by Stanley was, according to his calculations, 11.5 thousand kilometers. These kilometers came at a high price: less than a third of the expedition’s original personnel arrived on the west coast. Of the Europeans who participated in the expedition, only Stanley survived.

Stanley's trans-African journey immediately put him among the most prominent researchers of the “Dark Continent”. Assessing the results of this expedition in 1877 in his “Messages,” A. Petermann emphasized Stanley’s main merit was that he linked together the disparate links of African exploration - the routes of his predecessors who stormed the great “ White spot» in the equatorial part of the continent from the north, south, east and west.

The results of Stanley's research in the Great Lakes region were already extremely impressive; An even greater achievement was the final solution to the Lualaba problem. The arc-shaped middle course of the Congo appeared on the map for the first time. By sailing along the great river, Stanley began the discovery (which, however, became clear later) of a huge - more than 0.7 million square kilometers - periodically flooded flat depression called the Congo Basin.

Having become one of the most spectacular newspaper sensations of the time, Stanley's journey also had an important political resonance. After this journey, the actual division of tropical Africa began.

Stanley's reports of the densely populated, ivory-rich areas of the Congo did not arouse proper understanding in England, so he joined the International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Central Africa, headed by the Belgian King Leopold II.

In 1879, Stanley began to seize the Congo Basin. He had almost unlimited finances, he had at his disposal mountains of goods for exchange, a small steamer, a steam launch, boats, a rapid-fire cannon; weapons, equipment, dismountable vehicles, as well as all kinds of tools were delivered to the mouth of the Congo. Under Stanley's leadership, a road was built to bypass Livingston Falls, more than 400 leaders were forced to enter into allied treaties and agreements, and 40 military forts were founded, including Leopoldville, present-day Kinshasa. No one tried to hide the purpose of such expenses: “The lower Congo region turned out to be unproductive and at first supplied only peanuts, palm oil and feed for livestock, and a little further upstream - fossil resin and ivory. The upper reaches of the Congo had the most valuable forests and fertile soils. Building wood, wood of especially valuable species, mahogany, ivory, rubber, coffee, fossil resin and the like - all these treasures only needed to be raised if impeccable trade transport was organized.”

Trying to get ahead of the French competitor Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, who came from the north, Stanley put together and bargained for Leopold a personal colony, similar to which recent history dont know. Along the way, in 1882–1883, Henry Morton explored a number of tributaries of the Congo, discovered the mouths of the Lulonga and Lomami, and on the left bank of the Congo he discovered two relatively large bodies of water - Leopold II (Mai-Ndombe) and Tumba.

In the second half of the 80s, the close attention of the world press was attracted by the fate of Emin (real name Eduard Schnitzer), the governor of the Equateur province of Sudan, who, along with a large contingent of Egyptian military personnel and officials, was cut off from Egypt by the Mahdist uprising. Several rescue expeditions were organized. This was started not so much for the sake of saving the governor and his subordinates, but for the sake of new territorial seizures and 80 tons of ivory, which were in the hands of Emin.

Emin was eventually rescued by Stanley, who led a large expedition organized specifically for this purpose by a “rescue committee” created in London.

Stanley handed Emin the Khedive's firman, informing him of Egypt's refusal of the Equateur Province, and gave him a choice of three offers: either go with him to Zanzibar, or go into the service of the Belgian king and ensure the annexation of the Equateur Province to the "Independent State of the Congo" , or, finally, head to the north-eastern shores of Lake Victoria and settle there on behalf of the recently created British East Africa Company. Emin eventually settled on the first option, but the journey to the east coast was delayed for a whole year.

In April 1889, the joint detachment of Stanley and Emin left the shores of Lake Albert, moved up the Semliki Valley and in June arrived at Lake Muta-Nzige, discovered by Stanley 13 years earlier, which he now named after the English Crown Prince Albert Edward. From here the expedition headed to Kagera, then to Lake Victoria and further to the east coast, which it reached at Bagamoyo in December 1889.

This second and last trans-African journey of Stanley, like his previous expeditions, turned out to be very fruitful for geography. The main scientific result of its first stage, associated with the Congo Basin, was the study of the Aruvimi River (in the upper reaches called Ituri) from the mouth almost to its very sources; at the same time, the confluence of its right tributary Nepoko, visited in the upper reaches by Juncker, was recorded, and some other tributaries (Epulu, Lenda) were also discovered and partially examined. Stanley's trek along the Aruvimi was also of considerable interest as the first pedestrian crossing of the “great forest of the Congo” in the history of European exploration of Africa, which had previously been touched upon by travelers’ routes only along the outskirts or crossed by them along rivers.

Stanley's research activities during the second stage of his journey, in the area of the Nile lakes, were marked by even greater achievements. First of all, we should mention the completion of the discovery of the third highest mountain range in Africa - Rwenzori (5109 meters), seen by Stanley in 1876 only from afar. The discovery took place at the end of May 1888. Having walked around this mountain range from the west and south on the way from Lake Albert to the East African coast, he was able to get a fairly complete picture of the main features of its orography. In June 1889, Lieutenant W. J. Stairs, a member of the Stanley expedition, made the first ascent of Rwenzori, rising, according to his calculations, to an altitude of 3245 meters above sea level and determining the height of the nearest snowy peak (not the highest) at 4445 meters. Africa's last great mystery was thus solved.

An important geographical result of Stanley's expedition was the solution to the Muta-Nzige problem, which had greatly occupied scientists. After Jesse and Mason determined that this lake could not be part of Albert Nyanza, the question arose of which hydrographic basin it belonged to. Stanley established a connection between Lake Edward and Lake Albert via Semliki. However, this time he was not able to explore the lake itself in any detail; however, he still remained ignorant of the independent existence of Lake George and showed it on his map, as before, as a bay of Lake Edward.

Stanley's further journey to the coast of the Indian Ocean was marked by two more important geographical results: the configuration of the middle reaches of the Kagera was significantly clarified (the sharp bend described by the river was discovered) and the previously unknown southwestern bay of Lake Victoria was discovered, which received the name Emina.

In Stanley's book “In the Most Mysterious Africa,” published in London in 1890 (in Russian translation - “In the Wilds of Africa”), the author managed to rise above his usual level of sensational reporting and come to a number of interesting scientific conclusions and generalizations.

From the book Encyclopedic Dictionary (M) author Brockhaus F.A.

Morton Morton (W. Morton) – American. dentist, famous for introducing ether of sulfur into surgical practice as an anesthetic. M. gen. in 1819, was educated at a dental school in Baltimore, and practiced in Boston. Looking for pain relief

From the book 100 great doctors author Shoifet Mikhail Semyonovich

Morton (1819–1868) Medical historians have discovered that ether was discovered in the 16th century by the German scientist and physician Valerius Cordano (Valerius Cordus, 1515–1544). He obtained ether from alcohol using sulfuric acid. This method of obtaining ether was forgotten; it was unknown even to such a chemist as Stahl.

From the book Psychology by Robinson Dave

From the book Director's Encyclopedia. Cinema USA author Kartseva Elena Nikolaevna

Antonin Dvorak (1841–1904) In the village of Nelahozeves, located on the banks of the Vltava, one of the founders of Czech national musical classics, Antonin Dvorak, was born into the family of an innkeeper on September 8, 1841. At the age of six he went to a village school. Church

From the book Self-loading pistols author Kashtanov Vladislav Vladimirovich

MILGRAM, STANLEY American psychologist Stanley Milgram (1933–1984) is best known for his research into the reasons why people obey authority. One of the key questions of his research was: what would people's reaction be if a government official

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STANLEY, Henry Morton (1841–1904), British journalist and traveler 582 Dr. Livingstone, I presume? // Dr Livingston, I presume? With these words 10 Nov. 1871 Stanley approached David Livingstone. Livingstone (1813–1873), physician and missionary, disappeared in Africa in 1866 and after much

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MORTON, Rogers (Morton, Rogers, 1914–1979), American politician, Gerald Ford's 1976 campaign manager142aI'm not going to rearrange the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. Quote. in The Washington Post, May 16, 1976 (after Gerald Ford lost the prelims for the fifth time

From the author's book

STANLEY, Henry Morton (1841–1904), British journalist and traveler95 Dr. Livingstone, I presume? // Dr Livingston, I presume? With these words 10 Nov. 1871 Stanley approached David Livingstone. Livingstone (1813–1873), physician and missionary, disappeared in Africa in 1866 and after much

Yakov Vasilievich Abramov

His life, travels and geographical discoveries

Biographical sketch of Ya. V. Abramov

With a portrait of Stanley engraved in Leipzig by Gedan

Introduction

Stanley as a brave traveler who made four outstanding expeditions into the depths of the “dark continent”, who made the vast expanses of Equatorial Africa known and accessible to Europeans and civilization, who thereby exerted a powerful influence on the lives of many tens of millions of African natives and caused the extraordinary development of colonial enterprises on the part of Europeans states - enjoys worldwide fame. Much less known, or rather very little known, is Stanley as a unique personality completely unsuited to our time. On the one hand, he is an extremely outstanding example of a man who owes his brilliant career entirely to himself, his extraordinary energy, and his extraordinary moral and mental qualities. In this regard, of all the modern celebrities, only Edison can be placed next to Stanley, whose early youth, as well as his character, are surprisingly reminiscent of Stanley's youth and character. On the other hand, Stanley is a man who has managed in our real age and, with all the practicality of his nature, to remain all his life a man of ideas, a fighter for man and his dignity, a defender of the weak and an opponent of the oppressors. In this regard, Stanley is so little known, especially among us, that very recently he, one of the noblest personalities of our century, was treated by a certain part of the press, both European and especially Russian, as a new Cortes, just as cruel and selfish. In our work, therefore, we will have in mind not so much the clarification of the scientific and political significance of Stanley’s activities in Africa, as it is already quite well known, but rather the characterization of him as a person - moral and mental. True, work of this kind is less rewarding, since in the materials for Stanley’s biography the mentioned side of his life is not described fully enough. It is especially sad that it is precisely regarding that period of Stanley’s life when his moral personality was formed - childhood and early youth - that there is only fragmentary information. Nevertheless, we believe that Stanley’s biography, with the character that we predominantly give to it, should be preferred to the presentation of only the external events of the life of this remarkable man or to the repetition of details that have already become generally known. Our sources in compiling Stanly's biography were mainly books by Stanley himself, devoted to a description of his travels and the state of the Congo, books and articles by Adolphe Burdeau, Captain Glave, Scott, Water, Kelty and a report from the Western Mail newspaper about a conversation between its correspondent and his mother Stanley.

