Henry Morton Stanley (American National Biography)

In October 1869 Stanley was summoned to Paris by James Gordon Bennett, the proprietor of the [New York] Herald, who instructed him to find David Livingstone, the famous African missionary believed to be lost in central Africa, but he was to begin the search only after completing a series of assignments in Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, and India. It was March 1871 before he left Zanzibar with a large expedition bound for Tanganyika (the two countries now form Tanzania) in East Africa. After suffering great hardships and surmounting obstacles and dangers, he found Livingstone at Ujiji. Raising his hat, he asked politely, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" (How I Found Livingstone, p. 78).

Together they explored the north end of Lake Tanganyika before Stanley emerged from the interior carrying letters and notebooks from the missionary, who had no wish to leave. His newspaper stories and his book, How I Found Livingstone (1872), brought him fame.