Henry Morton Stanley's first trans-Africa exploration

Between 1874 and 1877 Henry Morton Stanley traveled central Africa East to West, exploring Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika and the Lualaba and Congo rivers. He covered 7,000 miles (11,000 km) from Zanzibar in the east to Boma in the mouth of the Congo in the west and resolved a number of open questions concerning the geography of central Africa. This including identifying the source of the Nile, which he proved was not the Lualaba - which is in fact the source of the river Congo.

This was Stanley's second journey in central Africa. In 1871–1872 he had searched for and successfully found the missionary and explorer Livingstone, greeting him with the famous (though disputed) words: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”.

Stanley's journey had four principal aims, to:

There was controversy among earlier explorers as to whether these lakes and rivers were connected to each other and the Nile. Richard Burton thought that Lake Victoria might have a southern inlet, possibly from Lake Albert, meaning that the source of the Nile was not Lake Victoria as Speke had argued. Samuel Baker thought that Lake Albert might have an inlet from Lake Tanganyika. Livingstone thought that Lualaba was the source of the Nile.

Being sponsored by the New York Herald - at the instigation of its then editor, James Gordon Bennett Jr., - and the Daily Telegraph newspapers, Stanley he was expected to write dispatches for them. He subsequently wrote a book of his experiences, Through the Dark Continent.

On September 21, 1874 Stanley arrived Zanzibar. He took with him three young Englishmen, Frederick Barker and the brothers Francis and Edward Pocock, and Kalulu, an African he had taken to England on his earlier trip and who was educated briefly in England. He also took 60 pounds of cloth, copper wire and beads (Sami Sami) for trading, a barometer, watches and chronometers, sextant, compasses, photographic equipment, Snider rifles and elephant gun(s), and the parts of a 40 ft boat with single sail, named Lady Alice after his fiancee. In Zanzibar he recruited African porters to a total of 230 people, including 36 women and 10 boys. He recruited mainly from the Wangwana, Wanyamwezi and coast people from Mombasa.

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