ChapterI. Stanley's childhood and youth

The man who became famous as Henry Morton Stanley was called John Rowlands as a child. Actually, he had no legal right to this name either, since it was the name of his illegitimate father. As a child he was not named after his father, but was known under the name of John Bach, and only when he grew up enough to learn about his origins and appreciate the action of his father, who abandoned him to the mercy of fate, did he arbitrarily begin to bear the surname Rowlands, as he later adopted the name Stanley, which he made famous. John Bach, John Rowlands, or Henry Stanley, was born in 1841 in the town of Denbeagh in Wales, that is, in the southwestern part of England. His mother was the daughter of a poor farmer and her name was Bztsi Perry. The son of a wealthy neighboring farmer, John Rowlands, became close to her. The consequence of the connection was a child, a future famous traveler. The young farmer wanted to make up for his offense by marrying the mother of his child, but old Rowlands rebelled against this, finding his son’s marriage to a poor girl unsuitable, and the young man, yielding to his father, abandoned his bride and child. The whole burden of raising a child, combined with the shame of his illegal birth, fell on eighteen-year-old Betsy Perry. Fortunately, her father, Moses Perry, despite his extreme poverty, was a humane man and treated his daughter’s misdemeanor leniently. When, returning home one day, he unexpectedly met a new tenant in his home, announcing his presence with a ringing cry, Moses Perry cordially said: “Give me this dear little one. Well, I don’t see anything unusual in him, but still. Let him, however, eat his first porridge on gold,” and the old man brought a few drops of porridge to his grandson on a gold coin. “May he always have a silver spoon,” the old man concluded his greeting to the newborn. Little John lived with Grandfather Moses, according to some sources, up to three years, and according to others, up to five. The grandfather loved his grandson, spoiled him and jokingly called him “the man of the future.” But good Moses Perry was overcome by an apoplexy and died. Betsy Perry had to go into service because her brother, a former butcher, and her sisters, who were getting married, did not want to know her after she gave birth to a child. The child prevented him from entering any place, and Betsy was forced to give him up to the family of a neighboring farmer Price. All of Betsy’s meager earnings were used to pay for raising the child, since little John’s father did not want to hear about him, and besides, he soon became an alcoholic and died after one fight in a tavern. As for Betsy's relatives, John's uncles and aunts, they also refused the unfortunate mother and her son any help. John lived with the Price family for several years. As you can imagine, this life was not fun. Rude people, who saw in the boy only a means to somewhat supplement their meager income, did not stand on ceremony in their treatment of the child. The Prices had two children of their own, and, naturally, little John had to endure a lot because of them. In addition, Betsy was not always able to accurately pay money for raising her son, and this further strengthened the Prices’ bad attitude towards their pet. Finally, Betsy was completely unable to pay for her son, and Price took seven-year-old John to a workhouse in St. Asaph, where the child remained in public care. Abandoned by his father, mother and other relatives, John early learned to distinguish the attitude of his father and relatives towards him from the attitude of his mother. Apart from his grandfather, his mother was the only person who loved John in his childhood, and he, in turn, became very attached to her, despite the fact that fate separated them so early. The boy early learned to appreciate the fact that his mother endured general condemnation because of him, the neglect of his brother and sisters, and the hard work to earn money to pay for his upbringing. He understood perfectly well that only complete poverty and loss of earnings forced his mother to stop paying the Prices and brought him to the workhouse. He never expressed the slightest reproach to his mother for the grief that she unwittingly caused him. On the contrary, the hard life in the working house further strengthened his attachment to the helpless woman. And John, or Stanley, retained this affection until the end of his mother’s days, who had the good fortune to see her son as a great man known to the whole world, but in relation to her he remained the same John, to whom she brought gifts purchased for last labor pennies. John more than repaid his mother for her modest concerns about him: he delivered her from poverty as soon as he had the opportunity, and always treated her with filial love and respect. John stayed in the workhouse until he was fifteen years old. It was a hard, harsh school. Anyone who wants to know what the orphanages of English workhouses are, especially what they were like 40 years ago when our John ended up in a workhouse, can read the horrifying description of them in Dickens's novel "Oliver Twist." Prison discipline reigned in orphanages. The unfortunate children were constantly hungry, ragged, and freezing in unheated rooms. Physical punishment were practiced on a wide scale and were usually used for any reason or without reason. The administration of the shelters consisted of rude and self-interested people who looked at the shelters only as a profitable item. At the head of the orphanage where John ended up stood a cruel man who found some kind of voluptuous pleasure in the torment of the children entrusted to him. It was especially bad for John, who, like Oliver Twist, was not able to endure the barbarity that reigned in the orphanage, protested against it as much as a ten- to twelve-year-old child could, and finally, like Oliver, ran away from the orphanage. For a long time he wandered without a penny and without a piece of bread, until finally hunger forced him to approach a butcher's shop, which, as he knew from his mother's words, belonged to his uncle. The boy was noticed, recognized by his resemblance to his mother, fed - and, provided with six pence, sent back to the orphanage, where a general flogging awaited him for running away. The person sentenced to such punishment was tied to a bench and all the pets of the shelter were forced to take turns flogging the culprit. John had to undergo this execution more than once. No matter how disgusting the rules of the orphanage were, there was a bright side to them. It consisted in the fact that the children kept in the orphanage were given a good primary education. John discovered such outstanding talents at the orphanage school that he interested his teachers, and they gave him the opportunity to learn much more than was due in the school curriculum. But John especially benefited from reading during this period of his life, to which he had the opportunity to indulge as much as he liked in the shelter. His favorite reading was descriptions of travel, and already at this early age he developed a thirst for wandering through unexplored areas, a thirst for discovery. Success in his studies and love of reading attracted the attention of even the cruel head of the orphanage to John, and he more than once told John’s uncle about his nephew’s talents and that John’s relatives should do something for him. Influenced by such certifications, one of John's aunts, who owned a small farm and tavern, took him in in 1856, when John was fifteen years old, and entrusted him with herding her sheep. It meant "do something for your nephew." It goes without saying that John could not remain a shepherd for long, and at the first opportunity he changed this profession to a completely different one. John's maternal relatives included school teacher Moses Owen. Having become acquainted with John's knowledge from the orphanage, Owen took him on as his assistant. John did not stay in this place for long. Owen was a completely ignorant man, but extremely proud. Seeing that John knew more than himself, Owen stopped allowing him to teach students, but forced him to act as a watchman. John had to shine boots, sweep rooms, light stoves, and so on, without receiving a penny for all his work. John soon left this “good” relative and went to Liverpool. Here he found a position as a clerk for a butcher. One of his aunts lived in Liverpool, and he moved in with her. His position was still far from brilliant. The place brought him so little that his salary went almost entirely to pay for his maintenance. And what this content was can be seen from the fact that John had to sleep in the same bed with his aunt’s son, who from the very beginning began to have a hostile relationship with him, leading to a fight almost every night. But no matter how bad it was for John, he did not lose heart, he already had a definite goal at that time, for the sake of which he moved to Liverpool. This goal was to go to America, build a career for himself there, get rich and, returning to his dear mother, save her from poverty. In order to save the amount needed to pay for moving to America, John denied himself everything, but things were not moving forward well. In addition, he left his aunt, with whom it turned out to be completely impossible to live any longer, and soon he lost his job with the butcher. But John at this time was already a man who never lost heart and never gave up on his intended goal until it was achieved. He began to work unloading ships, spent the night on the pier and, eating all sorts of rubbish, continued to save money. However, he soon had to make sure that his new craft was even less capable of providing him with the funds he needed to move to America. Then he goes to the captain of the ship, who was preparing to sail to New Orleans, and asks to be accepted into the ship's crew. The captain refused, saying that the crew was already full. John explained that he, in fact, needed to move by ship to America, that he did not have a pound sterling to pay for the move, and that he was offering his labor for the missing pound. Under these conditions, the captain agreed to accept him as a cabin boy, whose duties John performed until the ship arrived in New Orleans and landed the fortune-seeker ashore. At this time John was 17 years old. As we can see, by the age of seventeen of his life, John had experienced as many vicissitudes of fate as not many people experience during their entire lives. The illegitimate son of an almost beggar, a pet of someone else's family, a boarder in a workhouse, a teacher, a clerk, a worker on the pier and, finally, a cabin boy - these are the various positions in which fate placed John in childhood. And in all these situations he did not find the slightest support from anywhere, but always had to rely only on himself. Faced with a hostile mood everywhere, receiving insults from everywhere, John did not become embittered, did not harden his heart - perhaps precisely thanks to the ardent, albeit helpless love of his mother; but on the other hand, he was tempered by trials and those traits developed in his character that later served as the basis for the success of his bold and daring enterprises. Courage, persistent pursuit of the intended goal, extraordinary energy, lack of cowardice in the face of failure - all this was discovered by John in childhood to the same extent as the traveler Stanley - in adulthood. We see the same qualities in the young man who landed penniless in New Orleans to seek his fortune. In New Orleans, John had to endure a lot of grief. A complete stranger to everyone, for a long time he could not find anything to do, subsisting on odd jobs that could be found on the streets of a big city. At this time he happened to go hungry more than once, and spending the night on the street was a common thing for him. An accident brought him out of such a sad situation. Chance generally played a big role in John’s life, which is understandable, since chance falls predominantly on those who look for it. In this sense, the fact that, while walking down the street one day, John, who was carefully looking at all the advertisements, could be called a happy accident, noticed in the window of a dairy shop a piece of paper with the inscription: “Boy Wanted.” John heads to the store and offers his services as a boy. The owner of the shop, wanting to know his handwriting, forced him to copy the inscription that was visible on all the bags of the shop: “N. M. Stanley.” It was the shopkeeper's surname, which later became John's surname. The merchant liked John's handwriting and accepted him into his shop. John served with Stanley for three years. During this time, the owner liked him so much for his efficiency, intelligence and hard work that he promoted him from “boys” to senior clerk, and then adopted him, thanks to which our John turned into Henry Morton Stanley. Unfortunately, in 1861, when Stanley was twenty years old, his adoptive father died without leaving any disposition regarding his inheritance. It passed to his relatives, and Stanley was left with only the name of the deceased, and with this only property he had to begin his career again. Then the struggle between the southern and northern American states began. Usually this struggle is presented as a war for the liberation of blacks. In reality this was far from the case. Just as among the northerners, alongside the people who were striving for the liberation of the blacks, there were people who did not care about the blacks, and these were the majority, so among the southerners, slave owners made up an insignificant handful, while the majority went to fight for the independence of the states. The armies of both sides were recruited almost exclusively from volunteers, and, of course, the enthusiasm that gripped the entire South, giving it the strength to fight for so long and so courageously with the incomparably larger forces of the northerners, was not caused by passion for the interests of slave owners. The question of the blacks was only one of the elements of the struggle, skillfully brought to the fore by the northerners. For the majority of southerners, the question that was being resolved in this struggle was: should each state represent an independent state, which makes decisions of the general congress and even remains part of the entire federation only as long as it wishes, or should the states be an inseparable part of one state and are obliged to obey the decision of the whole Congress, no matter how negatively individual states may regard this decision. In short, the question was about the limits of the autonomy of individual states, and while the South stood for unconditional autonomy, the North, and after it the West, limited this autonomy by the authority of the whole union. The South rejected this union, declaring itself an independent state, and the North decided to force it to return to its previous union with arms in hand. The mistake of the southern autonomists was that, in order to strengthen their power, they united with the slave-owning aristocrats, which the North took advantage of and thanks to which it won. The enthusiasm that gripped the southerners did not escape Stanley. The twenty-year-old youth had not yet thought about the meaning of the great struggle and saw in it only the struggle between the South, which wanted to be independent, and the claims of the North. Stanley, like many thousands of southern youth who went to their death to defend the political independence of the South, entered the army of the southerners, under the command of the brave General Johnston. He took part in all the campaigns of this army and its battles. It was a difficult struggle for the southerners. Continuous campaigns and almost daily skirmishes terribly weakened the southern army. Stanley was so exhausted and tired that in his thinness he looked more like a skeleton than a man. Finally, at the Battle of Gitsburg, Stanley was captured and, along with other prisoners, doomed to be shot. The unfortunates were put in cages and taken to the main apartment of the northerners, where the formalities of a military trial and then execution were to take place. During the move, Stanley, taking advantage of his phenomenal thinness, crawled between the sticks of the cage and ran away. The northerners accompanying the cages with prisoners fired several shots at the fugitive, but the bullets happily missed Stanley, and he managed to hide in the neighboring forest. Freed from danger, Stanley remained inactive for some time. He needed to rest and gather his strength. In addition, he was overcome by doubt - was he really fighting for a noble cause by joining the southerners? Having entered the army, he soon saw what a huge role the slave-owning aristocrats began to play in it and how the original goal of the struggle - defending the independence of the southern states - was increasingly giving way to an element that was at first accidental in the matter - the struggle for slavery. The blacks, to whom the northerners declared freedom, naturally became their allies and, as experts on the area, provided them with invaluable services, while at the same time harming the armies of the southerners in every possible way. This caused severe irritation against blacks among the southerners - and the cause of slave owners increasingly became the cause of the entire South, and the barbaric attitude towards blacks became universal in the South. This state of affairs could not fail to show the noble Sznley that, whatever may have been the original causes of the struggle, at the present moment the sympathies of humane people must be on the side of the North, for the result of its victory must be the great cause of the liberation of the blacks, while the victory of the South would postpone this liberation for many decades. And so, having barely recovered, Stanley entered as a simple sailor on one of the ships that was then operating against the South. Stanley spent three years in naval service, from 1863 to 1866, when the war ended. All this time he zealously fulfilled his duties - first as a sailor, and then as a midshipman. He was promoted to midshipman for his brave and dangerous feat. The ship on which he served disabled the enemy ship, which, however, stood under fire from the enemy fortress, so that it was impossible to take it. Stanley rushed into the water, swam the distance separating both ships under gunfire and tied a rope to the enemy ship, so that it became possible to take away this valuable prize. With the end of the war, Stanley retired, and his first order of business after that was to go to England to visit his mother. He spent the Christmas holidays with his mother, visited his grandfather’s grave and walked around all the places he remembered from his sad childhood. He did not forget to visit the workhouse, where he had once spent eight whole years, and generously treated the children who were now being raised there. Dark memories made him want to look at his former tormentors. “What happened to old Francis?” asked the 25-year-old ardent young man about former boss orphanage. “I would gladly put a bullet in his forehead.” He was told that Francis had died. His relatives, who had once abandoned him to the mercy of fate, were now fawning over the young brilliant officer. Even Price, who had once sent him to a workhouse, now reminded him of that , that he received his initial upbringing in his Price family. In a word, the usual comedies took place here, which Stanley later saw on a more significant stage, with larger characters. But what brought him a lot of joy was the genuine happiness that his mother experienced when she saw his John, a gallant young man who made his way in life completely independently and treated her with all filial devotion. Having done everything he could for his mother, Stanley went to Constantinople, and from there to Asia Minor. His passion for travel, which was born, drove him here in it, as we have seen, even during his stay in the workhouse. Stanley thought to visit Lebanon, Jerusalem, Sinai and other biblical places. However, this first experience of travel ended unsuccessfully at the very beginning. Near Smyrna, Stanley and his companions, two Americans, fell into the hands of robbers, so the travelers had to return almost naked, wrapped in blankets. In Constantinople, Stanley sketched out a description of his adventure and published it in the Levant Herald newspaper there. The description was a huge success and made a strong impression. Under the influence of this article, the Turkish government took emergency measures to search for the robbers, and everything stolen from the travelers was returned to them. This unexpected success opened Stanley's own eyes to his literary talent, and he decided to become a reporter. An American newspaper reporter is not at all what we associate with this name in our minds. This is not at all a newspaper laborer looking for facts to fill the daily newspaper chronicle. American reporter is the soul of the newspaper. He knows everything that happens in a city, a state, an entire union or the whole world. He is always ahead of everyone and everything. He solves a crime before the police, goes to an enemy country before the army, learns about all sorts of abuses before the court. He is an organ public opinion and at the same time his leader. He is the controller of public life, to whom, whether they like it or not, all institutions and all figures must account for their actions. The role of reporters in America is so great that we cannot even imagine in our pitiful reality. And Stanley was a worthy representative of American reporting. Upon his arrival in America, Stanley, as a reporter for the Missouri Democrat and New-York Tribune, went with General Sherman's army, which moved into the far west against the Redskins. This campaign ended soon, bringing false laurels to Sherman for the victory over the defenseless Indians, and real laurels to Stanley, who ardently advocated in his correspondence for the defense of the unfortunate Redskins, who were oppressed and exterminated, as they continue to be exterminated now, by merciless representatives of civilization. At the end of the campaign, Stanley, instead of returning with the army, went down, accompanied by only one man, down the then unknown Platte River to its confluence with the Missouri. This first experience of reporting attracted general attention, and upon returning from the campaign, Stanley was invited by the most important American newspaper, the New York Herald, to become a correspondent with a salary of eight thousand dollars a year. At this time, the British organized an expedition to Abyssinia to punish Tsar Feodor, who imprisoned the English consul and several other Englishmen. The New York Herald assigned Stanley to accompany this expedition. Before leaving for Abyssinia, Stanley stopped in England to see his mother again. He came to London and from here he telegraphed his mother, asking her to come to him. The old woman, who had never left her remote place, was terribly amazed by the splendor of London, its enormity, the movement that reigned in it, the rich hotel where her son put her up, the theater to which he took her, and most of all, her own son, dressed, aroused her amazement. as she put it, “like a prince,” and was on friendly terms with the most important gentlemen that a country woman could imagine. She treated her son with some kind of reverence and was very proud of him. However, the success of her son, which she witnessed in London, could not satisfy her: it was much more important for her to see his success in Denbigh, and she begged her son to visit her native place with her again. The naive woman was quite satisfied, because if already on his first visit Stanley was the subject of general attention in Denbigh and the surrounding places, now he was the real hero of the day here. During this visit to his homeland, Stanley met the Gough girl and fell in love with her. The latter also responded to him with love. When parting, the young people gave each other their word, and Stanley wrote warm letters to his bride from Abyssinia. However, Miss Gough did not wait for Stanley to return and married a Manchester architect. This affected Stanley so much that he decided to remain a bachelor forever. And only twenty years later this decision was violated, as we will see below. The campaign in Abyssinia, which brought glory to the British, who defeated Fedor and freed the captives he had captured, served as the basis for Stanley’s worldwide fame. For him personally, this trip turned out to be an excellent school, preparing him for his next immortal journeys. The campaign through Abyssinia, a wild mountainous country, among hostile tribes, was one of the most difficult ever undertaken by large armies, and it is not for nothing that this expedition is considered the largest military enterprise of the English. Stanley had to endure a lot during the campaign, since he did not take any supplies with him, not suspecting that literally nothing could be obtained in Abyssinia. In the middle of the campaign, Stanley's luggage consisted of one buffalo skin, which served him as a cloak, a blanket, and a shield from the arrows of the natives. Because of such carelessness, Stanley had to go hungry, suffer from the cold, and generally endure all kinds of hardships. But such lightness allowed Stanley to make quick transitions, and he kept up absolutely everywhere where there was anything interesting. When Magdala, Fyodor's main stronghold, was taken and the latter committed suicide in despair, Stanley was the first to gallop to the telegraph station and send a telegram describing the event to the New-York Herald. Soon correspondents from other newspapers arrived at the station, but Stanley did not give them his place, but continued to telegraph - a whole hundred pages from the Bible. The telegram was terribly expensive for the newspaper, but it more than repaid the cost. The eyes of the whole world were then fixed on the Abyssinian expedition, and, of course, they were most interested in it in England and America. The New York Herald, which published news of the event that ended the expedition a day earlier than all other newspapers, sold an incredible number of copies. From now on, Stanley became the “king” of reporters and correspondents. Returning from Abyssinia, Stanley led a most active life as a correspondent for the New York Herald. He made a journey through Asia Minor, which he had planned, as we have seen, several years ago, but which was then inopportunely interrupted by robbers. Then he studied and described in his newspaper the work on the construction of the Suez Canal. From here he headed to Spain, where he witnessed the events of the Spanish Revolution. Here in Madrid, where he had just returned from Valencia, famous for the terrible massacre in the streets that Stanley observed and described, in October 1869 he received a laconic telegram from the owner of the New-York Herald, the famous Gordon Bennett Jr.: " Come to Paris on important business." Stanley knew what such a telegram from Gordon Bennett meant; and yet he had endured so much over the past three years and so needed rest, which he hoped to take advantage of after the Spanish events. But Stanley always forgot about rest when there was work ahead, and therefore, having received a telegram, he immediately set off on an emergency train to Paris. Stanley arrived in Paris at night and immediately went to the Grand Hotel, where Bennett was staying. Bennett was already in bed, but Stanley knocked on the door and invited him in. These two wonderful people had never met each other before. The conversation that took place between them is so typical that we will convey it here literally, as it was stated by Stanley himself in the book “How I Found Livingston.” -- Who you are? - Bennett asked Stanley as he entered. “My last name is Stanley,” he answered. -- A! Sit down, I have an important task for you. Where do you think Livingston is currently located? Stanley, who at that moment was least thinking about Livingston, lost somewhere in the depths of Central Africa, could only answer: “Really, sir, I don’t know.” - Is he alive, what do you think? Bennett continued. “Maybe he’s alive, maybe he’s not,” answered Stanley. “And I think that he is alive and that he can be found, and I ask you to do this.” - How, should I go to Central Africa and look for Livingston in unknown countries? Is this what you mean? “Yes, I instruct you to find Livingston, wherever he is, and collect all possible information about him.” Who knows,” Bennett continued, “perhaps the old man needs the bare essentials: so you take with you everything that he might need.” You can act completely at your own discretion. Do what you want - just find Livingston. “But have you thought about the enormous expenses that this short trip will require?” - asked Stanley, amazed at the cold and calm tone with which Bennett sent him to go into the depths of unexplored Africa and search across many millions of square miles for the man whom he, along with everyone else, then believed to be dead. — How much might such an expedition cost? - Bennett asked in response. —Burton and Speke's voyage to Central Africa cost from three to five thousand pounds sterling; I believe that my trip will cost at least two and a half thousand pounds sterling. “Well, then you’ll take a thousand pounds now; Having spent it, you will receive a new thousand, then another thousand, another thousand, and so on, but you will certainly find Livingston. “In that case, I don’t say a word.” Should I go to Africa right now for Livingston? - No, go first to the opening of the Suez Canal; then go up the Nile. I heard that Becker is going to visit upper Egypt. Collect information about his expedition and describe everything interesting you encounter along the way. Then compile a guide to lower Egypt, containing in it a description of everything worthy of attention. Then you can visit Jerusalem: I heard that Captain Warren made some interesting discoveries there. Then you will turn to Constantinople, where you will collect information about the clash that arose between the Khedive and the Sultan. Next you will go to Crimea, where you will explore the old battlefields. You will then head through the Caucasus towards the Caspian Sea. I heard about the Russian expedition to Khiva. From there you will travel through Persia to India. On your way to India, it will not be difficult for you to stop at Baghdad and write from there something about the Euphrates Railway. From India you can go for Livingston. That's all. Good night, sir. - Good night, sir. Adolph Burdeau, author of "The Adventures of Stanley", says about Stanley's meeting with Bennett and the latter's travel program for the former: "It all looks like a novel." Meanwhile, this novel came true with literal precision. Before setting off on a difficult and dangerous journey, Stanley wanted to see his mother again. Who knows, maybe he will not return from this enterprise. But he did not have time to go to his mother, since he soon had to set off along the route outlined by Bennett, and Stanley barely had enough time to prepare everything necessary for the journey. Then he telegraphed his mother to come to him in Paris. For a simple village woman, traveling abroad was a serious matter, but she loved her John so much that she immediately went to answer his call. Mother and son spent several days together. When asked by his mother about the upcoming journey, Stanley replied: “I am starting an enterprise that, if successful, will surprise the world and bring honor to the name of your son.” Having said goodbye to his mother and sent her to England, Stanley set out on a long and lengthy journey. “I was in Egypt,” writes Stanley in the book “How I Found Livingstone,” briefly listing his travels before leaving for Central Africa, “and saw in Philae Mr. Giggenbotham, the chief engineer on the Becker expedition. I talked with Captain Warren in Jerusalem and examined the notes made by Tyrian workers on the foundation stones of Solomon's Temple. I examined the battlefields in the Crimea with Kingleck's famous book in my hand. In Odessa I dined with the widow of General Liprandi. I saw the Arab traveler Palgreve at Trebizond and Baron Nicolai, the civil governor of Caucasus, in Tiflis. I lived with the Russian ambassador in Tehran. Following the example of many famous people, I wrote my name on one of the monuments of Persepolis. In August 1870 I arrived in India. On October 12th I sailed from Bombay to Mauritius. Since not There was an opportunity to go from here directly to Zanzibar, then I left for the Sechelles Islands. Three or four days later, after arriving at Maga, one of the islands of the Sechelles group, I was able to get on board an American whaling vessel sailing for Zanzibar, where we arrived on January 6, 1871 of the year". Stanley was in his thirties at this time. Now a life began for him, full of amazing adventures, first-class travels and discoveries, a life for which his entire previous destiny, full of such wonderful events, served only as a prologue, a preparatory school.

