Across Africa by the Congo

Henry Morton Stanley · 1874 CE – 1877 CE · Earth

Settle the shape of the great lakes and follow the Lualaba wherever it led.

Historical context

By 1874 the great lakes had been seen but not measured, and no one knew whether the Lualaba flowed into the Nile, the Niger or the Congo. After Livingstone’s death, the Daily Telegraph and the New York Herald sent Stanley to finish his work and to report on the slave trade. He went armed, with a sectional boat and a column of Zanzibari carriers and soldiers, 228 people by the muster lists and 356 by his own book, and by his own count he fought thirty-two times on the river, making blood-brotherhood where he could. The crossing answered the geography and opened the Congo basin to Leopold the Second’s Congo Free State, whose forced labour and killings became an international scandal.

The voyage, step by step

1. Bagamoyo, November 1874

   November 1874

   Some 230 people march inland with a sectional boat on their heads.

2. Around Lake Victoria

   1875 CE

   In fifty-seven days he sails the whole shoreline and proves Speke right.

3. Mutesa I

   1875 CE

   The kabaka’s canoes bring him to a lakeside welcome of thousands and volleys of musketry.

4. Lake Tanganyika

   1876 CE

   He returns to the town where he found Livingstone and charts the lake shore by boat.

5. Nyangwe and the Lualaba

   1876 CE

   At the limit of the known world he hires Tippu Tip to escort him into the forest.

6. The seven cataracts

   January 1877

   On the equator the river drops through seven cataracts spread over a hundred kilometres.

7. The great bend

   1877 CE

   The river swings north, west and then south across the equator twice.

8. Boma, August 1877

   August 1877

   Nine hundred and ninety-nine days out of Zanzibar, the survivors reach the Atlantic.

Outcome

Circumnavigated Lake Victoria, charted Lake Tanganyika and proved the Lualaba to be the Congo, reaching Boma on 9 August 1877 after 999 days; of the 228 people on the muster lists, 114 survived to reach the Atlantic.

Henry Morton Stanley

Welsh-born American journalist who crossed Africa from Zanzibar to the Atlantic, charting Lake Victoria and descending the Congo to the sea.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• Henry Morton Stanley — Wikipedia
• Through the Dark ContinentHenry Morton Stanley · Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington · 1878

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