The great journey of Mr. Henry M. Stanley, in which he crossed the continent of Africa, was both the longest and the most important journey that any African traveller has made. Both Dr. Livingstone and Commander Cameron had already crossed Africa, but they crossed it by a more southerly and much shorter path than that taken by the American traveller. They suffered a great deal from fever and weariness and the terrible heat; but Mr. Stanley, in addition to these miseries, was compelled to fight his way through tribe after tribe of blood-thirsty cannibals, and to follow the course of a dangerous river, full of rapids, in a frail boat. It is almost a miracle that he ever lived to reach the civilized world; and had he not been as prudent and skillful as he was brave and persevering, he never would have finished his journey.
Mr. Stanley started from Zanzibar--a town on the east coast of Africa--in November, 1874, with three young Englishmen and three hundred and fifty-three native Africans. Only a few of these were armed with rifles, for most of them were porters. In Africa, calico and beads are used for money, and as a traveller must have plenty of these with him, he has to employ a great many porters. You will ask why he does not have horses or oxen to carry his goods. The reason is that there is an insect in Africa, called the tsetse, the bite of which kills all animals of burden, so that travellers have to hire natives to carry all their property on their heads.
Stanley marched first to Lake Victoria--a lake discovered by Captain Speke in 1858, and which is one of the sources of the Nile. After sailing all around this lake in a boat which was made for him in England, and was built so that it could be taken apart and carried by the porters, he went to another great lake, discovered by Captain Burton in 1856, and called Lake Tanganyika. This he also circumnavigated in his boat, and discovered that it had no outlet. West of Lake Tanganyika Dr. Livingstone had discovered a great river, which he thought might be the Congo. Commander Cameron had also seen this river, and both of them wanted to descend it to its mouth, but they thought it would be impossible to make their way through the fierce savages who live on its banks.