ChapterII. Finding Livingston

When Gordon Bennett Jr. suggested that Stanley go to Central Africa in search of Livingstone, it came as a complete surprise to our travel reporter. But his mind immediately became accustomed to the new idea. And it must be said that it is difficult to imagine an enterprise that would be so consistent with Stanley’s inclinations, character and sympathies as the business that Bennett proposed to him. In addition to the passion for travel, which Stanley’s active nature required, he was pushed into this business by those feelings of reverence for Livingston and fears for his fate, which Stanley shared at that time with a significant part of the civilized world. The fate of Livingston at that time was as disturbing to everyone as at one time the famous Franklin, who died in polar ice , and just as a number of bold expeditions were undertaken to search for and save the latter, several expeditions were sent to search for Livingston, which, however, did not lead to any result. Stanley, being a traveler himself, had a special respect for Livingstone, the most daring explorer of Africa, and therefore the order to find Livingstone and assist him was completely to the liking of the brave reporter. But who is Livingston and why did the civilized world worry so much about his fate? Livingston began his career as a missionary and as such went into the interior of Africa. But his active nature could not be content with remaining at any one missionary station, and he began to travel through the unknown countries of Africa - first with his family, and then, sending them to Europe, alone. Livingston began traveling in 1841, and since then he has traveled throughout a significant part of inland Africa, which before him was completely unknown or known only by rumor. In total, Livingston undertook three long-term journeys. He followed the Zambezi almost to its source and explored many of the regions lying between this river and the country of the Great Lakes. Livingstone left Zanzibar for the last time in 1866, heading inland along the Ruvuma River, and was not heard from for several years. But the civilized world heard alarming rumors brought from the depths of Africa by Arab caravans. Finally, Livingstone’s people from among the residents of Zanzibar, whom he hired to accompany his expedition, began to appear on the Indian Ocean coast. According to the stories of these people, Livingston was captured by one of the native rulers, who held him prisoner; those who arrived later assured, on the contrary, that he had died. The leader of his caravan, who also came to Zanzibar, stated the same. At the time Bennett suggested that Stanley go to Central Africa, the general belief was that Livingstone had died. Bennett, as we have seen, did not share this belief, and his confidence that Livingston was alive aroused in Stanley the hope that he would be able to find Livingston and help him. This hope soon became positive, since in the interval between Stanley and Bennett’s meeting in Paris and the former’s arrival in Zanzibar, letters were received from Livingstone. From them it was clear that the famous traveler was abandoned by the majority of his people, who, to justify themselves, invented fables about the captivity and death of Livingston. In any case, Livingston's situation was desperate. Abandoned by most of his people and having spent almost all his supplies, he was in a completely helpless position, and one has to wonder how, despite all this, he managed to make a series of geographical discoveries around two of the largest lakes in Central Africa - Nyasa and Tanganyika. It was necessary to send help to the brave traveler, and measures were taken for this. At the same time that Stanley arrived in Zanzibar, a caravan equipped with funds from the English government had just set off from here, bringing the necessary supplies to Livingstone. The departure of this expedition did not shake Stanley's intention to reach Livingston, and this was fortunate for the latter, since without Stanley's help the caravan sent by the English government would never have reached its goal. Arriving in Zanzibar, Stanley immediately began making preparations for his long journey. The nature of travel in Africa makes these preparations very difficult. First of all, an armed convoy is needed to protect against attacks by roadside robbers who guard all caravan routes and attack weak travelers. In addition, many native rulers, through whose lands travelers have to pass, do not disdain the business of robbery and robbery. Finally, a convoy is also necessary due to the fact that there are constantly wars going on in interior Africa, and the traveler always risks getting caught between two fires. The issue of the convoy was soon resolved thanks to the fact that Stanley managed to recruit into his service for a decent remuneration six former companions of the famous traveler Speke, who gathered another 18 people from their compatriots, coastal Africans, somewhat civilized by relations with traders from all over the world visiting Zanzibar . Hiring a convoy was followed by the acquisition of things necessary for the journey. A traveler going into the interior of Africa must stock up on all sorts of things, since it is absolutely impossible to expect to find anything inside the country. First of all, you need to take a supply of food supplies: tea, sugar, coffee, all kinds of canned food, alcoholic drinks, which take on the meaning of medicines during a trip. Medicines are even more necessary in view of the fact that all sorts of endemic diseases are rampant in many parts of Africa. Killer African fevers are especially common. Next you need weapons - cold steel and firearms, bullets, gunpowder. A significant supply of linen and clothing is required. Next come kitchen utensils - cauldrons, frying pans, knives, then axes, ropes, resin, and so on. It is also necessary to take various things for gifts to the native rulers. To prevent all this from spoiling on the way, it is necessary to pack everything in boxes and bales, and to protect the bales from tropical rains and to save travelers from feverish fumes, be sure to stock up on tents. In addition, in order to be able to move along the rivers and lakes that were to be encountered along the way, Stanley decided to take with him two large boats, dismantled into parts. But that was not all. The main part of the cargo that Stanley had to take was not the things listed, but something completely different. The fact is that in inner Africa the most amazing coin is still used. Various materials, beads and copper wire serve as such. Beads play the role of a copper coin, cloth plays the role of silver, and copper wire in the countries beyond Tanganyika is mistaken for gold. Thus, in order to be able to purchase food supplies within the country and, in general, everything that is necessary and possible to buy, you need to take with you a lot of the above-mentioned items, especially fabrics and beads. It must be borne in mind that each tribe considers valuable only known species materials and beads. One tribe takes only white beads and rejects all others, another prefers black, a third - red, a fourth values only oval ones. Since there is no way to determine how long the traveler’s caravan will have to stay on the territory of one or another tribe, and these tribes themselves were mostly unknown at the time of Stanley’s first journey, it was necessary to take all types of the above-mentioned coin substitutes and, moreover, in as many quantities as possible , since the lack of the goods that may be required in one or another specific case can put the expedition in the most critical situation, depriving it of the opportunity to acquire food supplies for itself. Thus, even if Stanley had not taken anyone with him except the convoy, then even then he would have needed a huge supply of all kinds of things - luggage completely unthinkable for travelers to other parts of the world. But the matter was further complicated by one very special circumstance. The fact is that throughout Central Africa - from Zanzibar to the mouth of the Congo - there are no domestic draft animals at all, since neither bulls, nor horses, nor donkeys can withstand the poisonous bite of the tsetse fly and its relatives, which are extremely common here. Thus, a traveler here cannot expect to hire or buy draft animals along the way. If he takes these cattle with him, the latter will soon die from the deadly tsetse. In addition, the difficulties of the road in a country that remains in the very primitive form in which the Lord created it inevitably destroy the animals introduced into the country. Stanley tried to take with him two horses and about three dozen donkeys to transport part of his luggage; but they all got caught at the beginning of the journey. Thus, to transport luggage one has to resort to the only means of moving luggage in Central Africa - porters. What inconvenience this circumstance creates is clearly evident from the fact that a porter can only carry a bundle weighing no more than 70 pounds, and thus an enormous number of porters are required to carry the luggage. At the same time, the addition of a large number of porters to the caravan requires, in turn, an increase in all supplies and those goods that play the role of money; and this, in turn, requires an increase in the number of porters. Eventually the caravan turns into a small army. Stanley's expedition at its beginning consisted of almost two hundred people, and this number was only possible due to the fact that at the beginning of the journey a lot of cargo was carried on donkeys. The entire luggage of the expedition weighed up to 360 pounds. It goes without saying that there was no way to observe the entire mass of people and goods alone, and Stanley took as his assistants two Europeans from the idle sailors whom he found in Zanzibar. There was no one to choose from; we had to take what we had. Subsequently, Stanley had to grieve a lot with these assistants. Arriving in Zanzibar, Stanley had very insufficient information regarding the country he had to enter and the conditions of travel in it. Some information about this subject could then be found only in the descriptions of the journey of Speke and Livingston, but this information was extremely insufficient. Instead of relying, like many travelers, on his own resourcefulness, Stanley tried to get directions from everyone who could give them. However, the Europeans living in Zanzibar, to whom he turned for help, could tell him almost nothing. Then he tried to get along with the Arab merchants who, with their caravans, plied all of Central Africa. From these knowledgeable people he received many valuable instructions, which gave him the opportunity to organize the expedition more or less tolerably. However, the lack personal experience affected at every step. Subsequently, during subsequent expeditions, Stanley had the opportunity to more carefully make all preparations for the journey, make all the necessary supplies and recruit a more suitable composition of the caravan. Now he had to suffer many times from the unsatisfactory choices of people, as well as from the lack of many things. Stanley's task was greatly facilitated by his lack of that contempt for the natives that most travelers to Africa, especially the British, display. In this regard, the following words written by Stanley in the book “How I Found Livingstone” are curious: “For a European who has come to Africa, it is very interesting to walk through the black quarters of Zanzibar - Vanyamwezi and Vazavagili. Here he will understand that blacks are the same people as and himself, although of a different color; that they have the passions and prejudices, likes and dislikes, tastes and feelings peculiar to every person. The sooner he comes to terms with this fact, the easier it will be for him to travel between the different tribes of inner Africa. I lived for some time time between the Negroes of our southern states and met people among them whose friendship I could only be proud of. Thus, I got used to valuing Negroes by their inner qualities, like all my neighbors, and not by the color of their skin and tribe." Stanley showed this attitude towards the natives in practice. He treated his black companions from the porters and soldiers of his convoy with the same attention as his European companions, and, on the contrary, demanded from the latter the same performance of their duties as from the former. Stanley's care for his porters and escorts amazed the natives. He not only spared no expense to ensure that his people always had a sufficient amount of food and everything they needed, not only paid them generously and gave them valuable gifts, but he showed his attentiveness in a more significant way. When his people fell ill, which was very often under African conditions, Stanley turned into a doctor and nurse and stopped the caravan for several days to allow the sick to recover. If the caravan could not be stopped, he would arrange for the sick to stay with some peaceful natives, leaving with them enough to feed them during their illness and return to the caravan or home, as well as one of the healthy members of the expedition to care for the sick. All this was new for the African natives, accustomed to receiving pittance in Arab caravans, whose owners fed them extremely poorly, treated them like animals and, in case of illness, calmly abandoned them to their fate somewhere in the forest. Such a humane attitude towards his native companions was one of the main reasons for Stanley’s success, since it tied these companions to him and made his business as if they were their own, thanks to which it was possible to overcome such difficulties that under other conditions would have been invincible. Even on his first trip, when Stanley's companions were all kinds of rabble, he eventually managed to win them over. A month after arriving in Zanzibar, the expedition was organized. European satellites have been found, a staff of specialists has been assembled - cooks, tailors, hunters; a convoy has been recruited; Everything you need has been purchased. The expedition boarded boats to cross from the island on which the city of Zanzibar stands to the African continent. Then an event occurred that showed Stanley how much he could count on his European companions. When it was time to leave, both Europeans disappeared. After several hours of searching, they were found drunk in a tavern; they refused to go. Stanley managed to persuade them, and they joined the expedition, but later Stanley many times regretted that he had not left them in Zanzibar. On the continent, in the coastal city of Bagamoyo, it was necessary to recruit more than one hundred and fifty porters. This turned out to be not so easy, because, due to the lack of personal experience in such a matter, Stanley had to entrust this matter to Arab commission agents. The latter took advantage of Stanley's inexperience in order to recruit the most worthless trash among the porters, who agreed to go for the most insignificant price, the difference between which and the price set by Stanley, these commission agents put in their own pockets. Therefore, Stanley stood in Bagamoyo for two and a half months and set out, having in his caravan a collection of cowards and desperate lazy people. We have covered all the details of Stanley's preparations for his first journey so as not to return to this subject when describing the rest of his journeys. From what has been said here, one can see that the difficulty of the expedition to Africa should be considered not from the day of the actual departure, but from the beginning of preparations for it. Stanley divided his caravan into five detachments and, sending four ahead, set out with the last one himself on March 21, 1871. Stanley returned from this trip to Zanzibar on May 7, 1872, having thus been on the road for more than 13 months. Reading the description of this long journey, in which Stanley went to look for a man “somewhere in Central Africa,” one wonders how he could endure this endless series of hardships and suffering. Both of Stanley's European companions were killed; the same thing happened to a significant part of the natives. Stanley attributes the preservation of his life to iron health and enthusiasm, which constantly supported him and never allowed him to fall into despair. The rich, luxurious nature of the countries through which Stanley passed, in the complete absence of any cultural measures on the part of the population, itself causes various disasters. The abundance of moisture in the hot sun gives rise to destructive fever and a number of other diseases. Stanley had fever twenty-three times during this trip, and African fever is terrible. Terrible chills, strong headache , unbearable pain in the hips and along the spine, terrible thirst, then an unconscious state, during which the sufferer is overcome by the most painful nightmare - these are the symptoms of African fever. Afterwards, a person feels completely defeated and incapable of anything. In addition to fever, the expedition was plagued by many other illnesses. It happened that almost the entire caravan was sick at the same time. Some had a fever, others suffered from fever, others suffered from attacks of rheumatism, others had bloody diarrhea, and so on. The entire camp was seized by despair, and only Stanley alone did not lose heart, went from one sick person to another, treated them and inspired the few healthy ones to fulfill their duties. The difficulties of the path itself were the source of countless suffering. During the rainy season, when tropical rain falls continuously for forty days, rivers and streams turn into impassable masses of water, and since here, of course, no one cares about bridges, for unhindered movement forward it was necessary to constantly build bridges, sometimes two at a time , three a day, and then cross the water along them. The roads, already primitive, turned into streams of mud. The valleys became swamps, through which one had to walk for several miles in waist-deep mud. Often the road was crossed by forests and bushes. And what are the African bushes through which you had to make your way, can be judged by the following excerpt from Stanley’s description: “It was very difficult to make our way through the African bush, which tore my dress and scratched my skin. It ended up that, having caught on one of the thorns, I completely tore my boot, and then, continuing to walk on this thorny soil, I began to be punctured at every step. The scarlet thorny plant made a huge hole in the other boot, I again caught on the needle bindweed and fell at full length onto the thorny bed. On all fours , like a sniffer dog, I continued to make my way; the heat of the sun increased every minute; with every step my clothes took on a more and more miserable appearance, and more and more new wounds appeared on my body. To all these misfortunes, a plant with a terribly sharp and a pungent odor hit me in the face and left painful burns, similar to those of cayenne; the crowded bushes made the atmosphere unusually hot and stuffy; profuse sweat, protruding from every pore, soon completely wet my rags, and I began to resemble a person who had been in heavy rain ". One can imagine the difficulty of the journey when, under such conditions, one had to walk for weeks at a time and at the same time bear quite a significant weight - one and a half to two pounds. One of the greatest inconveniences of travel was the abundance of insects. As soon as the tired travelers set up camp and settled down to rest, they jumped up in horror from the multitude of earwigs, thousands of them clinging to their dress, hair, and face. “Locusts, lice and fleas are nothing compared to those damned earwigs,” says Stanley. “You can go crazy just thinking about them.” Another annoying insect was white ants, which caused terrible havoc in things. “The mats, cloth, bags, clothes, in a word, all my things,” writes Stanley, “seemed ready to crumble, and, knowing the gluttony of ants, I was afraid that they would not eat my tent while I was sleeping.” . The picture was complemented by masses of mosquitoes and poisonous wasps and bees, from which there was no escape. Added to the hardships of the journey were all sorts of obstacles caused by the native rulers, of whom there were so many here that almost every village had its own sultan. These gentlemen demanded gifts for passage through their territory and were so immoderate in their demands that one had to bargain with them until one dropped, since otherwise they would have robbed the traveler naked. It was impossible to refuse gifts, because the strong ones could simply rob the entire caravan, and the weak ones could cause a lot of trouble by forbidding their subjects to sell food supplies to the caravan, which some of them did if Stanley was unwilling to satisfy their too great demands. Once Stanley flatly refused to give a gift to the Sultana, who had already received one once. This Sultana had at her disposal an entire city with five thousand inhabitants and, of course, could cause a lot of trouble to the caravan. She began hostile actions, capturing several people from the caravan and the things they were carrying. The matter ended happily, thanks to the fact that an Arab caravan passing at that time frightened the sultana with stories about the extraordinary power of Stanley's rapid-fire guns, with which he allegedly could destroy the entire city. On top of all this, Stanley had to constantly fear attacks from bandits of bandits, of which there are so many in Central Africa due to constant wars and the devastation of entire regions. There are even entire robber monarchies here, and each local ruler more often than not began his career as a robber. Stanley constantly had to stumble upon hostilities, and once, as we will see below, he even had to take a formal part in the war in order to pave the way for himself. All these inconveniences of the journey would