Stanley Livingstone Africa Lake Tanganyika

Explorers - One of Tanzania's most famous missionaries-cum-explorer was Dr David Livingstone, the first European to cross the continent from the Zambezi to Luanda on the West Coast. A Scottish missionary and student of medicine, Livingstone travelled Tanzania and beyond, converting the natives to Christianity and later, and much more famously, in the search for the source of the mighty Nile.

Livingstone and Stanley - Discovery of Victoria Falls. Strong faith, a deep commitment to stamping out the slave trade and a genuine belief that European imperialism would benefit the people of Africa took Livingstone back to Africa on three separate expeditions. His first, 'the Missionary Travels' were primarily about converting the 'godless' natives of southern Africa but he also managed to stumble upon the Zambezi River in 1851 and the Victoria Falls in 1855 before making his way to the east coast at Quelimane, Portuguese East Africa, in 1856. He returned to England that same year to write about his travels and to stir public debate around the moral issues of the slave trade, advocating "Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation" as the clear alternative.

Livingstone disappears - Livingstone's second, government sponsored anti-slavery expedition from 1858-63, led him up the Zambezi and on to Lake Nyasa at its head. In 1866 he was back for a purely exploratory outing - on the trail of the Nile's elusive starting point. Control of this would enable the British to better protect their territorial assets in Egypt. Shunning the company of Europeans who he found irksome, Livingstone, his African support team including his devoted guide and friend, Chuma disappeared into the interior without a word and were given up for dead by worried fans back home.

Stanley on Livingstone's trail - Such was the frenzied press reporting of Livingstone's daring-do and dramatic disappearance that The New York Herald paid Welsh-American journalist Henry Morton Stanley handsomely to go forth and recover the intrepid explorer. Stanley worked very differently to the Scot, was motivated instead by dreams of fame and fortune and was accompanied through Tanganyika by 200 well-armed African porters. He set out in March 1871 and found "Dr Livingstone…..I presume?' sick with fever at Ujiji on the shores of Lake Tanganyika on November 3rd.

Livingstone had been busy; had discovered lakes Mweru and Bangweula and had reached the Lualaba tributary of the Congo River. Though he refused to return to Europe with Stanley, the two journeyed up the north end of Lake Tanganyika together for four months before Stanley headed back to London - leaving Livingstone, still sick, to continue his fated quest for the elusive Nile source.

Stanley crosses Africa from East to West - Though Livingstone's backers criticising Stanley's motivations and efforts, his sensational stories of his search for the missionary hero earned them both daredevil reputations, one that Stanley liked so much that he set out a second time in 1874, backed again by a British press and public, hungry for adventure. Stanley left Zanzibar for Lake Victoria (which he circumnavigated in his boat, the Lady Alice), then headed into Central Africa towards Nyangwe and the Congo (Zaire) River. He followed the Congo for some 3,220 kilometres from its tributaries to the sea, reaching Boma in August 1877, thus proving that Lake Tanganyika drained westward and had nothing to do with the Nile.

after...

Livingstone's death - Livingstone meanwhile had met his maker in 1873 at Lake Bangweulu, Zambia. The ever-faithful Chuma organised the embalming of his body, carried it for ten months back to Bagamoyo on the coast, allegedly ensuring that his heart was buried in Zanzibar as per Livingstone's wishes and accompanied the remains back to Britain for burial in Westminster Abbey. Though admired in life - a British MP from 1895-1900, knighted in 1899 - Henry Stanley has done rather less well in death. History has raised some thorny questions about Stanley's honesty, methods and cruel treatment of his African guides and porters.

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