STANLEY, SIR HENRY MORTON ( ,1841-1904), Brit ish explorer of Africa, discoverer of the course of the Congo, was born at Denbigh, Wales, on June ro, 1841, of a family named Rowlands or Rollant. John Rowlands, by which name Stanley was baptized, was brought up first by his maternal grandfather, and after his death was boarded out by his mother's brothers at half a crown a week. In 1847 he was taken to the St. Asaph Union workhouse, where the schoolmaster, James Francis (who eventually died in a madhouse), was a tyrant of the Squeers type, and in May 1856, Rowlands, after giving Francis a thrashing, ran away from school. His paternal grandfather having refused to help him, he became a pupil teacher at Brynford, where his cousin was master. But within a year he was sent to Liverpool, where he lived in poverty with an uncle, and after working at various trades, he sailed as a cabin boy to New Orleans, where he landed in 1859. There he obtained a situation through the good offices of Henry Morton Stanley, who subsequently adopted the lad as his son, but died without making provision for him.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861 Stanley enlisted in the Confederate army; he was captured at the battle of Shiloh (April 1862), and after two months' imprisonment at Camp Douglas, Chicago, he obtained release by enrolling in the Federal artil lery. In less than a month he was discharged as unfit. In No vember 1862 he returned to Liverpool "very poor, in bad health and in shabby clothes," and made his way to Denbigh, but was turned away from his mother's door. For a livelihood he took to the sea—was wrecked off Barcelona—and in August 1864 enlisted in the United States navy. After the war he crossed the plains to Salt Lake City, Denver, and other parts, and became a vivid descriptive writer.
Thus began a series of adventures in search of "copy," which led him through Asia Minor, Tiflis and Tibet. 'In 1866 Stanley revisited Denbigh and St. Asaph, returning thence to America, where he joined General Hancock's expedition against the Red Indians, acting as correspondent for the Missouri Democrat and other papers. His reports induced the New York Herald to send
him to accompany the British expedition of 186,7-68 against the emperor Theodore of Abyssinia. Succeeding in sending through the first news of the fall of Magdala, Stanley received a roving commission from the proprietor of the Herald, James Gordon Bennett. He went to Crete and Spain, but in 1869 was recalled to Paris by Mr. Gordon Bennett, jun.
Convinced that David Livingstone was alive Bennett corn missioned Stanley to go in search of him. But he cumbered Stan ley with a large number of commissions in Egypt, Syria and Per sia before the quest for Livingstone could be begun. Eventually he sailed from Bombay for Africa, reaching Zanzibar on Jan 6, 1871.
The journey to the interior was begun on March 21 on Nov.
having overcome innumerable difficulties, Stanley arrived at Ujiji, where he found Livingstone. With Livingstone Stanley navigated the northern shores of Tanganyika, settled the question as to whether the Rusizi was an effluent or an affluent—a point then much debated in connection with the hydrography of the Nile basin, and regained Zanzibar on May 7, 1872. His story, made public in a picturesque narrative, How I Found Livingstone (1872), was received in London with some incredulity; but the journals of Livingstone, which he brought home, silenced the critics, and from Queen Victoria Stanley received a gold snuff-box set with brilliants and her thanks for his services.
A series of public lectures in England and America followed. In 1873, as war correspondent of the Herald, he accompanied Wolseley's expedition to Ashanti, which he described, together with his Abyssinian experiences, in a volume entitled Coomassie and Magdala: Two British Campaigns (London, 1874). On reach ing the island of St. Vincent from Ashanti in 1874 he first heard that Livingstone was dead.