have been less severe if the caravan had been one unit. But the fact is that the purpose of the journey was clear to Stanley alone; it alone encouraged him to go forward at all costs and gave him strength. For the rest, finding a traveler lost somewhere was only a dangerous eccentricity; they were attracted by material motives and were not in the least inclined to endanger their lives or exhaust themselves with backbreaking work. The porters turned out to be a bunch of lazy people who constantly complained, asked for days off, got down to business only after a whole series of coercions, fled from the caravan at every opportunity, although in a foreign country this meant almost certain death for them, and in addition to all this they were distinguished by their inclination to theft. The convoy consisted of people so cowardly that they were the first to flee in case of danger, but they were boastful to the extreme, perky and were the instigators of disobedience to the head of the caravan. The Europeans behaved even worse. They had never expected that the journey would be so difficult, they were always unhappy and, instead of fulfilling their duties, they constantly bickered with Stanley. Stanley thought to find them as assistants in monitoring the huge caravan, but they themselves became a source of trouble for him. Doing nothing, they demanded all kinds of services from the native members of the caravan and treated the latter so cruelly that Stanley had to constantly stop them. One of Stanley’s white companions was put in charge of one of the detachments of the caravan and, as such, squandered the goods entrusted to him, which served as a bargaining chip, thereby putting his detachment in a cramped position. He soon died, contracting elephantiasis. Another companion, after a quarrel with Stanley, made an attempt on his life by shooting him with a gun. Fortunately, the bullet missed, and Stznley generously pretended to believe the explanation that the shot was fired unconsciously, in a dream. This white man, halfway through the journey, flatly refused to go further and remained in one Arab settlement to await the return of the expedition. Here, however, he fell ill with a fever and died. Under such conditions, the caravan completed the first half of its journey within three months. The only bright ray for Stanley during all this time was a meeting with an Arab merchant returning from the depths of Africa and telling Stanley that he had seen Livingstone in Ujiji on the coast of Tanganyika. Stanley was thus freed from the need to wander around Central Africa, looking for traces of Livingstone. He now knew where to go, and even if Livingston had left Ujiji before Stanley arrived there, he could follow in the fresh footsteps of the famous traveler. On the twentieth of June, Stanley's caravan entered Unyanyembe. This is the central region of a huge country lying between the great lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and the east coast of Africa. It is divided into a number of regions, essentially completely independent, but, according to legend, considered to belong to the Sultan Unyanyembe. The latter is especially important in that there are two important Arab settlements here, which are the first important trading point on the way from the coast into Africa. Since the Arabs played a large role in Stanley's travels, it would be appropriate to say a few words about their significance for Central Africa in general. The role of the Arabs in Africa is enormous. As is known, they Muslimized the whole of North Africa, and their influence - racial, religious and cultural - extends far into the depths of Africa and is expanding every year. Already before our eyes, the entire region lying on the upper Nile up to Lake Victoria fell under Arab influence. A similar process is happening in Central Africa. Arabs appeared here later than in North Africa; Moreover, these were Arabs of a different kind. North Africa was overrun by Yemeni nomads, who came here under the influence of preaching about the conquest of the whole world by Islam. Arab merchants from Oman came to Central Africa for trade purposes. They began the conquest of Zanzibar, then subjugated the Zanzibar coast and from here began to undertake expeditions into Africa, which were semi-military and semi-commercial in nature. There are few Arabs in Central Africa: they number no more than ten thousand families. But culturally they stand high above the natives and therefore play a huge role here. These are wealthy people who own vast estates on the island of Zanzibar, in the coastal part of the mainland and in many places in inland Africa. They own many slaves, have extensive plantations, conduct enormous trade, live like princes and, considered subjects of the Zanzibar Sultan, are in essence independent princes. Inland they formed a series of stations consisting of several Arab houses, which, by their size and the thickness of the clay walls, represent real fortresses and are usually surrounded by hundreds of huts for servants and slaves. In Unyanyembe there are two such Arab stations, standing next to each other Tabora and Kwihara. Ujiji, where Stanley went for Livingstone, was also an Arab station that grew into an important city in inland Africa. The trading role of the Arabs is extremely important, since it is only thanks to them that inner Africa has the opportunity to sell its products and receive the products of civilization - fabrics, iron products, weapons, etc. But at the same time, the Arabs turn out to be the worst plague in Central Africa, because the most important items that they export from Central Africa are ivory and slaves. The Arabs, overwhelmed by the thirst for profit, in order to get more ivory, unceremoniously take it away from the native population, burning villages and killing the inhabitants. Even more murderous is the slave trade. The Arabs simply hunt people, ruining and depopulating entire countries. Since the two main items of Arab export are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain in areas closer to the sea - ivory due to the departure of elephants from here, and slaves due to the fact that the natives, having received firearms, are now repelling the Arab robbers, -then the Arabs are penetrating further and further into Africa every year. In the mid-sixties they did not penetrate further than Lake Tanganyika, and in the late eighties Stanley met them far to the west, along the banks of the Aruvimi, a tributary of the Congo, and in the upper reaches of the Congo itself. Of course, not all Arabs are engaged in such robbery; There are noble people among them, conducting correct and honest trade, which itself is profitable enough here to enrich everyone involved in it. IN modern times Many of the slave traders became convinced of the impossibility of continuing their trade under the new conditions created by the appearance of Europeans in Central Africa, and moved on to proper trade and processing of their plantations. Serious measures are currently being taken against stubborn slave traders in Zanzibar, which not long ago was still the main point of the slave trade. These measures were mainly influenced by Stanley’s discovery of the monstrous way in which the Arabs received their living goods. However, this evil is still strong, and many Arabs still hunt people and devastate entire regions. In Unyanyembe, Stanley was greeted with honor by the Arabs who had their residence here. One of the fortified houses was placed at his disposal, where he settled with his goods and servants. All members of the caravan received generous gifts. Here Stanley found a caravan sent by the English government to help Livingston. This caravan did not move forward because the road to Ujiji was blocked by the new African conqueror Mirambo. In Africa, there are always Napoleons of sorts, who from nothing - from runaway slaves, shepherds or robbers - turn into the founders of vast and powerful empires, which rarely survive the death of their founders. Mirambo, who shortly before Stanley's arrival was the chieftain of a bandit gang, was now on the path to founding a large state, and later actually became the head of a powerful empire. He was a bloodthirsty, although intelligent and capable black man. His exaltation was marked by terrible bloodshed, the victims of which were many hundreds of thousands of people. At the same time, he terribly hated the Arabs and at that moment, having intercepted the road to Ujiji, he announced that not a single caravan would pass along this road. The Unianiem Arabs, who suffered enormous losses from this cessation of relations with Ujiji, and therefore with all the regions further to the west, decided to force Mirambo out of the way. Stanley, having just recovered from an illness that had kept him in bed for a week, decided to join the Arabs in the hope of helping to clear the road to Ujiji as quickly as possible. The proud Arabs looked disdainfully at the Negro Mirambo and hoped to easily deal with him. Indeed, their army of two thousand was successful at first, but when they had to face the main forces of Mirambo, the slaves of the Arabs, and after them their masters themselves, fled from the battlefield. Stanley at this time again fell victim to fever and was in an almost unconscious state. The Arabs, fleeing, completely forgot about their sick ally and abandoned him to his fate. So did Stanley's men, who took part in the battle and lost several men. Only one Arab youth, taken by Stanley from Jerusalem, took care of his master, put him on the last donkey Stanley had left and brought him to Unyanyembe. After this incident, Mirambo marched on the Arab settlement of Tabora, destroyed several fortified houses and killed several Arab youths who boldly came out against him, accompanied by slaves, who immediately abandoned them as soon as the battle began. Tabora is only an hour's journey from Kwihara, where Stanley settled, and the latter expected Mirambo to attack his home as well, but Mirambo was distracted by a new enemy in the person of Sultan Unyanyembe. After all these incidents, Stanley decided to penetrate Ujiji, bypassing Mirambo far from the south. However, he had to stay in Unyanyembe for three months, since he was held back either by his own illness, then by the illness of his companions, or, finally, by the refusal of the latter. The road that Stanley chose was completely new and unknown to anyone. Not only Stanley's servants, but also the brave Arab merchants had no doubt that walking along this road meant going to certain death. In addition, Stanley himself was so exhausted by hardships and illnesses that he looked like a real dead man. Everyone advised him to rest and return back to Zanzibar, since he could not reach Livingstone. However, the thought of leaving the matter halfway and leaving Livingstone to all the horrors of poverty in the depths of Africa, deprived of the opportunity to continue his research, or to return to Europe, was so unbearable for Stanley that he decided to get to Livingstone no matter the cost. He decided to leave most of his luggage at Unyanyembe, taking only the essentials for Livingstone and a supply of goods sufficient to feed a small detachment to Ujiji and back. With the promise of a rich reward, Stanley managed to persuade 50 people from his caravan to participate in the journey. When the squad set out, Stanley was so weak that he could barely stand on his feet. He was supported by an iron will, and now, when everything rested more than ever only on him, he never got sick the entire way to Ujiji. The road to Ujiji was full of previous difficulties with the addition of new ones. The most important of the latter was Stanley's open disobedience of his companions. It turned out that the country through which they passed was at that time a theater of war between two powerful tribes, and the small caravan of travelers could be attacked at any moment by the warring parties, who, of course, would not have looked at the fact that it was a caravan of peaceful travelers. and with particular pleasure they would take possession of the weapons of strangers. Stanley's men were so frightened that they absolutely refused to go any further. Finally, a real riot broke out in the caravan, and two of the members of the convoy turned their guns against Stanley to shoot this madman, ready to destroy them all with him. Stanley was on the verge of death. He was saved by his own courage, which gave him the strength not to get confused under such unusual circumstances and to repel the attack of one of the rebels, while one of the faithful servants snatched the gun from another rebel. After this episode, the relationship between Stanley and the caravan changed dramatically. Stanley's courage in this story, and the generosity with which he forgave those who were preparing to kill him, instead of executing them, as should have been according to African concepts, completely conquered the caravan. From that moment on, its members were ready to follow Stanley wherever he led them. And indeed, from that time on, Stanley’s companions followed him unquestioningly. This made the further journey much easier and enabled Stanley to finish his journey with a bold march through the seemingly impenetrable forest. A few days' journey from Ujiji, the caravan entered a country whose numerous rulers demanded such a huge tribute for the passage through their territory that if Stanley had satisfied their demands, he would have come to Ujiji with his bare hands, and instead of helping Livingstone would have brought him a burden in face of 50 people who needed to be fed. To prevent this from happening, Stanley decided to walk through the forest, which even the natives avoided, and thus avoid the greedy rulers. The forest he walked through was truly terrifying. “What a monstrous smell and what an indescribable disgust this forest produces!” Stanley wrote in his diary. It is so dense that even a tiger could not crawl through it, and so impenetrable that an elephant could not make a path for itself! If we could collect a bottle of concentrated miasma, such as we inhale here, what a deadly poison it would be! The expedition walked through this forest for several days, day and night, exhausted and hungry. Finally, the caravan came out into the open and a day later was in Ujiji, where Livingston actually ended up. Livingston at the time when Stanley came to him was in the most desperate situation. Several months ago he returned from a long journey through the countries beyond Tanganyika. A supply of goods, which he demanded from Zanzibar, was to be awaiting him in Ujiji. But it turned out that the Arab who was entrusted with delivering these goods, having come to Ujiji, sold them for his own benefit. Livingston was left without any means, alone in the depths of Africa, without the opportunity to return or even make news of himself. Stanley's arrival literally saved him from death. It is understandable how happy he was to see the brave reporter, not to mention the joy of seeing a European after many years of living among only natives. Stanley, in turn, was going crazy with joy that he had finally managed to get to Livingston, and at such a critical moment for the latter. Both travelers became friends with each other in the most cordial way and spent long hours in conversation. Stanley informed Livingston about world events of the last five years, and Livingston informed him about his travels and discoveries. It was here, in these conversations with the famous traveler, that Stanley’s decision to devote himself to Africa, research in it, the establishment of civilization and the fight against slavery appeared and matured. It was here that the area that Stanley decided to choose for his future activities was determined. The countries beyond Tanganyika to Livingstone had never been visited by civilized people. Even the Arabs got there just two, three years before Livingston. Meanwhile, these countries were extremely interesting. There was rich nature, a dense population and a wide field for geographical research. Livingston discovered a huge water system there, consisting of a number of lakes and rivers, which he took to be the sources of the Nile, but which later, according to the research of Stanley himself on his next trip, turned out to be the sources of the Congo. A whole series of geographical questions were put forward, and in Stanley’s head ideas arose about the penetration of European civilization here, about the formation of states here from the natives and about saving the latter from the ulcer of slavery and the atrocities of conquerors like the Mirambo family. From Unyanyembe to Ujiji Stanley it took 131 days. In Ujiji he stayed with Livingston for more than two months. Of this time, 28 days were spent traveling around Tanganyika to its northern end, and our travelers resolved the controversial geographical issue of the Ruwizi River, which was taken by many to be the source of Tanganyika and the beginning of the Nile. In fact, this river turned out to flow into Tanganyika, and not flow out of it. On December 27, 1872, both travelers set out from Ujiji to Unyanyembe to take the left goods there and decide on their further actions. The difficulties of the journey remained the same, but it was immeasurably easier to endure them, since the travelers no longer suffered from loneliness, they were guided by their combined experience, and their caravan was more willing to go home than forward. At Unyanyembe, Stanley handed over to Livingstone all the supplies he was carrying for him, as well as those that had been sent to the latter by the English government, but did not reach Ujiji, being stuck at Unyanyembe. The supply of everything necessary for Livingston was so large that it was possible to travel with it and maintain a significant caravan for two years. However, it was not possible to take advantage of all these riches in the interests of travel, because the war that was then going on between Mirambo, on the one hand, and the Arabs and the Sultan of Unyanyembe, on the other, took away from the natives any desire to accompany Livingston. In view of this, Stanley decided to go to Zanzibar and, having recruited the required number of porters and escorts from the local residents, send them to Livingston. In doing this, Stanley made a very sensitive sacrifice, since he had previously intended to go from Unyanyembe to Victoria to meet the famous expedition of Samuel Baker, who was climbing the Nile up to its sources. Stanley believed, in abandoning this plan, that he would do more good by assisting the voyage of an experienced and renowned explorer than by undertaking an expedition on his own. Stanley in general, knowing his worth well, never suffered from conceit; his modesty is equal to his courage and perseverance. As soon as Livingston agreed to Stanley’s proposal, the latter immediately began to get ready for the road. Livingston urged him to wait to gather his strength and wait out the rainy season that was soon to begin. Stanley knew from experience what it was like to travel through Africa in the rainy season, but he did not want the start of Livingston's journey to be delayed any longer than necessary. He left Unyanyembe on March 14 and with incredible speed for Africa covered the distance that separated him from the seashore. While Stanley traveled from the seashore to Unyanyembe in three months, he made the return journey in 35 days, despite the fact that at that time there were such rains that the local old-timers did not remember, and the expedition had to walk for days and days up to the waist and even up to your neck in water. When Stanley reached the seashore, he met here an expedition equipped to search for Livingston using funds raised by subscription among the English public. Now this expedition turned out to be unnecessary. Stanley fulfilled his promise to Livingston and recruited the required number of selected people for him. Now he already knew which people were suitable for traveling inside Africa, and knew how to choose them. By sending this caravan to Livingston, Stanley could finally return to Europe and then to America. His journey from the time of his appearance in Africa to the moment of his return to the seashore lasted thirteen months. In total, two years and eight months had passed since Stanley's famous conversation with Bennett, and all this time Stanley had been on the road, moving from one place to another. Stanley returned to Europe terribly exhausted. His thinness again took on a phenomenal character. He looked like an old man, although he was only 32 years old. The hair has turned grey. In general, Stanley's appearance changed so much that his acquaintances did not recognize him. His mother, whom he visited immediately upon his arrival in England, was terribly amazed at the pitiful appearance of her John and was consoled only by seeing how quickly he recovered from solid English cuisine. Stanley's feat - searching for Livingston and helping him - made a strong impression throughout the civilized world. Stanley now became a celebrity. Bennett, who provided funds for his expedition, did not lose out, since the issues of the New-York Herald, which published a description of Stanley’s journey, were sold in countless copies. The general sympathy for the young traveler more than compensated him for all the hardships he suffered. But in the general chorus of praise and approval, voices of a different kind were heard. There were Englishmen who were annoyed that Livingstone was discovered not by an Englishman, but by an American, whom Stanley was mistaken for, since his past was not known. And even in the English Geographical Society there were people who claimed that Stanley was simply a charlatan, he had never found Livingston, and he simply forged the letters of the famous traveler and the latter’s diary that he brought. Stanley adequately responded to these insinuations with his further travels, compared to which what he did to find Livingston completely pales in comparison.

