Henry Stanley
New York Herald/
Kwihara, Unyanyembe
March 12, 1872
The day after to-morrow the HERALD expedition will leave the Land of the Moon — Unyamwezi — for the sea coast.
Your correspondent has been commissioned by Dr. Livingstone, if there is time before the first ship leaves Zanzibar, to send him fifty well-armed men from Zanzibar, to act as soldiers and servants for a new expedition which he is about to organize for rapid exploration of a few doubtful points before returning home to declare to those concerned that he has finished his work.
He will leave Unyanyembe for Ufipa, thence to Liemba and Marungu, and crossing the Luapula River at Chicumbi’s will make his way to the copper mines of Katanga, in Rua; then eight days south, to discover the fountains of Herodotus; then return by Katanga to the underground houses of Rua, ten days northeast of Katanga; thence to Lake Kamolondo, and by river Lufira to Lake Lincoln; thence back to Lualaba, to explore the lake north of Kamolondo; thence return by Uguhha to Ujiji, or by Marungu, through Urori, to the coast, and England.
This is his present programme, which he thinks will only take him eighteen months, but, as I have told him, I think it will take two years.
Though he is now going on sixty years of age, he looks but forty-five or fifty — quite hale and hearty. He has an enormous appetite, which has abated nothing of its powers since I have known him. He is in need of no rest; he needed supplies; he has got them now and everything he needs. Though sick and thin when I saw him at Ujiji, he is now fleshy and stoutish, and must weigh about one hundred and eighty pounds. Though I have hung my balance scales temptingly before his eyes, I have never been able to get him to weigh himself. I have not the slightest fears about his health or of any danger coming to him from the natives.
(Source: “Stanley’s Despatches to the New York Herald,” Archive.org)
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