Thomas Stevens (cyclist) - The Search For Stanley

The Search For Stanley

The New York World asked Thomas in 1888 to join its search in East Africa for the explorer Henry Morton Stanley. Stanley had travelled up the Congo but a year and a half had passed without news. Stevens called it "a grand opportunity; the one chance, mayhap, of a lifetime, to spring into fame on the stage of African exploit. How would I Found Stanley look in the libraries with I Found Livingstone?"

Stevens left New York by ship on 5 January 1889. His instructions, he said, were:

Go to Zanzibar. Investigate the state of affairs there. Let us know the truth about the troubles between the Germans and the Arabs. See what is to be seen of the slave trade. Find out all you can about Stanley and Emin Pasha, and, if necessary or advisable, organize an expedition and penetrate the interior for reliable news of the Emin Pasha Relief expedition. Spare no expense in carrying out the main object of the enterprise, but at the same time don't throw money away recklessly.

Stevens led a six-month expedition, writing for the newspaper of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and hunting big game. He found Stanley's camp in a race with the rival New York Herald and wrote his book, Scouting for Stanley in East Africa It concluded:

By the end of February, 1890, I was again in New York. I had been gone fourteen months. I had not 'found Stanley',as Stanley had found Livingstone in 1871; the circumstances were altogether different. I had, however, gratified a pardonable journalistic ambition in being the first correspondent to reach him and to give him news of the world, after his long period of African darkness. That I had done this under most trying conditions, Mr. Stanley fully appreciated; and warmly reciprocated by showing me every courtesy in his power, on the march to the coast, in Zanzibar, and in Egypt.

Stevens then reported from Russia, sailed the rivers of Europe, and investigated miracles claimed by Indian ascetics. His conclusions that " the stories of travelers, from Marco Polo to the latest witness of Indian miracles … are quite true" were greeted with scepticism and his career faltered. A planned tour of London with his Indian photographs fell through.