Henry Morton Stanley and the Congo River
Henry Morton Stanley is perhaps most famous for his greeting upon meeting David Livingstone in the middle of Africa. ‘Doctor Livingstone I presume!’
Most historian now accept that no such words were uttered, and that the phrase was a later creation of Stanley, who was a master of self-promotion.
Stanley’s expedition to find Livingstone was his first, and from it he extracted such fame and celebrity, that he decided he would follow it up with something truly spectacular, and that is why Stanley resides at the top of our list. By the mid-1870s, most of the major geographic question of Africa were answered, with the exception of the question of the source and course of the great Congo River.
A glance at a map will reveal that the Congo River rises at point more or less where the borders of Zambia, Angola and Congo meet, after which it flows in a wide, westward leaning arc, some 2,900 miles, crossing the equator twice before emptying out into the Atlantic Ocean.
At that point, nothing was known about it. In 1874, the 33-year-old Stanley, sponsored by the New York Herald and the British Daily Mail, set off from Zanzibar with a view to intercepting the Congo close to its source, and exploring it downstream to the coast. Geographically, this was a reasonably simple undertaking, but practically speaking, it was the commencement of one of the most epic feats of African exploration on record.
As was his habit, Stanley traveled with an entourage of several hundred porters, a small army and a handful of European companions. Initially, the journey was quite routine, but as his party began to enter the darker recesses of the Congo rain forest, it began to come under attack from hostile tribes occupying the banks on either side. Stanley spared no thought for propriety, and his response was simply heavy firepower, which killed a great many indigenous people, guilty or innocent.
But besides that, the physical conditions that Stanley faced were daunting to say the least. The Congo is a wide river, drawing a vast region of rain forest, and its rapids and obstacles are on the same scale. It is also a deathtrap of tropical diseases, of wild animals, snakes, insects and cannibals – in fact all the elements of a wild, boy’s-own adventure, the stuff of Tarzan or King Solomon’s Mines. When Stanley eventually emerged at the mouth of the Congo River after 999-days, his hair had turned white and he had aged twenty-years. More than a third of his expedition was dead, all four European members among them. It is impossible to overstate what an utterly harrowing adventure it was, and it is truly amazing that Stanley himself survived.
But now that he had, Stanley set about making as much noise about it at he could, and for that reason, and simply because he was an authentic, car-carrying bad-ass, Stanley is probably the most famous of all African explorers.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“Mary Kingsley: Demystifying Africa”. Jacqueline Banerjee. The Victorian Web, September 2013
“Suppressed story of Richard Burton’s rival explorer surfaces”. The Guardian, September 2017
“Richard Burton: Even a spear through his face could not stop this Explorer Extraordinaire”. Doug Williams, Outdoor Revival, February 2017
“René Caillié: the first European explorer who returned alive from the town of Timbuktu.” Tijana Radeska, May 20017
“The late Alex Nyirenda Remembered.” From Butiama and Beyond. Madaraka, December 2009
“Livingstone’s Life & Expeditions”. Livingstone Online, Justin D. Livingstone, 2014