ChapterIII. Across Africa

Stanley didn't rest for long. Having finished the book dedicated to the description of his courageous journey, “How I Found Livingston” (available in Russian translation), Stanley immediately went as a correspondent to the country of the Ashanti (on the Guinea coast of Africa), with whom the British were then at war, and was present at the capture of Kumassia, Ashanti capitals. At this time, news reached Stanley of the death of Livingston, who, with a caravan equipped by Stanley, went deep into Africa, to the headwaters of the Lualaba River, which so occupied him, which, as we have already said, he took for the source of the Nile, and here, at 13R south latitude, died on the banks of a mysterious river. Stanley looked upon himself as Livingstone's heir on the question of Lualaba, which later turned out to be the most important geographical question of our century, and therefore decided to continue the research of the great traveler. He returned to England, wrote the book “The Life and Travels of Livingstone” and began to prepare for an expedition that was supposed to solve questions about the sources of the Nile and what kind of river the majestic Lualaba was, which already in the center of Africa had the appearance of one of the greatest rivers in the world : is this the upper reaches of the Nile, Niger or Congo, as few thought then? The expedition that Stanley was embarking on was supposed to cost a lot of money, but now it was not difficult for him to get the necessary funds. The New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph formed a syndicate, which provided funds for the expedition. On September 21, 1874, Stanley landed in Zanzibar, and on November 17, he set out into Africa at the head of a huge caravan. This time the expedition was even larger than on the first trip. Stanley was accompanied by three Europeans, this time chosen more carefully and who turned out to be quite worthy comrades of the great “land explorer”. These were the two brothers Pocock and Friedrich Barker. The caravan consisted of 366 people, which included guards, porters, 36 women and six children. Of course, such a large caravan in itself was already a source of a number of difficulties. Just worrying about food for such a mass of people was worth it! But Stanley was preparing a multi-year journey and wanted to bet himself regardless of whether the necessary goods replacing the coin would be sent to him on time from Zanzibar or not - as happened with Livingston, who had to constantly interrupt his research halfway due to lack of funds . Thus, it was necessary to take a lot of goods, and this, in turn, required a lot of porters. Among the cargo Stanley took with him, it should be noted the large boat "Lady Alice", which was carried disassembled into parts. Initially, Stanley headed his way to the largest lake in Central Africa, Victoria or Ukerewa, in order to begin research on the sources of the Nile from here. At first the road followed the same path that Stanley took on his first journey, and here he encountered all the same difficulties and suffering. But already in the country of Ugogo, these sufferings increased. And for the first time this country seemed to Stanley the most robber of all that he had passed through. It was divided into many small estates, each of which required a fee for passage, not allowing them to buy provisions, take water, or even stop at a camp until such payment was made. The payment requirements were prohibitively enormous. In order to prevent oneself from being completely robbed, it was necessary to argue for many hours. At this time, the entire caravan, exhausted from the day's march, suffered from hunger and thirst. There was no point in turning to force, since the residents of Ugogo, despite their disunity, rallied together during an attack on a separate village and the whole country stood up to defend their right to rob caravans. Stanley sighed happily when he finally got out of this inhospitable area. From Ugogo Stanley turned north towards Lake Victoria. On this path, the most difficult trials of the expedition had to be endured in the country of Ituru. The inhabitants were hostile to the expedition from the very first moment Stanley entered their area, and this hostility increased as the journey continued. The natives refused to provide guides, did not sell provisions, and finally treacherously killed two porters. Stanley tried to the last opportunity to maintain peaceful relations with the natives, but this turned out to be impossible. Huge crowds attacked the caravan and showered it with arrows. Stanley was forced to use his weapon. For two days I had to fight with brave savages almost chest to chest. After this, the whole country rose up and a real war began against Stanley’s small detachment. This war cost the expedition 53 people, and only Stanley’s courage, his unexpectedly discovered strategic talents, and the unanimity of the caravan, ready to go to death for its leader, made it possible for the expedition to break through the enemy hordes, fighting continuously for several days. With such adventures, Stanley reached Lake Victoria two and a half months after leaving Zanzibar. By this time, the expedition was missing more than 160 people, half of whom deserted, and the rest were killed or died from disease and exhaustion. The entire expedition was terribly exhausted; half the people were sick. The native chief of Kagegiya, a town on the coast of Victoria, received the expedition in the most cordial manner, and she now had the opportunity to rest peacefully. Stanley himself, however, did not think about rest. He ordered his boat "Lady Alice" to be launched and with eleven people set off to explore Victoria. Swimming on the lake turned out to be extremely difficult. The stormy lake-sea was ready to swallow the fragile little boat every minute. But this was still the mildest of the disasters. Much more worrying was the hostility of the population. Every time Stanley went ashore to stock up on provisions or rest, he was attacked by armed savages; he constantly had to deal with pirates on the lake. One day, "Lady Alice" was attacked by a whole flotilla of pirogues, which was repelled only thanks to firearms. The travelers remained in this state of constant anxiety for three weeks. Suddenly it all completely disappeared, as if by magic. Instead of hostile faces, armed warriors and clouds of arrows, our travelers began to be greeted by joyful faces, friendly greetings and the most cordial hospitality. It turned out that Stanley ended up in the kingdom of Uganda, ruled by the powerful Mteza. Mteza was the same darling of fortune as Mirambo, with whom Stanley was forced to fight on his first trip. He also, from an adventurer, became the founder and owner of one of the most powerful states in Central Africa; only the state founded by him is incomparably more powerful than the kingdom of Mirambo. Uganda has up to 5 million inhabitants. This country lies on the northern and western shores of Victoria and is the happiest region of Central Africa according to natural conditions . With the usual wealth of natural gifts for Central Africa, it is at the same time devoid of many of the severe inconveniences of this nature and, due to its climatic conditions, is especially favorable for the stay of Europeans. Under the leadership of Mteza, the country achieved extraordinary prosperity, and Stanley was extremely amazed to find in the depths of Africa such a rich region, as they say, full of milk and honey. The reception given by Mteza Stanley surpassed in its splendor anything the wildest imagination could imagine. Suffice it to say that up to a quarter of a million people came out to meet Stanley. Mteza was extremely pleased with the first European he saw and showered him with his favors. On the first day, for Stanley and his eleven companions, Mteza sent the day's food, consisting of 14 bulls, 8 goats, one hundred measures of bananas, three dozen chickens, four huge jugs of milk, four baskets of patatas, five hundred ears of corn, a basket of rice, two hundred eggs and ten barrels of banana beer. The same was Mteza's generosity towards Stanley throughout the latter's stay at his court. Mteza questioned Stanley about all sorts of subjects and was amazed at the white man's vast knowledge. He showed Stanley his harem, which consisted of several hundred women, and promised every assistance for his expedition. Stanley asked for boats to transport his companions left in Kagegiya to Uganda. Mteza sent with him one of the commanders of his fleet to transport Stanley's expedition. However, it turned out that this subordinate of Mteza did not at all share his master’s enthusiasm for the white man and, sailing away from the capital of Mteza, calmly abandoned Stanley to the mercy of fate, and returned himself. The situation of Stanley and his companions on the return journey was terrible. Deprived of supplies, they had to starve, and meanwhile landing on the shore threatened death from hostile natives. On one island, Stanley and his comrades, who had landed on the shore, were surrounded by a huge crowd of natives, pulled their boat out of the water, carried away the oars and were ready to begin killing the travelers themselves. Only the cunning of Stanley, who managed to deceive the boat again, saved the expedition from death; but the rescued fugitives ended up on the lake without food supplies and, to top off the misfortune, without oars. After a number of similar misfortunes, Stanley finally reached his caravan, left in Kagegiya. Here, too, things were far from going well. Many of the caravan died of dysentery, others were ready to flee due to the three-month absence of Stanley, whom they considered dead. Among the dead was one of Stanley's white companions, Barker. One of the Pocock brothers had died earlier, and thus Stanley now had only one white comrade - Franz Pocock. Stanley began to look for means to transport his expedition to Uganda. It took a month and a half to do this until, finally, thanks to the help of one of the native owners, Stanley was able to put the rest of his caravan, consisting of only one and a half hundred people - men, women and children, on boats. The start of the voyage was miserable. A violent storm scattered Stanley's boats, and then there was a bloody quarrel between his own men, which he barely managed to break up. I had to go back. And only half a month later the expedition set off for Uganda. Stanley again had a lot of adventures. On one of the islands, the expedition would have been completely killed by the natives, if at the last moment a detachment of troops sent by Mteza had not arrived to help, who did not believe in Stanley’s death, as the treacherous admiral informed him. This detachment was supposed to find Stanley and came at the most critical moment to save the expedition. Mteza again received Stanley and his companions as dearest friends. At this time, he was preparing for war with one tribe that had rebelled against him and asked Stanley to accompany him on the campaign. For this war, Mteza gathered up to 150 thousand troops, but could not do anything with the rebels who settled on one of the islands and stubbornly withstood attacks until, on Stanley’s advice, they built a ship unprecedented in Africa, which terrified the rebellious and forced them to submit to Mteza. In gratitude for his help, Mteza provided all possible assistance in sending Stanley to Lake Muta-Ntsige and gave him a significant detachment of troops to protect him while passing through the possessions of Unioro, another strong state of Central Africa, the ruler of which was distinguished by extreme hostility towards foreigners. Thanks to a detachment of Ugandans, Stanley passed through Unioro's possessions unhindered, but everywhere he met empty villages abandoned by residents who did not want to enter into any relations with the expedition. On Lake Muta-Ntsige, the population also met the expedition with hostility. Here Stanley had to face hatred of whites. The fact is that Unioro, as well as some other countries of Central Africa that lay on his way, already bordered on areas that at that time were conquered and annexed to Egypt by the associates of the famous Gordon, especially Emin Pasha, the governor of the Equateur province. Stanley was received here as an enemy, and the population chivalrously warned him to prepare to withstand the attack. The Ugandan detachment accompanying Stanley was frightened by this declaration of war and decided to retreat. In vain Stanley protested against this decision and threatened the head of the detachment with the wrath of Mteza. The Ugandans went back the next day, and Stanley was forced to follow them. Leaving the country of Unioro, Stanley separated from the Ugandans and went to Nile-Alexandra. Here he received a letter from Mteza, who was terribly indignant at the cowardice of the leader of his detachment, imprisoned him and begged Stanley to return and take at least an entire army from him for his own purposes. But Stanley at that time already enjoyed the favor of another African sovereign, so he did not need Mteza’s help. The Nile-Alexandra, or Kagera, was at that time a completely unknown river, and Stanley decided to explore it. Here lay the Negro kingdom of Karague, ruled by the ideal African sovereign Rumanika. He was an extremely kind man who not only greeted Stanley with complete cordiality, but also became interested in the traveler’s research. He assembled entire geographical congresses of knowledgeable Africans and generally provided all possible assistance to Stanley’s work. Thanks to the help of Rumanika, Stanley was able to determine that the Nile Alexandra was the southernmost tributary of Lake Victoria, and therefore the uppermost source of the Nile. Having solved this major geographical issue, Stanley decided to go south to complete the studies of the Lualaba River begun by the late Livingston. On the way to Lake Tanganyika he had to pass through the possessions of the already famous Mirambo. Stanley's fame in Central Africa was at this time so great that Mirambo, who had every opportunity with his huge army, armed with guns, to crush the expedition and thereby take revenge on Stanley for his participation in the attack on him, Mirambo, during his first voyage, sent to Stanley asks if he continues to have hostile feelings towards him, Mirambo, or if he wants to be his friend. It is clear that Stanley preferred friendly relations, and a blood union was concluded between the traveler and the thunderstorm of Central Africa. On May 27, 1876, that is, a year and a half after leaving Zanzibar, Stanley was again in Ujiji, on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, having now come here by a completely different route than on his first trip. Leaving most of his caravan in Ujiji, Stanley traveled around Tanganyika. This lake is remarkable for the unusually rapid rise of its waters. When Stanley was in Ujiji in 1871, he saw three palm trees here in the market square, which in 1876 were already in the lake, a hundred feet from the shore. And Stanley found the same changes everywhere. On his boat "Lady Alice" he explored a significant part of the lake, and now it has turned from completely unknown previously into one of the most famous places in Central Africa, like another huge body of water in the same part of Africa - Lake Victoria. When Stanley returned to Ujiji and intended to move to the countries west of Lake Tanganyika, where Livingston alone had previously passed along the outskirts, his people resolutely refused to follow him. The country of Maniema, which lay beyond Tanganyika, had a bad reputation. According to rumors, ferocious cannibals lived there, and Stanley's people had no doubt that they would inevitably be eaten by savages. After much persuasion, insistence and orders, Stanley finally decided to take drastic measures. He forcibly transported 32 of the most unreliable of his companions to the west coast of Tanganyika, after which the rest followed him. Now, the further the caravan went from the lake, the less Stanley could fear the desertion of his people, since the very fear that the cannibals instilled in them made them now cling tightly to the caravan. The region into which Stanley entered was even more beautiful and richer in natural creations than the countries he had previously traversed. The equatorial sun and abundance of moisture produced miracles of vegetation. There were many wild animals everywhere. The countries had a fairly dense population that lived by agriculture. The culture of the population was very diverse. There were cannibals, and savages who stood at the lowest stage of development, and tribes that were sharply different from the rest of the blacks - like appearance, reminiscent of a white man, and a high culture that left far behind the culture of all that Stanley had seen before African peoples . Unfortunately, all these tribes agreed on one thing - hatred of the people sailing to them from across Lake Tanganyika. The reason for this hatred was the predatory behavior of the Arabs, who, as we have already said, penetrated these countries in the sixties and committed all kinds of horrors here in order to obtain ivory and slaves. When Stanley came here, there were already Arab trading posts, the most important of which was Niangue. Stanley, who traveled for the purpose of geographical discoveries, completely incomprehensible to the natives, was extremely suspicious of the latter, who assumed that he was something of a black trader. Already at the beginning of the journey, the population was extremely fearful of the expedition and fled at the first opportunity. Then things got even worse, and then for many months the expedition had to be in the position of a constantly belligerent party. Stanley headed his way along the banks of the Luama River and after some time came to its confluence with the greatest of the rivers of Central Africa - the Lualaba. This stream would be one of the largest rivers, even if it had the same dimensions at its mouth as it did in the very heart of Africa. As we have already said, he terribly intrigued geographers and travelers. Stanley decided to follow the course of the Lualaba and follow it to the mouth, wherever it might lead him. Soon he came to Nianguz. Here he decided to hire a convoy from the Arabs due to the hostility of the natives, since it was too risky to venture into an unknown region with the insignificant forces that Stanley had at that time. The Arabs, however, were little inclined to go to a country completely unknown to them, about which, moreover, the most alarming rumors were circulating: Stanley could be left without an escort. He was rescued by Hamed ben Mohamed, better known as Tippo-Tip. This is perhaps the most remarkable man in Central Africa, and he alone could undertake to help Stanley in an enterprise that to all other Arabs seemed pure madness, inevitably leading to death. Tippo-Tip was the son of an Arab and a black woman. At the time when Stanley first met him, he was a black merchant, having inherited this occupation from his father. Subsequently, largely under the influence of Stanley, Tippo gave up his vile business and even fought against it himself. He was the bravest and richest of the Central African Arab merchants. In the spread of Arab influence deep into Africa, he is the foremost instigator. It has its own trading posts in a number of places in Central Africa, which have the character of fortresses, and numerous plantations. His caravans roam all over Central Africa. Tippo-Tip's popularity in the heart of Africa is enormous, and his friendship here means a lot. This man agreed to help Stanley for a good reward. The conditions under which Stanley found a comrade were as follows: Tippo-Tip joined the expedition with three hundred escorts. He will accompany Stanley on 60 day trips, so that these transitions will take no more than three months. For this service he should receive 5 thousand dollars. Stanley agreed to these conditions, and the expedition set out. Soon after leaving Niangue, the expedition arrived in Mitamba. This is how in Central Africa they call a huge space of 8R longitude and 16R latitude, lying on both sides of the equator and representing a continuous primeval forest. This forest is so huge and dense that, having entered it, the expedition did not see the sun until it left the thicket. The air was so damp that the travelers' clothes never dried. Dew dripped from the trees like rain. Every minute we had to cross streams. It was hard to breathe, since the air, saturated with thick swamp fumes, did not have the slightest movement in this gigantic cellar, where, moreover, eternal darkness reigned. It was terribly difficult to walk, much less carry anything. Clothes and shoes fell apart like rot, so I had to walk barefoot. The forest itself was a true miracle of vegetation. It was a whole chaos of giant ferns, thorny grasses, orchids, reeds, vines, acacias, tamarinds, wild grapes, palms, aloe, date trees and thousands of other plants, reaching incredible heights and intertwining in the most bizarre way, creating obstacles for passage at every step . It was possible to walk through this forest only by cutting a road and taking each step, thus, with a fight. At first, when the expedition entered the vaults of this dungeon, everyone lived in the hope that it would soon end and the difficult journey would end. But days passed after days, and there was no end to the forest. After two weeks, the expedition was completely exhausted. Tippo-Tip decisively told Stanley that there was no way to go further and he would return, because he never imagined that the path would be so difficult, and now he does not want to destroy his people at all. Meanwhile, just at this time, the expedition, having covered a huge space along a dry path, came to the bank of the river, which turned out to be a continuation of the Lualaba and here it overflowed widely, capturing up to 600 fathoms in width under its bed. Not knowing what kind of river it was, Stanley named it Livingston; but then I became convinced that this river already had geographical name , since when he passed it to the mouth, the latter turned out to be known. Now, standing on the banks of this magnificent river, he came to despair from Tippo’s refusal: to make such a huge journey that had lasted for two years, to endure such a mass of hardships, to be on the eve of the greatest geographical discoveries - and to be forced to return back! No, he'll go alone if Tippo-Tip doesn't want to accompany him! But Stanley’s own people refused to go further through this damned forest, which blackened on both banks of the great river and the end of which was not in sight. Stanley asked, begged: he brought up all sorts of arguments, tried to touch some string in the souls of his companions - all in vain. And it was difficult to expect anything from these people, exhausted by two years of wandering, having lost two-thirds of their comrades and seeing only one thing - this strange, incomprehensible man decided at all costs to destroy himself and them in an unknown land. Then Stanley announced that he would go alone with his white brother (Pocock), and let them leave him to his death. It worked. A black man jumped out of the crowd and threw himself at Stanley’s feet with the words: “I’m not afraid, sir, and I’ll go with you to death!” The first was followed by another, then a third, and soon enthusiasm took possession of everyone. Everyone decided to share the fate of the brave leader, and even the cold-blooded, self-interested Arabs were carried away by the general enthusiasm and abandoned their intention to return. Thus, the moral strength of one man prevailed over all the adversities that African nature generously threw in the path of this man. From that moment on, Stanley did not leave the river. He divided the expedition into two detachments, one of which sailed along the river, and the other walked along the shore, and both detachments stopped together for the night. The coastal natives fled everywhere when the expedition appeared and there was not the slightest opportunity to enter into any kind of communication with them. Soon, however, the fugitives began to gather in huge crowds and attack both detachments - both those walking along the shore and those sailing along the river. Fortunately, the natives did not have firearms, but their arrows caused a lot of harm to the expedition, especially considering the fact that they were often poisoned. The first time the natives made an attack on fourteen large boats, lined up in a battle line in front of the expedition's anchorage. Stanley tried to negotiate with the attackers, but the answer was a hail of poisoned arrows. Stanley ordered a volley of thirty guns to be fired; the enemy was repulsed, but was again preparing to attack. Wanting to end the battle with as few casualties as possible for the savages, Stanley decided to shoot through several boats with bullets and thereby force them to leave. He boarded the Lady Alice with several people and rode out into the middle of the river. The savages raised a cry of joy, imagining that they would now defeat the aliens, and surrounded Stanley in all the boats. But soon well-aimed shots sank several boats, forcing their crew to swim to safety, and causing the remaining boats to flee. From that day on, for several months, the expedition constantly suffered from attacks by the natives. Two days later, a land detachment, lost in the forest, was attacked, from which it barely escaped, losing one killed and four seriously wounded. Two days later, a crowd of thousands of natives attacked the expedition camp at night. The attackers showed extreme courage and renewed their furious attack several times. And similar attacks were repeated every day on land and on water, and when the enemy left the expedition alone, the banks of the river resounded with cries: “Let's eat the meat of the sun people! We will have a lot of meat.” These ferocious cannibals seemed to despise death and went into battle with monstrous ferocity. Whatever Stanley did to enter into peaceful relations with them was all in vain. The offer to exchange goods, the offer of gifts, persuasion - nothing worked. Every day brought new battles and every day the detachment made new victims. To add insult to injury, the detachment suffered terribly from illness. Smallpox, dysentery, pneumonia, typhoid and many other diseases all reduced the composition of the expedition. Every day they had to lower two or three people to the bottom of a huge river. The expedition proceeded under such conditions for more than a month. Finally, Tippo again told Stanley that he could no longer accompany him. Stanley himself understood that Tippo had made much more sacrifices for him than could have been required even with the strictest attitude to the agreement concluded between them, and therefore he did not insist on continuing the escort and paid him the entire agreed amount. Stanley feared that his own people would leave for Tippo and he would be unable to continue the journey. But his entire caravan remained true to its promise to follow him even to the end of the world. However, it took Stanley's insane courage to continue the road with the small detachment that remained with him, when earlier the expedition had more than once been on the verge of death, despite the help of the Arabs. But the further he moved forward, the closer he was to the goal, the less desire he had to turn back, the more decisively he moved on, no matter what. Having released Tippo-Tip with his detachment, Stanley now had the opportunity to land the entire expedition on the Lady Alice and the twenty-two native boats he had. Thanks to this, the journey was accelerated, but the attacks of the natives did not decrease. Two weeks after the removal of Tippo-Tip, which passed the expedition into continuous battle with cannibal natives, Stanley met with a new disaster. The river along which he sailed turned to the west, making it clear that it was nothing other than the Congo, the mouth of which had been known to Europeans for many centuries, and European trading posts had long been established on it. The mouth of the Congo, however, was limited to a certain part of this river, and no one climbed up it, because not far from the mouth of the Congo there are rapids that block the path of ships. At first it never occurred to Stanley, like Livingston, that the great river they encountered in the center of Africa could be the Congo, since the latter river at its mouth is incomparably narrower than the Lualaba, especially where it, having taken a number of tributaries flow into one of the widest rivers in the world. Thus Stanley now discovered that the Congo represents one of the greatest rivers in the world. The joy that Stanley experienced at this discovery was completely overshadowed by the fact that at the turning point the Congo terribly narrows thirty times its previous width - and forms a whole series of rapids. Thus, they had to stop swimming and go ashore, where thousands of savages were waiting for the travelers, shouting in delight that God had sent them a rich supply of human meat. Here began the most difficult period of the journey, since, having landed on the shore, they had to carry boats on themselves in order to lower them onto the river below the rapids, and at the same time constantly fight with the attacking natives. Stanley walked ahead with twenty picked men, armed with guns and axes, and cleared the way, driving away the enemies and at the same time cutting down trees. Behind this party sixty men pulled the boat, stopping exhausted to rest every half mile. When one boat was delivered to a place from where it could be lowered onto the river, they went after the next one until all twenty-two boats had been dragged. This titanic work, which lasted 78 hours, was accompanied by constant attacks by the natives, who spoiled the path laid by Stanley, cluttered it with barricades, set up ambushes and showered the workers with thousands of arrows. When the last boat was finally hauled and lowered, the travelers indulged in the wildest joy. But their disappointment was even greater when, after swimming some distance, they came across second rapids. Once again the boats had to be pulled ashore and transported overland. And there were seven such rapids, nicknamed “Stanley Falls” from that time on. The expedition had to spend three and a half weeks to get around this terrible obstacle placed on human courage by nature. Finally, after incredible labors, combined at every step with mortal danger , the expedition again entered the wide expanse of the great river, which spread here several miles wide. When the struggle with nature ended, a fierce struggle with people began again. Skirmishes followed skirmishes, until finally, at the confluence of the Congo with one of its largest tributaries, the Aruvimi, the expedition encountered a huge flotilla of natives that literally covered the waters of the river... All members of the expedition considered themselves dead and only prepared to sell their lives at a higher price. However, this time too, discipline, firearms and desperate courage prevailed over numbers, and after a bloody battle the enemy was driven out. Descending further down the Congo, the expedition was forced to endure the thirty-first battle, which made Stanley extremely happy with the fact that the attackers had guns. Of course, this circumstance could have been the reason for the death of the expedition, but it also indicated that the expedition had entered countries in relations with European trading posts at the mouth of the Congo, and that it would soon enter a region pacified by trade. And indeed, the expedition had to endure only one more battle, and then it went on without being attacked. But disasters of a different kind awaited her. The Congo forms a huge spill in its lower part, known as the Stanley Pool. Beyond this “pond,” which has a surface area of 30 square miles, the river, from a wide, calmly flowing water, turns into a narrow, furiously rushing stream, full of whirlpools and rapids. Sailing along this part in the shells in which the expedition proceeded threatened with inevitable death. Again the expedition had to drag the boats, this time through high mountains, which required tremendous effort, and meanwhile the expedition’s strength was completely undermined. Stanley's last European companion, Franz Pocock, contrary to orders, decided to try to descend through one threshold and died, becoming a victim of his careless courage. Thus, all the Europeans who went with Stanley died, and he himself remained safe and sound after all the hardships and dangers, truly only by miracle. A few days after the death of Franz Pocock, Stanley decided to abandon the river and follow the dry route along the road that led to the Portuguese settlement of Embomme, or Bomma, lying on the Congo a little above the mouth of the river. Here the expedition had to experience a new disaster, from which it suffered relatively little throughout the journey - hunger. The region was poor, the land was uncultivated, and the inhabitants agreed to sell food supplies only in exchange for rum, which, of course, the expedition that crossed Africa could not have had. The travelers ate everything they could eat, and then all the horrors of famine began. To save the expedition from starvation, Stanley wrote an appeal to the first Europeans he encountered in Bomme and sent with it several of the most strong people, and he himself remained to share the fate of his comrades. The hours and days dragged on painfully hard for the starving people waiting for the messengers to return. And so, when the agony of those dying of hunger was close to the end, messengers appeared, supplied with food supplies thanks to the compassion of the European merchants in Bomme. On August 9, 1876, that is, two years and four months after leaving Zanzibar, the expedition arrived in Bomma, and on August 11 it greeted the ocean. From here Stanley transported his few surviving companions (109 people out of 369 who performed) to Zanzibar, and then went to Europe, greeted everywhere with the warmest applause. This journey of Stanley turned out to be the largest of all the journeys undertaken so far in Africa, both in terms of the enormity of the route traveled and the importance of geographical discoveries. True, five travelers crossed Africa before Stanley; but they all went south of Stanley, that is, where the diameter of the continent is much smaller. Honorato da Costo was the first to set off in 1802 from the western shore to the mouth of the Zambezi and covered this area in only nine years. Francesco Collerda then spent ten years, from 1838 to 1848, crossing Africa from Mozambique to Benguela. Then, in the early fifties, Silva Porto walked in three years from Benguela to the mouth of the Rovuma River, which flows into the Indian Ocean. In 1854, Livingstone set out from Saint-Paul-de-Loande and arrived in 1856 at Quiliment. Finally, between 1873 and 1875, Cameroon crossed Africa from Bagamayo, on the Zanzibar coast, to Benguela, on the Atlantic coast. Stanley went further north than all his predecessors and crossed Africa right under the equator. The geographical discoveries and explorations of the brave traveler on this journey were enormous and extremely important. We list here only the most important ones. Stanley examined Lake Victoria and found that it was a continuous body of water, and did not consist of five separate lakes, as previously thought. He then discovered the true source of the Nile, which is a tributary of Lake Victoria, the Kagera River, or Nile Alexandra. Next, Stanley carefully examined Lake Tanganyika. But the most important thing is the discovery of the Congo River. Previously, as we said, only the mouth of this river was known and not most of its above the mouth. By the nature of the river in its lower reaches, no one could think that it ranks among the first rivers of the globe, but meanwhile it turned out to be one of the greatest rivers in the world. Its length is about four and a half thousand miles. The amount of water that the Congo brings into the ocean reaches a monstrous figure of 50 thousand cubic meters per second, so in this regard, the Congo is second only to the Amazon of all the rivers in the world. The width of the Congo in some places reaches twenty miles. Receiving on both sides many tributaries, many of which exceed the most big rivers Europe, the Congo has a water basin of 4 million square miles. This huge area, which remained completely unknown before Stanley and was considered completely deserted due to its location under the equator and due to its proximity to the Sahara in the north and Calagari in the south, now turned out to be richly endowed with all the gifts of nature, quite densely populated and suitable for the life of Europeans. The practical impact of Stanley's discoveries was enormous. From that moment on, the colonial fever began that gripped all Western European states, which for the past decade and a half have been trying to compete with each other to seize as much space as possible on the “dark continent.” The Germans came here and grabbed a few pieces for themselves. They were not left behind, or rather, far surpassed, by the British, whose East African Company, as well as the Great Lakes Company, seized lands precisely in the places Stanley traversed. Next came the French, who took possession of a huge area known as the “French Congo.” The Portuguese also began to expand their African possessions. Even Italians appeared in Africa, and so on. Stanley himself took part in a very special kind of colonial enterprise that resulted in the founding of the Congo Free State.

