Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/395

 years travelling among the Mississippi towns with, this kindly and cultivated man, and educating himself by sedulous reading. In September 1860 he was sent up to Cyprus Bend, Arkansas, where he was to serve a sort of apprenticeship in a country store, while his adopted father went on a trip to settle some business in Havana. They never saw one another again. The elder Stanley died suddenly in the spring of 1861, without having made any provision for his adopted son.

Meanwhile the state of Arkansas was seething with, excitement over the approaching civil war. The young Welshman's friends and neighbours were ardent secessionists, and all the young men were eager to put on uniform for 'Dixie.' Stanley was carried away in the stream, and in July 1861 he entered the service of the Confederate States as a volunteer in the 6th Arkansas regiment. In later life he regarded this step as 'a grave blunder,' for his sympathies, if he had considered the matter, would have been with the north. He served with the Confederates nearly ten months, and had some rough experiences in camp and on the march in the winter of 1861-2. On 6 April in the latter year his regiment was in the thick of the fighting at the battle of Shiloh. Stanley seems to have borne himself bravely, and advancing beyond the firing line when his company retired he was taken prisoner. He was confined at Camp Douglas, Chicago, with some hundreds of other captured Confederates in a state of utter wretchedness and squalor. He endured the miseries of this situation, with disease and death all round him, for some two months. On 4 June he obtained his release by enlisting in the United States artillery. For this transaction he was often reproached afterwards, but in all the circumstances it was excusable enough. He had, however, no opportunity of taking part in the operations of the Federal armies. He was attacked by dysentery and low fever within a few days of his enrolment, taken to hospital, and a fortnight later discharged from the service at Harper's Ferry, without a penny in his pocket, and almost too weak to walk, in a condition 'as low as it would be possible to reduce a human being to, outside of an American prison.'

A kindly farmer took pity on him, and gave him shelter for several weeks until his health was restored by good food and fresh air. He left this harbourage in August 1862, and for the next two years was engaged in an arduous, and at first unpromising, struggle for a livelihood, taking such employment as he could obtain. In the late autumn of 1862 he shipped on board a vessel bound for Liverpool and made his way to his mother's house at Denbigh, very poor, in bad health, and shabbily dressed. He was told that he had disgraced his family and was 'desired to leave as speedily as possible.' He returned to America and the life of the sea. During 1863 and the earlier part of 1864 he made various voyages, sailing to the West Indies, Italy, and Spain. He was wrecked off Barcelona and swam ashore naked, the only survivor of the ship's company. In August 1864 he enlisted in the United States navy, and served as a ship's writer on vessels which took part in the two expeditions against Fort Fisher in North Carolina. A daring exploit commonly credited to him was that of swimming under the fire of the batteries in order to fix a rope to a captured Confederate steamer. Some accounts of these stirring events he sent to the newspapers, and so made his entry into journalism. When he left the navy at the close of the war in April 1865 he had already established a sufficient connection with, the press to enable him to wander about the western states as a more or less accredited correspondent of the newspapers. With his budget of adventures, his keen observation, and the graphic descriptive style he was already beginning to acquire, his journalistic progress was rapid. He was well paid for his contributions, and by July 1866 his resources and his connections were sufficient to enable him with a companion to take a trip to Asia Minor. The two young men left Smyrna in search of adventures, and found them, as Stanley usually did. They were attacked by a body of Turkoman brigands, robbed of their money, insulted, beaten, and threatened with death. Escaping with some difficulty, they made their way to Constantinople, where the American minister took up their cause, and obtained compensation for them from the Turkish government. Later in this year, on his way back to America, Stanley revisited his Welsh birthplace, where some of his relatives were now by no means unwilling to recognise the clever and rising young man of the world. The following year he was sent by the 'Missouri Democrat' as special correspondent with General Hancock on his expedition against the Comanche, Sioux, and Kiowa Indians. His picturesque letters were afterwards republished by himself in the first volume of the book called 'My Early