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Denbigh, in Wales, in 1840. When three years old he was placed in the poor-house of St. Asaph, where he remained ten years, and received an education which enabled him to teach in a school. At the age of fifteen he sailed as cabin-boy in a vessel bound for New Orleans. Here he was adopted by a merchant named Stanley, whose name he took, in place of his original one, which was John Eowlands. His patron died without leaving a will, and young Stanley was left to his own resources. He enlisted in the Confederate army, was made a prisoner, and subsequently joined the Federal service, becoming a petty officer on a war-steamer. After the close of the war he be- came a newspaper correspondent, and in 1867 was sent by the -New York Herald as its correspondent with the British army in Abyssinia, and subsequently travelled in Spain and elsewhere. He was finally sent by the conductor of the Herald to find Dr. Livingstone, of whom no- thing had been heard for more than two years. Stanley reached Zanzibar, on the east coast of Africa, early in Jan., 1871, and on the 28th of October reached Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika, where Living- stone had just arrived from the south-west. Stanley remained with him imtil Feb., 1872, when Living- stone started on the journey from which he never returned, and Stanley made his way back to Europe. The ^clat of this exploit induced the conductors of the New York Herald and of the London Daily Telegraph to send him, at their own expense, on another Afri- can expedition. He reached Zanzi- bar in the autumn of 1874, and learning that Livingstone was dead, resolved to go north-westward, and explore the region of Lake Victoria N'yanza. This, after many en- counters with the natives, he reached in Feb., 1875, and found it to be the largest body of fresh water on the globe, having an area of 40,000

square miles. He then pushed west- ward towards Lake Albert N'yanza, and was able to satisfy himself that it was not, as had been generally- supposed, connected with Lake Tan- ganyika. Forced by the hostility of the natives to return to Ujiji, he determined to descend the great river discovered by Livingstone, and believed by him to be the Nile, but which others thought was the Congo ; and named by Livingstone the Lualaba, and by Stanley the Livingstone. The descent, chiefly by canoes, occupied him eight months, cost him the lives of thirty- five out of his one hundred and fifty men, and was accomplished under the greatest difficulties and privations. On reaching a settle- ment on the coast, a Portuguese national vessel took him to St. Paul de Loanda ; whence an English vessel conveyed the party to the Cape of GkK)d Hope, and thence to Zanzibar. Here his men were left at their home ; and Stanley reached England in Feb. 1878. He has published an account of his first expedition, imder the title "How I fotmd Livingstone," 1872. Of his other expedition an account is given in " Through the Dark Continent," 1878. The President of the French Geo- graphical Society presented the Cross of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour to Mr. Stanley at the Sor- bonne, Paris, June 2S, 1878. In 1879-82 he visited Africa again, under the auspices of the Ahican International Association founded at Brussels. The object he had in view was to develop the great basin of the river Congo. The King of the Belgians devoted from his private purse .£50,000 -per annum towards this costly enterprise, and Stanley had practically unlimited means at his command. He made a road on the side of the Living- stone Falls, with steamers on con- venient level reaches, so as to reach Stanley Pool from Embomma.- In Sept., 1888, a letter from Stanley