ChapterIV. Free wtat Congo

Stanley spent the five months after returning from his last trip on rest, personal matters, among which visits with his mother took first place, and on writing a description of his adventures and discoveries. It should be noted that Stanley, possessing energetic and figurative language and a purely artistic ability to present to the reader unusually vivid pictures of nature and life in Africa and the events that he conveys, at the same time writes with extraordinary speed. Having completed his work, Stanley was already in Brussels at the beginning of 1877, where he drew up a plan with the Belgian king to found an independent state in the Congo, with the main goal of introducing to civilization those numerous black tribes that he found in the Congo basin and who accepted him so unfriendly. The idea of saving blacks, on the one hand, from slavery, and on the other, from the sad aspects of civilization, which usually only befall the lot of savage peoples who enter into relations with Europeans, has long occupied Stanley. Even in the book “How I Found Livingston,” Stanley mourned the gifted black tribes that perished, degenerated and disappeared under the influence of enslavement carried out by the Arabs, as well as smallpox, syphilis and vodka supplied by the Europeans. Even then, Stanley dreamed of a state that, having arisen in the depths of Africa, would protect blacks from all the listed troubles. In the Belgian King Leopold, one of the most humane personalities of our century, Stanley found a man who showed complete sympathy for his views. While Stanley was still in the heart of Africa, Leopold founded the International Association for the Exploration and Civilization of Central Africa. Now, after the discoveries of the great "passage", this association was given a practical character, and it took into its own hands the business that Stanley proposed. The funds necessary for this enterprise were provided by King Leopold, who put most of his considerable fortune into its foundation. As a commissioner of the International African Association, Stanley again went to the Congo to form a number of European settlements here, organize the administration of the country and create the state he had conceived. Stanley set to work with his usual energy. He dragged overland a whole flotilla of steel steamships to that part of the Congo, which lies between Stanley Pool and Stanley Falls and for 1600 miles is a water channel where ocean steamers could sail freely. He laid roads, built bridges, founded cities, concluded treaties and established trade relations with native rulers and peoples. Stanley spent five whole years on this peaceful activity, and its results were most brilliant. He pacified the entire lower half of the Congo, made travel in this area safe, attracted European trade into the interior of the country, created a proper administration and laid the solid foundations of civilization in the region. But what did it cost our researcher! The first town Stanley created in the Congo was Vivi. Before Stanley there was nothing here except rocks, bushes and tall grass. He spent five months of labor, paved a road here from the seashore, created buildings, planted plantations and turned this place into an important trading point in Central Africa. The next point at which Stanley intended to establish a town was Issangwila, located 400 miles from Vivi. Throughout this entire length, the Congo presents a series of rapids and rapids, called by Stanley “Livingston’s rapids.” The steamships and all the huge supplies and equipment of the expedition had to be dragged along the ground. Meanwhile, the roads here were in a very primitive state, or rather, they did not exist at all. Rocks, gaps, streams - all this was in abundance along the entire route. Stanley stopped at nothing. He blew up rocks, filled up chasms, and built bridges over rivers. From Issangwila to Manianga, Stanley sailed using whale boats. But from Manianga to Stanley Pool, sailing again turned out to be impossible and again everything had to be dragged on dry land. Here, however, nature had piled up such obstacles on the road in the form of huge granite cliffs that it seemed completely impossible to move steamers along this route. But nothing was impossible for Stanley - and the ships crossed all obstacles to Stanley Pool. This made such a huge impression on the natives that from then on Stanley began to be known among them as a man possessing the highest magic. When Stanley reached Stanley Pool, he noticed a flag waving from the top of one of the hills. It turned out to be a French flag, hoisted by the French traveler Savorgnan de Brazza, who occupied a significant territory on the right bank of the Congo on behalf of France. This incident greatly upset Stanley. On the one hand, he considered his rights to the Congo River, which he crossed before all Europeans, as exclusive, and on the other hand, the occupation of the territory by the French reduced the possessions of the state he founded and significantly impeded the implementation of the goals he had outlined for this state, so how from the new French possessions all those evils of civilization that Stanley wanted to protect the natives of the new region inevitably had to penetrate into the Congo region. However, the fact was obvious and had to be taken into account. Stanley decided to immediately begin annexing the areas along the further course of the Congo to the new state. He crossed to the other side of the river and here he founded Leopoldville, named after the Belgian king, against the French Brazzaville. Here Stanley had to endure a clash with the native king Ngaliema, who never wanted to allow Europeans to settle in his possessions. However, Stanley managed to get along with him without resorting to force, and Ngaliema agreed to become a vassal to the new state. Having finished here, Stanley moved on. All the time the great initiator stuck to the Congo, pursuing the goal for which he came to Africa this time. But the thirst to see new places, to explore the unknown, forced him one day to leave the Congo and climb one of its tributaries, the Kua. Here he discovered a lake of considerable size, which he named Lake Leopold II. The five years Stanley spent in the Congo also broke his iron health. Enormous work, life mainly in the open air and the numerous fevers Stanley endured forced him to finally leave his post and return to Europe to rest. The short stay of the selfless traveler in Europe was a complete triumph, and he, with all his dislike of celebrations, had to spend all this time moving from one banquet given in his honor to another. Soon, however, unfavorable news coming from the Congo again forced him to rush there. When Stanley left for Europe, his place was taken by the German Peschul-Lehe, sent by the Belgian king. This was a man of a completely different make. There was no trace of Stanley's talents, nor his intelligence and energy in the new commissioner. He also cared least about the ideal goals that Stanley pursued when founding a new state in the Congo. Lehe came to Africa with the sole purpose of getting rich and cared only about this. He completely neglected concerns about expanding the territory occupied by the new state, about establishing new stations, about establishing friendly relations with the natives. The selfish German began trading with the natives and forced them to work on his plantations. Things were quickly going downhill. The roads laid by Stanley, left without support, quickly deteriorated. The towns not only did not develop, but also lost the inhabitants who had previously settled in them. The natives began to be hostile towards the newcomers. The entire enterprise was threatened with death if Stanley had not arrived on time, arriving in the Congo at the end of the same year, 1882, in which he went to Europe for vacation. Stanley quickly corrected the damaged Lehe, restored order everywhere and went further up the Congo to found towns, or stations. He founded the Bolobo station and, just under the equator, Equatorville. The last station is 1200 versts from the sea. But Stanley decided to go further into the very depths of the country that received him so unfriendly in 1876. This time, however, there was no struggle. The rumor about the “great stonebreaker,” as Stanley was nicknamed by the natives of the Congo because he blew up a lot of rocks while clearing roads, spread throughout this part of Africa, and Stanley was now greeted everywhere with greetings. The natives willingly exchanged food supplies for goods, and local rulers entered into formal alliances with Stanley. Only once did a huge crowd of natives approach Stanley’s camp with hostile intentions, but, having learned who they were dealing with, they immediately changed them to friendly ones. As Stanley approached the waterfalls named after him on this journey, the country, which he had found on his first visit so prosperous and overcrowded with population, now appeared before him completely ruined. Villages were burned, palm trees were cut down, fields were overgrown with wild vegetation, and the population disappeared. It was as if some gigantic hurricane had passed through the country and destroyed everything that could be destroyed. Only here and there were people sitting on the river bank, resting their chins on their hands and blankly looking at everything around them. From questioning these people, Stanley learned that the devastation of the country was the work of Arab slave traders who finally penetrated here. These robbers made their way from Niangue in the upper Congo to the Aruvimi, one of the main tributaries of the Congo, and devastated a huge area of 50 thousand square miles, also catching part of the population along the Congo, above the confluence of the Aruvimi. Approaching a village, the Arabs attacked it at night, set it on fire from different sides, killed adult men among the residents, and took women and children into slavery. Stanley soon encountered a huge detachment of slave traders, who were leading more than two thousand captive natives. To collect such a number of prisoners, the Arabs destroyed 18 villages with a population of approximately 18 thousand people, some of whom were killed, some fled, and some finally died in captivity from the cruel treatment of their new masters. This treatment was immeasurably worse than the treatment of any livestock. The unfortunates were in chains and tied in whole parties to one chain. The chain was attached to collars that pressed on the throat. During the journey, the position of the chained was immeasurably worse than the beasts of burden, no matter how heavily laden they were. At rest stops, the shackles and chain made it impossible to straighten the limbs or lie down freely. People had to huddle together and never had peace. The Arabs fed their captives only enough for the strongest to survive, since the weaker ones were only a burden for them due to the long journey to Zanzibar, the main slave market in East Africa. Stanley was ready to attack these robbers, punish them and take their unfortunate captives from them by force. Unfortunately, his forces were too insignificant to have any success in a skirmish with a large detachment of Arabs and their people, armed with excellent guns. But he decided to do everything possible to protect the natives from the robbery of the Arabs and soon founded a station at Stanley Falls, the purpose of which was to help the natives repel the Arab slave traders if they appeared in the upper Congo. Stanley then entered into relations with Tippo-Tip: he offered him the title of governor of the upper Congo and a salary so that Tippo would assume the responsibility of preventing slave traders from entering the country and expelling them if they appeared. Unfortunately, these measures did not have practical significance in the upper Congo for long. The people who soon replaced Stanley at the head of the administration of the “Congo State” considered it unnecessary to maintain the relations that Stanley had established with Tippo-Tip; However, no care was taken to make the Stanley Falls station strong enough to repel the Arab gangs, and in 1886 it was destroyed by the combined forces of the Arab slave traders. But another measure, the adoption of which Stanley strongly insisted, turned out to be more effective - the prohibition of the slave trade in Zanzibar. This measure was adopted only very recently, although given the influence that Europeans have received in Zanzibar since 1884, when they - first the Germans and then the British - became complete masters of the Sultanate, such a measure could have been implemented immediately after the publication of Stanley the horrors that slave traders produce inside Africa, looking for slaves there. This time Stanley's stay in the Congo lasted about two years. By 1884 he felt too tired. And in fact, since 1869, since the momentous conversation with Gordon Bennett, Stanley, in essence, knew no rest. It was time to get tired. In addition, he saw that the Congolese cause, to which he had devoted so much time and labor, was not going the way he wanted. Of the many Europeans who came to the Congo as Stanley’s assistants, there were no individuals with ideal goals. At best, these were simply people who served for a salary, and more often they had in mind the same goals of profit as Lekhe, who almost ruined the entire enterprise. Moreover, in Brussels they were becoming increasingly dissatisfied that the Congolese enterprise was bringing only damage and no income. Stanley understood that in the future, when the “State of the Congo” gets on its feet and widespread trade develops along the river, trade duties alone will more than cover all the costs incurred for the business, as is the case at present. But then they didn’t want to understand this and thought to give the business a commercial character in order to benefit from it in this way. Stanley was unable to do this, and he left his position as chief of administration of the Congo. Returning to Europe in 1884, Stanley began a great deal of work devoted to describing the Congo, its region, nature and population. Having published this book, Stanley received from the United States North America a proposal to take part as a representative of the said state in the African Conference, which met in Berlin in 1885 and had the goal of resolving controversial African issues by establishing general provisions, which should determine the future acquisition of possessions in Africa by European powers. Stanley accepted the offer and at the conference vigorously supported the rights of the new state of the Congo. Thanks to his efforts, the Congo Free State was recognized as a special state under the protectorate of the Belgian king. The borders of the new state are defined very broadly. Its boundaries included the entire Congo Basin, with the exception of parts of the territory in the lower Congo recognized by France and Portugal. In total, more than two and a half million square miles of space were recognized as the new state. Of course, in fact, the “state of the Congo” occupies only a small part of this territory in the lower and partly in the middle reaches of the Congo, and the rest of the space belongs to the “state” only theoretically. But such, with a few exceptions, are all the possessions of Europeans in Africa. Vast areas marked on maps as belonging to the Germans, English, Portuguese, French, Italians and Spaniards are usually only under the protectorate or “sphere of interest” of the named nations, and in fact only a few points are occupied by them. The belonging of a territory to one or another nation only means that no other European nation has the right to take possession of this territory. In the same sense, the “Congo State” includes the entire vast space occupied by the Congo Basin. If the new state develops its forces, it will little by little extend its actual influence throughout the vast territory that is recognized to it.

