Livingstone had gone into central Africa in 1866 searching for the source of the Nile, and for years almost nothing had been heard of him. James Gordon Bennett Jr., publisher of the New York Herald, sent Stanley to find him. The expedition left Zanzibar in March 1871 and endured fever, desertions and war along the route. Stanley's reports of the meeting made him famous. Livingstone refused to return with him and died in Africa in 1873.
Stanley had been born John Rowlands in Wales, spent part of his childhood in a workhouse and emigrated to the United States, where he fought on both sides in the Civil War before becoming a correspondent. Bennett, eager for sensational stories, gave him a large budget and orders to find Livingstone, whom many in Britain assumed was dead.
From Zanzibar, Stanley led a caravan of about 190 men inland. The journey took more than seven months. Many porters died or deserted, and Stanley was repeatedly ill. At Ujiji, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, he found Livingstone, ill and short of supplies. In his account, Stanley recalled wanting to embrace him but, conscious of the crowd, walked up, raised his hat and asked, "Dr Livingstone, I presume?" The two pages of Stanley's diary for that day were later torn out, and some historians doubt the line was spoken at all.
The two men explored the northern end of Lake Tanganyika together. Stanley left in March 1872. Livingstone continued his search and died in 1873 in what is now Zambia. His attendants carried his body to the coast, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Key people: Henry Morton Stanley, David Livingstone, James Gordon Bennett Jr.