That successful expedition marked him as the man to carry on further exploratory work in Africa; and when the news of Dr. Livingstone’s death reached Europe, fired with the desire to carry on the work of the great Doctor, he gladly accepted the commission of the Daily Telegraph and New York Herald.
Starting from Zanzibar November 17, 1874, he circumnavigated the Lakes Victoria Nyanza and Tanganika for the first time, carefully charting. Thence he struck across to Nyangwe. In spite of the obstacles and difficulties that had hindered others, his immense determination, his resources, and knowledge of the Swahili language, enabled him to induce his men to follow him down the river.
He recalled to their minds the long weary marches, the terrible dank forests of Urega, how easy it would be to sit in canoes, and paddle down this great river, which must flow into the sea. They agreed, and met the first serious impediment to navigation at the Equator, where a series of seven cataracts in forty miles caused them to transport their canoes overland round these obstacles.
Clear of these Stanley Falls they had an uninterrupted course for 1,060 miles, the river widening out in some places to as much as twenty-five miles in breadth, studded with low sandy tree-covered islands. As he neared the end of this grand reach of waterway, hills appeared, the river narrowed, and the banks grew steeper until they towered a thousand feet above him. The river widened out once more into a pool some seventy miles in circumference, which is now named Stanley Pool, at the western end of which the explorer heard the thunder of the Ntamu Cataracts. From this point his difficulties were to be of a different nature. Along the 1,000 miles of clear waterway which he had just passed, he had been exposed to the constant attacks of wild, fierce savages, now he had to struggle with a wilder, fiercer river. The next one hundred miles occupied four months. Dragging his canoes overland, past the Ntamu Cataracts,