ChapterV. For helpEMinu Pasha

For some time after the Berlin Conference, Stanley lived quietly, enjoying the fruits of his many years of labor. His universal fame reached the highest degree. He constantly received offers from learned societies of all countries to become their member. The best magazines - American, English, French, German - sought the honor of having him as their employee. Stanley's appearance in one or another city in Europe and America was the reason for warm applause from the public. Descriptions of his travels were distributed in many tens of thousands of copies and were translated into all languages of civilized peoples. Four large essays and several small ones, in which Stanley described Africa and travels - his and Livingston's - gave him a very significant fortune, which allowed him to lead a completely independent lifestyle. During this period of his life, Stanley lost his dearly beloved mother, whose long-suffering life was made happy at sunset by the reflection of the glory of her dear John. Having buried his mother, Stanley thought to live the rest of his life without affection, but fate now sent him the happiness that he was deprived of in his younger years. He met Miss Tenant, a highly educated and talented girl who had for several years occupied a prominent place in the literary and artistic circles of London. She collaborated in English magazines, illustrating her articles with her own drawings and, in addition, painting, and a number of her paintings had significant success at exhibitions. Stanley was captivated by her intelligence, varied knowledge and liveliness, and she, in turn, was captivated by his energetic and noble character. In 1887, Stanley and Miss Tenant became engaged, but their wedding was postponed, since Stanley at that time had to take on a task that only he could carry out. This matter consisted of rescuing Emin Pasha, who was stuck in the depths of Central Africa. If Stanley's previous travels in Africa, both for the purposes for which they were carried out and for the extraordinary energy discovered by the traveler, forced everyone to recognize Stanley as the first "explorer" of our century and the "knight of the 19th century", then the new journey that was now ahead Stanley should have further increased his rights to these titles. Indeed, a dangerous and incredibly difficult expedition, undertaken and brilliantly carried out by him in the interests of the liberation of two Europeans, Emin Pasha and Casati, lost in the depths of Central Africa - an expedition that lasted three years, full of continuous dangers that at every step threatened death to the brave traveler and actually killed many of his companions - this expedition completely stands out from the usual course of our life and is partly reminiscent of the exploits of Homer's times, partly of the Middle Ages, when ideas could move entire nations. But who are Emin Pasha and Casati, for whose sake this heroic expedition was undertaken? Casati is an Italian traveler who got into trouble in Africa completely by accident and did not play any significant role in this case. Emin Pasha is a different matter. This is a highly original personality, and his story seems, in our narrowly practical age, straight out of the tales of Shahrazad. It would be quite appropriate to get acquainted with this person here in short words. Real name Emina Pasha - Schnitzer. A German, or rather a German Jew by origin, Eduard Schnitzer received a very solid natural science and medical education in Berlin, Vienna and Paris. Even in his youth, he went to the East, which attracted him with the peculiar structure of his life, and spent a long time studying medical practice in Scutari, Albania. In the mid-seventies, when the famous Gordon, appointed governor of the Sudanese provinces of Egypt, gathered around himself Europeans, on the one hand, interested in nature in the depths of the “dark continent”, and on the other, capable of working to eliminate the slave trade there, Schnitzer immediately came to Gordon’s call . At first he carried out private assignments, such as embassies to the native African rulers, and then was appointed governor of the southernmost province of Sudan, lying on the upper Nile almost below the equator. This province, recently annexed to Egypt, in the first years of Egyptian rule was subjected to monstrous plunder by the Egyptian authorities, their troops and especially the Arab slave traders who were under their protection. The latter turned the whole country into a field of hunting for people and carried on this vile business on such a wide scale that they threatened to turn the whole country into a desert. Having taken control of the province, Schnitzer, who renamed himself Emin, curbed the Egyptian administration, replaced Egyptian troops with natives and began such a decisive war against slave traders and human hunters that soon there was no trace of them left in his province. At the same time, he discovered remarkable administrative talent. Having turned his attention to the development of agricultural culture, he achieved enormous success along this path. Soon the province he ruled was covered with plantations of wheat, rice, sugar cane, indigo and so on. The country was rich in nature, like most countries in Central Africa. She needed only external peace, order and knowledge delivered by science in order for her to flourish - and all this was first given to her by Emin. This tireless figure, who throughout his stay in the heart of Africa did not abandon scientific works - geographical and natural sciences, with which he enriched special publications throughout Europe and which gained him a great name in the scientific world - at the same time worked intensely for the benefit of his population provinces, introducing new cultivated plants, teaching the natives improved methods of cultivating the land, preparing cotton fabrics, and so on. In a few years, the Equatoria province turned into a flourishing and rich region, Emin gained enormous popularity among the population, and his troops, recruited from the natives, simply idolized him. At the very height of the civilizing activities of Emin Pasha, a Magdist uprising broke out in Sudan, caused by the incompetent and cruel administration of Reuf Pasha, who replaced Gordon as the Sudanese governor-general. The uprising quickly spread throughout Sudan. Gordon was again invited to the post of Governor-General of the Sudan, but too late to stop the avalanche of Muslim fanaticism that had risen. He fell victim to his magnanimous intention to save civilization in the Sudan and his trust in the English government, which, having sent him to a dangerous post, delayed for a long time in sending him help and came with it too late, at the very moment when the center of the Egyptian Sudan, Khartoum, was Gordon is captured and treacherously killed. From that moment on, all Egyptian possessions within the “dark continent” fell into the hands of the Magdists, with the exception of the province of Emin. Emin Pasha spent six whole years in his province, cut off from the whole world by the Magdists. His fate was shared by two travelers caught up in the Magdi uprising - the Italian Casati and the Russian German Juncker. This one-of-a-kind fact of Emin’s “reign” presents an amazing spectacle. In a vast area lying in the very center of Africa, inhabited by millions of savage blacks, there were first three Europeans, and then, after Juncker’s departure, only two, having at their disposal no other power except moral influence, cut off from the civilized world, without relying not to any external power, since the prestige of the Egyptian government had completely disappeared, - during these long years they managed to govern a vast region, maintain a significant army, maintain strict order everywhere and take care of the well-being of the population of the province. It was some kind of idyll, a kind of Robinsonade. Meanwhile, on the borders of this Robinson kingdom stood, on the one hand, the formidable hordes of Magdi, and on the other, the no less formidable armies of the powerful black states of Unioro and Uganda, which we spoke about above. In Uganda at this time, the place of Stanley's friend, Mteza, was taken by Muanga, who declared a merciless war on the whites, and in Unioro they had previously treated the whites, as we have already said, with the greatest hostility. For the time being, Emin’s troops held back the pressure of hostile forces on both sides, but Emin understood that things could not continue like this for long, sooner or later the hordes of Magdists would increase to such an extent that his troops could not cope with them, as happened later. If Emin had thought only about himself, he could have left his peculiar imprisonment, as Juncker left him in 1886, making his way to Zanzibar. But Emin knew that leaving meant giving up the Equatoria province as a victim of anarchy and into the hands of the Magdists. Moreover, going through half of Africa with an army of thousands was out of the question, and leaving the brave black army, which had been loyal to its leader for so many years, meant turning out to be undeserving of this loyalty. And Emin decided to remain at his post until the end, sharing a common fate with his province and his army. He, however, expected help from Europe, hoping with this help to gain such a strong foothold in the upper Nile as to make that country permanently annexed to the civilized world, or at least to be able to retire from the country with his entire army. Meanwhile in Europe for a long time they didn’t even know if Emin was alive, and no one could even think that he reigned unchallenged in his province. Everyone was sure that the Magdists, who had captured Khartoum and all other Egyptian fortresses in Sudan, destroyed several Egyptian armies, threatened Egypt itself and the British in Wadigalfa and Suakim, had long since occupied the Equatoria Province and defeated Emin's troops. Most were sure that Emin had died, just like Gordon and many of his other European associates. Only the famous traveler Schweinfurt, who had previously been with Emin in Africa, insistently asserted that Emin was alive and that it was not so easy to survive him from his province. In the middle of 1886 a letter finally arrived from Dr. Juncker, who, as it is said, made his way from the Equateur province to Zanzibar. Emin turned out to be not only alive, but also ruled a huge region in the very center of Africa without limit, and asked Europe for help in order to put the cause of civilization in this country on solid ground. Juncker's appeal on this matter made a strong impression in Europe. Public opinion in England was especially excited, where they considered Gordon’s death a sin on the conscience of English society, and now they wanted to, as it were, atone for this sin by saving Emin and his brave army. A “committee to help Emin” was immediately formed, headed by the famous philanthropist McKinnon, and a subscription was opened to receive the necessary funds. The subscription yielded enormous sums: McKinnon alone contributed about one hundred thousand rubles. The Egyptian government, in whose service Emin continued to be listed and several of whose officers were locked up in the Equateur province along with Emin, gave the expedition several dozen of its Sudanese soldiers. The Belgian king, as protector of the “State of the Congo,” placed ships sailing to the Congo at the disposal of the expedition. The British government, through its representative in Zanzibar, recruited 650 Zanzibaris to serve on the expedition. Finally, the Indian-British Shipping Company provided the expedition with a huge steamer to transport its personnel and luggage from Cairo to Zanzibar and thence to the mouth of the Congo. Many Englishmen wished to join the expedition and share its dangers. But who should be at the head of this bold enterprise? Who was to lead this small army into the heart of Africa and who could successfully accomplish such an extraordinary task? There was not the slightest disagreement on this subject. Everyone knew that only one man was able to carry out the huge undertaking begun by English society, and that man was Stanley. When the question of equipping an expedition to help Emin arose at the end of 1886, Stanley was on his way to the United States, where he was to give conferences in a number of cities about his travels and discoveries; from here he was going to Australia for the same conferences. These conferences were supposed to give Stanley a fortune: in at least one Australia, the entrepreneur who arranged this reading trip guaranteed Stanley a minimum income of 200 thousand francs. Having landed in New York, Stanley received a telegram from McKinnon with an invitation to become the head of the liberation expedition and sailed to Europe with the next ship, abandoning the benefits that the conference promised him. He believed that his position as an expert on Central Africa obliged him to go to the aid of Emin more than anyone else; Moreover, he knew better than anyone else how a European should feel, thrown into the depths of Africa and left alone. After some time, Stanley appeared at the head of a crowded expedition to the mouth of the Congo, from here to undertake a new three-year journey. The route through the Congo, the longest, was chosen due to the fact that the roads to the Equateur province from the north along the Nile and from the eastern coast of Africa were blocked: the northern one by the Magdists, and the eastern one by the bloodthirsty kings of Uganda and Unioro, who had huge armies armed with guns. Of course, on the new path, Stanley had to expect obstacles, which he could have figured out on his first trip through Africa. But on this path, at least, such strong possessions as Unioro, Uganda and the newly formed state of the Magdists were not known, although, of course, something similar could have turned out here. New way It also had the advantage that it ran through completely unknown areas that could be explored along the way. Having chosen this path, Stanley boldly set out on March 19, 1887 from the mouth of the Congo on a campaign that lasted three years. The path he covered this time from the mouth of the Congo to Bogamayo on the Zanzibar coast was a little less than two thousand miles. The total number of the expedition exceeded 700 people. Only a few of them completed the journey safely; the majority died in the depths of Africa from disease, hunger and arrows of the natives or deserted. The expedition included, in addition to Stanley, ten Europeans; two of them could not bear the severity of the journey and returned to the beginning of the road, and three died, so that only five completed the entire journey. Among Stanley's companions was also Tippo-Tip, who had already accompanied Stanley on a trip to the Congo, as was said in its place. This time Stanley met Tippo-Tip in Zanzibar and made an agreement with him regarding the supply of porters for an expedition to the upper Congo, where Tippo-Tip's possessions lay. The latter, together with Stanley, traveled around Africa and was now climbing the Congo with an expedition. The journey began on steamships. But since the Congo, not far from the mouth, becomes unnavigable, it was soon necessary to go by land. Already here, the expedition more than once experienced a serious shortage of food supplies, since the natives produce them almost exclusively in the amount of their own food and for the first time the population had to deal with such a huge demand for provisions as was presented by a crowd of more than 700 people. From Stanley Pool the journey continued again on steamships, taking the expedition to Yambuya on the Aruvimi, a tributary of the Congo. Further movement of steamships was hampered by rapids, and from here it was necessary to go by land. Until now, most of the expedition traveled through territory actually occupied by the “state of Congo.” Order reigned everywhere here, and the expedition was free from any hostile actions on the part of the natives. In addition, thanks to steamships, the journey was completed very quickly. The expedition found itself in completely different conditions when it entered the Aruvimi region. Here began a completely unknown region, and the expedition had to rely only on its own strength. The journey, which was supposed to be made on foot from here, became extremely slow and difficult. Having reached Aruvimi, the expedition had only a small number of porters. The latter were, as mentioned above, to be delivered by Tippo-Tip, who went to fulfill this order to his possessions in the upper Congo. In order not to waste time waiting for porters, Stanley divided his detachment into two parts; one of them, under the command of Major Bartello, was supposed to guard most of the expedition’s cargo in a fortified camp and, after waiting for the porters, set off in the footsteps of Stanley, who with the other part of the detachment immediately set off on the road. Unfortunately, the choice of the commander of the abandoned detachment was extremely unfortunate, since Major Bartello turned out to be a man completely unsuitable for the responsible role entrusted to him by Stanley. Unruly, inept, he was also an arrogant and cruel person. Not getting along with his European companions, he antagonized Tippo-Tip and with his cruelty, reaching the point of madness, instilled deep hatred for himself in the natives of the detachment, one of whom eventually killed him. This ill-fated detachment, despite the fact that Tippo-Tip provided him with several hundred porters, stood still more than a year, losing most of his men to disease and starvation, including two Europeans, not counting Major Bartello. When he finally set off, he almost died of hunger, and only Stanley, who had already managed to reach Emin Pasha and returned to look for his rearguard, saved him. Stanley set out from the fortified camp where he had left Major Bartello in early July 1887 and was not heard from for 15 months. During this time, everyone despaired of the success of his expedition. The general confidence in the death of the famous traveler was reinforced more than once by news from Arab traders coming from the depths of Africa about the death of a white man who was at the head of the caravan. And suddenly, at the end of 1888, a letter from Stanley arrived in Europe, informing him that he had reached Emin Pasha. The path taken by Stanley along Aruvimi and further to Lake Albert, or Muta-Ntsige, where he met Emin Pasha, is about 1000 miles. It took almost six months to complete this path: of the 389 people who made up the detachment when parting with Major Bartello, only 174 people reached the lake. The rest died from hardships and in battles with the natives, or were left sick, exhausted, under small covers, at several points along the way. This may give some idea of the horrors of the road that Stanley traveled. For almost all of these six months, the detachment was continuously hungry; It happened that the detachment walked for whole weeks without anything to satisfy their hunger except the roots of herbs. Death from hunger, from dysentery, tropical fever, from the poisoned arrows of the natives - that was what awaited the detachment at every step. Most of the route lay through endless tropical forests, which, as already said, occupy a large part of Africa, and with the horrors of which Stanley was well familiar from his first trip across Africa. That part of this gigantic forest through which the expedition now walked was even more terrible than the forest that Stanley passed through in the upper Congo. Here, under the eternally dark arch of trees that do not allow a single sunbeam , all life freezes. There is no vegetation except the forest itself, no animals except elephants. Occasionally there are open meadows that play the role of real oases, full of a variety of tropical flora and fauna. But here the travelers were faced with fights with the natives, who did not want to enter into any relations with them. In a word, all the horrors that Stanley had already experienced in the upper Congo were repeated, but in an even more intensified form. To complete the disaster, most of the glades-oases were completely devastated and turned into desert by Arab slave traders, who by this time had made their way into these remote places, uncontrollably hunting people, killing some, taking others into captivity, destroying their homes, robbing their farms and destroying crops. Stanley met several times with detachments of these robbers, who even managed to settle down here in permanent fortifications. The Arabs were not averse to robbing Stanley’s detachment, and if they did not dare to do this openly due to the general fear inspired in Central Africa by the names of Stanley and his friend Tippo-Tip, they did not hesitate to rob the stragglers from his detachment, as well as extort Stanley’s hungry companions in exchanging weapons and clothing for food supplies, so in the end most of Stanley’s squad found themselves not only completely unarmed, but also completely naked. If it were not Stanley but someone else who led the detachment, the detachment would inevitably die. But this iron man never lost heart and knew how to inspire others. There were times when the detachment was in danger of widespread starvation, people fell exhausted and, of course, would have died if Stanley had not convinced them to make another transition, at the end of which, by a lucky chance, there was a blooming oasis. While the entire squad was ill, Stanley alone remained healthy the entire time. He couldn’t get sick, because then everything would perish, and he supported himself with incredible effort of will. Only later, when the hardest part of the task was completed, did he suddenly collapse and almost die. Having finally reached the country adjacent to Lake Albert, or Muta-Ntsige, and which, like the entire country of the Great Lakes, turned out to be a real earthly paradise, Stanley immediately entered into relations with Emin, whose possessions were adjacent to the northern shore of Lake Albert. Emin, who at that time enjoyed complete peace with his province, was little inclined to retire from the center of Africa, and was ready to do this only if the Equatoria Province and his entire army agreed with him. Stanley decided to give Emin time to resolve the issue of leaving the Equateur Province, and he himself decided to gather the people he left on the way and find his rearguard, about which he had no information. This return trip by Stanley is one of his most remarkable exploits. He had just recovered from a fatal illness; his strength was exhausted to the last degree, and meanwhile he had to go back and forth again that very road, with the horrors of which he had just struggled for a whole half a year. But he considered himself obliged to go after his abandoned sick companions and the missing rearguard, since his conscience did not allow him to entrust this task to any of the Europeans who were with him. Leaving part of his detachment in the fort built near Albert, Stanley and the rest of the people set out on the return journey, collecting those stragglers who were still alive, until finally they came across the pitiful remnants of the rearguard. Having thus gathered the remnants of his detachment, Stanley again moved to Albert, where he returned at the end of January 1889, that is, more than a year after his first appearance here. This year, during which Stanley made a two-way trip, down and up the Aruvimi, was also full of suffering, if somewhat less than the first trip along the Aruvimi (since Stanley now knew the road and knew how, as far as possible, to take measures precautions), nevertheless still so terrible that the moving detachment melted away by leaps and bounds. Some died, others ran away. There was a period of such prolonged famine that Stanley himself despaired and considered everything lost. To top it all off, the detachment had to have constant battles with a wild tribe of dwarfs. These dwarfs, mentioned by Herodotus and Arab writers of the Middle Ages, were long considered in Europe to be the creation of idle fantasy. But now a number of travelers, like Schweinfurt, Juncker, Van Gehl, Stanley and others, have attested to the spread of dwarfs over a large part of Central Africa, where they live among other tribes, quarreling with their neighbors and living like wild animals in the forests. All these hardships reduced the size of the expeditionary force by half, so that of the 700 people with whom Stanley entered the mouth of the Congo, and the 350 porters given by Tippo-Tip, only 550 people reached Lake Albert. But the main grief awaited Stanley ahead. Having reached Albert, Stanley learned that Emin was captured by his own mutinous troops. Stanley was desperate. His entire two-year expedition, all the labors and hardships, the death of half of the expeditionary force - all this turned out to be in vain, and he was late with his help, just as the English troops were late with their help to Gordon. Stanley didn't know what to decide on, but at this time further events in the Equateur province brought the matter to a conclusion. When Emin informed his Egyptian officers of the information brought by Stanley about the death of Khartoum and the abandonment of Sudan by the Egyptian government and proposed to discuss the issue of returning to their homeland through Zanzibar with the help of Stanley, the Egyptians refused to believe that they could no longer wait for help from the north, but a return route They couldn't imagine anything other than the Nile. Stanley's appearance and proposal seemed extremely suspicious to them. And so they spread a rumor among the Muslim soldiers that they wanted to deceive them and take them to England, where they would turn them into slaves. A group of conspirators unexpectedly attacked Emin and the officer left with him from Stanley’s squad and arrested them. When other detachments of Emin’s troops found out about this, they were ready to help out their beloved Pasha by force. But at this time the Magdists broke into the Equateur province. The first fortress occupied by Emin's troops was taken by them and the garrison was exterminated. During the siege of the second fortress, the Magdists were defeated, however, and retreated to the north of the province - in anticipation of reinforcements rushing to them. Then Emin's army demanded the immediate release of their leader, and the rebels had to obey this demand. Emin even after that wanted to stay, sharing the fate of the province. It took Stanley a lot of work to persuade him to leave the area, the death of which was certain. Finally, in the second half of April 1889, Emin, with six hundred people from his army and the families of officers who wished to leave the province, set off with Stanley’s detachment. The detachment was joined by another 350 porters from the inhabitants of the region lying under Alberta. Thus, the entire detachment consisted of one and a half thousand people. Stanley headed back to Zanzibar. To avoid the states of Unioro and Uganda, hostile to Europeans, he led his detachment on a detour that stretched two thousand miles through terrain inhabited by unfriendly natives and in many places deserted. This was a path no less difficult than the path along Aruvimi, and it is not without reason that Western European authors, describing this retreat of Stanley with one and a half thousand people, compare it with the famous retreat of Xenophon. Suffice it to say that the journey from Albert to the Zanzibar coast lasted 8 months and that of the 1,500 people who set out from the lake, only 700 reached Bagamayo. Be that as it may, Stanli completed the task he had undertaken. He penetrated into the heart of Africa in a way that had hitherto seemed completely impossible, and freed Emin and those of his comrades who wished to leave the Equateur province. This cost many heavy sacrifices; nevertheless, the humane goal of the expedition was achieved, and important geographical discoveries were made along the way. From Zanzibar Stanley went to Egypt and here in Cairo wrote a book dedicated to the journey he had just completed. This book consists of two volumes of a thousand pages in large format, typed in a neat font. Stanley completed this enormous work in 50 days, that is, with such incredible speed that it is difficult to imagine. The book, as it was written, was immediately translated from English into French and German and was published simultaneously in three languages. It took much more time to publish it than to compile it, namely four months. The book was printed in a huge number of copies and, despite the high price, about 200 rubles, it immediately sold out, so a new edition was immediately needed. In the first three months after the book was published, ten translations of it into different languages appeared. The success of the book testifies to the enormous interest aroused in civilized countries by Stanley's heroic expedition, undertaken with the sole purpose of rescuing people from trouble with whom Stanley had absolutely no personal connections and whom he had never even seen before. And this interest manifested itself not only among the educated part of the population, but also among the Western European masses. Here is a characteristic fact in this regard. The publisher of Stanley's new book, In Darkest Africa, Marston, met an old shepherd in the depths of England, who told him in a conversation that his only desire was to read Stanley's book. When Marston remarked that he knew the great traveler, the shepherd joyfully exclaimed: “Give him a pound sterling - that’s all I have put aside for a rainy day - and ask him to send me a book; I’ll send him the rest of the money when I collect it.” ". Of course, the publisher did not take the money and sent Stanley’s fan a deluxe copy of the publication with the author’s autograph. Upon his return to Europe, Stanley received such loud and numerous ovations as very few have experienced in our century. Public sympathy for the brave researcher was especially warmly expressed in Belgium and England. The city of Brussels, led by the Belgian king, organized a gala dinner in Stanley's honor, at which a number of speeches extolled Stanley's merits and explained the enormous cultural significance of his discoveries. In England, for almost six months, Stanley had to receive deputies from cities, learned societies and political associations every day and attend dinners and banquets organized in his honor by the named corporations. Stanley's wedding to Miss Tenant, which took place at this time, turned into a public event thanks to Stanley's popularity. The wedding took place in Westminster Abbey, not far from Livingston's grave, and before the wedding, Stanley and his bride laid wreaths on the grave of the great philanthropic traveler. The newlyweds received a mass of all kinds of gifts, many of which were of high moral value, such as Gladstone's writings with an inscription from the author, a small bouquet presented by London street boys, and a bottle of Nile water sent by one of Stanley's black friends from the upper Nile. All the outstanding personalities of English society belonging to the political, literary, scientific and artistic world were present at the wedding. When Stanley went to America after that, he was received there with even more enthusiasm than in England. Now, by the way, the Americans could hear from Stanley personal messages about his adventures, messages that they had been waiting for so long. Americans look with pride at Stanley as a phenomenon of American life due to the fact that Stanley spent his youth in America and here his mind and energy were first developed. Among these general expressions of sympathy, Stanley, of course, could not avoid manifestations of envy. First of all, it arose among German travelers, who were extremely annoyed by Stanley's laurels. Not having the strength to accomplish even an insignificant fraction of what Stanley accomplished (the German expedition sent from the Zanzibar coast to help Emin did not even reach Lake Victoria), they tried in every possible way to reduce the significance of Stanley’s feat. Things got to the point that envious people began to accuse Stanley of even saving Emin, who allegedly did not need any help and whom Stanley allegedly forcibly took away from his province. Something extremely absurd came out. At first everyone was shouting about Emin's dangerous situation and the need to save him; Emin himself begged in his letters for help; his friends, Schweinfurt and Juncker, aroused the strongest agitation in this sense - and when at last a man was found who took upon himself the incredibly difficult task of saving Emin and brilliantly completed this task, supplying Emin with military supplies with which he could stay in his province, if it were possible, and having delivered Emin to European possessions from the center of Africa after it turned out to be impossible to stay on the upper Nile further, then suddenly they begin to say that Emin did not need anyone’s help at all, forgetting that without this help, he would inevitably die from the Magdists who flooded the country. Stanley found opponents of a different kind. They began to accuse him of cruelty towards blacks, and since in reality Stanley’s attitude towards the natives was always of the exact opposite nature, and even main goal Since his work in Africa was precisely the destruction of the prevailing cruelties in it, they began to blame him for the cruelty of the aforementioned Major Bartello, the commander of the rearguard in Stanley’s last expedition, and Bartello’s comrade, the artist Jameson, although this cruelty was shown at a time when Stanley was behind a thousand miles from the scene of action, and he was the first to be indignant at it and exposed the shameful actions of these people to the court of public opinion in his book. Fortunately, Stanley has the ability to rise above the petty attacks caused by envy and petty malice, which are always cherished by nonentities towards outstanding people. Upon his arrival in England, Stanley launched an intensified agitation in order to provoke opposition to the successes of the Germans in Central Africa, who were trying to penetrate the country of the Great Lakes and establish their rule there. The struggle of the Germans with the natives on the Zanzibar coast, accompanied by the vile beating of unarmed people and the aimless bombing of flourishing coastal towns, instilled in Stanley the deepest hatred of the Germans. Under the influence of the agitation he raised, the British government entered into negotiations with Germany for the cession to England of a large part of the territory claimed by the Germans in Central Africa, and indeed received this concession, in exchange for the insignificant Heligoland, an islet in the German Sea, which belonged to England. Thanks to this deal, England received exclusive rights to the Great Lakes region, covering more than half a million square miles. Stanley is currently 50 years old. This is the age at which in the West they just reach full courage and the prime of life. There is no doubt that his brilliant work as an explorer and civilizer of Africa is far from over. Of course, now that Stanley has started a family, it will be more difficult for him to decide on difficult and dangerous undertakings; but Mrs. Stanley, without a doubt, will not become an obstacle to him on this path, which she proved even as a bride without making the slightest opposition to Stanley’s last most dangerous journey. And the world will probably be surprised more than once by the courage, courage and nobility of the character of the great “land explorer.”

Sources

1. Stanley. How I found Livingston. 2. Stanley. A travers le continent mysterieux. 3. Stanley. Congo. 4. Stanley. Dans les tenebres de l"Afrique. 5. Adolphe Burdeau. The Adventures of Stanley. 6. Glav. Six years in the wilds of Central Africa. 7. Wauters. Stanley au secours d"Emin-pacha. 8. J. Scott Keltie. La delivrance d"Emin-pacha. 9. "Western Mail", 1886.

(1841-1904)

American journalist and traveler to Africa, born in Denbigh (Wales) on January 28, 1841, died in London on May 10, 1904. He revealed the secrets of the Conto river system and became one of the major discoverers of Inner Africa. After a joyless youth in a poor shelter at the age of seventeen, he went as a cabin boy on a ship to New Orleans in the United States of America, where the merchant Stanley educated him and adopted him. Left to his own devices again after the death of his adoptive father, Stanley took part in the American civil war first on the side of the Southern States, and then as a sailor on the side of the Northern States. With iron energy, he took up the task of eliminating the gaps in his education, became a newspaper correspondent and traveled throughout the American West, Spain and Western Asia. In 1867, on behalf of the New York Herald newspaper, he took part in the British campaign against Ethiopia. In 1869, from the owner of this newspaper, D. G. Bennett, Stanley received an assignment to attend the opening of the Suez Canal, and then go in search of a missing person in Africa. In January 1871, Stanley arrived in Zanzibar, where he found out about Livingstone's possible whereabouts, so that on October 28 he was able to meet him in Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika. After sailing together in boats to the northern tip of Lake Tanganyika, Stanley returned to the east coast in early 1872. Stanley described his adventures in a book entitled “How I Found Livingston” (1872; in Russian translation, St. Petersburg, 1873).

After Stanley in 1873-1874. As a newspaper correspondent, he took part in the English campaign against the country of Ashanti (Ghana); with the support of the New York Herald newspaper and the London Daily Telegraph, he began to prepare for a new journey into the depths of Africa in order to finally clarify the problems of the sources of the Nile and the Congo. In November 1874, with more than three hundred soldiers and porters, as well as one collapsible ship, he set out from Bagamoyo on the East African coast and on February 27, 1875, reached the open Lake Victoria, the contours of which he finally established during the 58th century. day sailing. Moving further to the west, Stanley in Uganda discovered the 5130 m Rwenzori Mountains and Lake Edward, and in mid-1876 he circled Lake Tanganyika in 51 days, which was discovered in 1858 and later largely explored. Working his way from here further to the west, he reached Nyangwe on the upper Lualaba Congo. Before Stanley, Livingston and Cameron had already visited there, but were forced to return, unable to establish where this river flowed. True, the German geographer Ernst Bähm pointed out the possibility that this river is, apparently, the upper course of the Congo; However, this assumption was opposed by the opinion, which Livingston held for a long time, that we were talking, apparently, about the upper reaches of the Nile. Stanley decided that only swimming would help, and demanded that the Arab slave trader Tippu-Tip, who owned there, provide him with 18 large river boats. On November 5, 1876, Stanley began his adventurous voyage down the Congo. He fought more than 30 real battles with the local Africans. He had to overcome the difficulties created by nature. Many boats were lost in river rapids and waterfalls that prevented navigation; in addition, the expedition suffered from fever and hunger. With a much thinned squad, Stanley finally reached the mouth of a huge river at Boma on August 8, 1877. He covered the last part of the journey by land in 10 days. Thus ended one of the last expeditions for discovery in Africa, carried out using the most brutal methods. The last, previously unexplored waterway of Africa, the Congo, was explored along its entire length, and a path was found into the interior of Central Africa; An economically rich region was opened up for the penetration of colonialism. True, only the main river became known, and its numerous huge tributaries still had to be explored. Stanley described this trip in the book “Across the Black Continent,” 2 vols. , 1878 (“Through the dark continent").

Stanley subsequently took part in the exploration and beginning of the colonial takeover and exploitation of the Congo Basin. In 1879, on behalf of a commission of exploration founded by King Leopold II of Belgium, he entered the Congo lands to “open up trade”, walked the country from the mouth of the river and discovered the lake of King Leopold II. Until 1884, Stanley remained in the Congo, founded numerous settlements and captured vast territories. He paved the way for the creation of the Congo State by Leopold II, which was recognized in 1885 at the Berlin Conference. See “The Congo and the foundry of its Free State”, 2 vols., 1885 (“The Congo and the foundry of its Free State”).

In 1887, Stanley from London set out again to cross Central Africa a second time and at the same time remove Emin Pasha from encirclement, who, due to the Mahdi's uprising, was cut off from the outside world in the Egyptian Equateur province. In Zanzibar, on the east coast, he prepared a new expedition, and did not choose the shortest and most convenient route through East Africa, but left from the mouth of the Congo in West Africa to explore the area of \u200b\u200bprimitive forest between the Congo bend and the Nile lakes. In March 1887, with a detachment of 620 people, Stanley began a journey up the Congo to the confluence of the Aruvimi, where he left Major Bartelotte and 257 people, most of the luggage, for which he could not find porters. Moving along the Aruvimi and its tributary the Ituri, the expedition had to cut its way through the damp rain forests of interior Africa with ax and knife. Over 100 people died from exhaustion and in defensive battles with the African population; as a result, Stanley, who met Emin Pasha on April 29, 1888 at Lake Albert, was forced to use the help of the one he wanted to save. Since Barthelott did not follow the main expedition as agreed, Stanley had to return back to the mouth of the Aruvimi. There he learned that Barthelotte had already been killed, and most of his squad had also died. With new battles and losses, Stanley returned to Lake Albert and on January 18, 1889 he again met Emnn Pasha there. To be able to tell the world at least about the successful rescue of Emin Pasha, Stanley persuaded the reluctant Emin Pasha to accompany him to the East African coast; they reached it at the end of 1889 at Bagamoyo.

Stanley described his last trip to Africa in the books: “In the Wilds of Africa” (1890; in Russian translation, M., 1948) and “Emin Pasha and the rebellion at the Equator”, 1890 "). In 1891-1892 Stanley traveled to Australia, where he served in the House of Commons from 1895 to 1902. The traveler's Autobiography was published by his wife Dorothy Stanley in 1909.

With unbridled energy, even cruelty, Stanley walked towards his goal, and human life meant nothing to him. Where other explorers tried to go, maintaining good relations with the local population or, due to their resistance, turned back, as, for example, Livingston and Cameron, Stanley, if it was impossible otherwise, achieved success by force of arms. Thus, his journeys of discovery are similar to military campaigns. He, who powerfully paved the path of the pioneer traveler, lacked the patience to negotiate and understand the uniqueness of the life of Africans. The first major discoverer of travel journalists, he did not also scientific research lands discovered by them. But such a task as organizing the state of the Congo was fully consistent with his aspirations for power and wealth. However, despite this, Stanley's merit lies in the fact that in three expeditions, which he carried out, using rich material resources, he was able to open vast areas of previously unknown Africa to view. In 1899 he was elevated to knighthood. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in London, in the same place as Livingston.

Bibliography