Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life Part 12

For months they journeyed on under these conditions. The donkeys had died from drinking impure water, and some of the men had fallen victims to disease.

It was no wonder that the survivors of the expedition--all but Stanley--had grown disheartened. Half starved, wasted by sickness and hards.h.i.+ps of all kinds, with bleeding feet and torn clothes, some of them became mutinous. Stanley's skill as a leader was taxed to the utmost. Alternately coaxing the faint-hearted and punis.h.i.+ng the insubordinate, he continued to lead them on almost in spite of themselves.

So far they had heard nothing of Livingstone, nor had they any clew as to the direction in which they should go. There was no ray of light or hope to cheer them on their way, yet Stanley never for a moment thought of giving up the search.

Once, amid the terrors of the jungle, surrounded by savages and wild animals, with supplies almost exhausted, and the remnant of his followers in a despairing condition, the young explorer came near being discouraged.

But he would not give way to any feeling that might lessen his chances of success, and it was at this crisis he wrote in his journal:--

"No living man shall stop me--only death can prevent me. But death--not even this; I shall not die--I will not die--I cannot die! Something tells me I shall find him and--write it larger--FIND HIM, FIND HIM!

Even the words are inspiring."

Soon after this a caravan pa.s.sed and gave the expedition news which renewed hope: A white man, old, white haired, and sick, had just arrived at Ujiji.

Stanley and his followers pushed on until they came in sight of Ujiji.

Then the order was given to "unfurl the flags and load the guns."

Immediately the Stars and Stripes and the flag of Zanzibar were thrown to the breeze, and the report of fifty guns awakened the echoes. The noise startled the inhabitants of Ujiji. They came running in the direction of the sounds, and soon the expedition was surrounded by a crowd of friendly black men, who cried loudly, "YAMBO, YAMBO, BANA!"

which signifies welcome.

"At this grand moment," says Stanley, "we do not think of the hundreds of miles we have marched, of the hundreds of hills that we have ascended and descended, of the many forests we have traversed, of the jungle and thickets that annoyed us, of the fervid salt plains that blistered our feet, of the hot suns that scorched us, nor the dangers and difficulties now happily surmounted.

"At last the sublime hour has arrived!--our dreams, our hopes and antic.i.p.ations are now about to be realized! Our hearts and our feelings are with our eyes, as we peer into the palms and try to make out in which hut or house lives the white man with the gray beard we heard about on the Malagarazi."

When the uproar had ceased, a voice was heard saluting the leader of the expedition in English--"Good morning, sir."

"Startled at hearing this greeting in the midst of such a crowd of black people," says Stanley, "I turn sharply round in search of the man, and see him at my side, with the blackest of faces, but animated and joyous--a man dressed in a long white s.h.i.+rt, with a turban of American sheeting around his head, and I ask, 'Who the mischief are you?'

"'I am Susi, the servant of Dr. Livingstone,' said he, smiling, and showing a gleaming row of teeth.

"'What! Is Dr. Livingstone here?'

"'Yes, sir.'

"'In this village?'

"'Yes, sir.'

"'Are you sure?'

"'Sure, sure, sir. Why, I leave him just now.'

"'Susi, run, and tell the Doctor I am coming.'"

Susi ran like a madman to deliver the message. Stanley and his men followed more slowly. Soon they were gazing into the eyes of the man for news of whom the whole civilized world was waiting.

"My heart beat fast," says Stanley, "but I must not let my face betray my emotions, lest it shall detract from the dignity of a white man appearing under such extraordinary circ.u.mstances."

The young explorer longed to leap and shout for joy, but he controlled himself, and instead of embracing Livingstone as he would have liked to do, he grasped his hand, exclaiming, "I thank G.o.d, Doctor, that I have been permitted to see you."

"I feel grateful that I am here to welcome you," was the gentle reply.

All the dangers through which they had pa.s.sed, all the privations they had endured were forgotten in the joy of this meeting. Doctor Livingstone's years of toil and suspense, during which he had heard nothing from the outside world; Stanley's awful experiences in the jungle, the fact that both men had almost exhausted their supplies; the terrors of open and hidden dangers from men and beasts, sickness, hope deferred, all were, for the moment, pushed out of mind. Later, each recounted his story to the other.

After a period of rest, the two joined forces and together explored and made plans for the future. Stanley tried to induce Livingstone to return with him. But in vain; the great missionary explorer would not lay down his work. He persevered, literally until death.

At last the hour of parting came. With the greatest reluctance Stanley gave his men the order, "Right about face." With a silent farewell, a grasp of the hands, and a look into each other's eyes which said more than words, the old man and the young man parted forever.

Livingstone's life work was almost done. Stanley was the man on whose shoulders his mantle was to fall. The great work he had accomplished in finding Livingstone was the beginning of his career as an African explorer.

After the death of Livingstone, Stanley determined to take up the explorer's unfinished work.

In 1874 he left England at the head of an expedition fitted out by the London Daily Telegraph and the New York Herald, and penetrated into the very heart of Africa.

He crossed the continent from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e, overcoming on his march dangers and difficulties compared with which those encountered on his first journey sank into insignificance. He afterward gave an account of this expedition in his book ent.i.tled, "Darkest Africa."

Stanley had successfully accomplished one of the great works of the world. He had opened the way for commerce and Christianity into the vast interior of Africa, which, prior to his discoveries, had been marked on the map by a blank s.p.a.ce, signifying that it was an unexplored and unknown country.

On his return the successful explorer found himself famous. Princes and scientific societies vied with one another in honoring him. King Edward VII of England, who was then Prince of Wales, sent him his personal congratulations; Humbert, the king of Italy, sent him his portrait; the khedive of Egypt decorated him with the grand commanders.h.i.+p of the Order of the Medjidie; the Geographical Societies of London, Paris, Italy, and Ma.r.s.eilles sent him their gold medals; while in Berlin, Vienna, and many other large European cities, he was elected an honorary member of their most learned and most distinguished a.s.sociations.

What pleased the explorer most of all, though, was the honor paid him by America. "The government of the United States," he says, "has crowned my success with its official approval, and the unanimous vote of thanks pa.s.sed in both houses of the legislature has made me proud for life of the expedition and its achievements."

Honored to-day as the greatest explorer of his age, and esteemed alike for his scholars.h.i.+p and the immense services he has rendered mankind, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, the once friendless orphan lad whose only home was a Welsh poorhouse, may well be proud of the career he has carved out for himself.

THE NESTOR OF AMERICAN JOURNALISTS

"I heard that a neighbor three miles off, had borrowed from a still more distant neighbor, a book of great interest. I started off, barefoot, in the snow, to obtain the treasure. There were spots of bare ground, upon which I would stop to warm my feet. And there were also, along the road, occasional lengths of log fence from which the snow had melted, and upon which it was a luxury to walk. The book was at home, and the good people consented, upon my promise that it should be neither torn nor soiled, to lend it to me. In returning with the prize, I was too happy to think of the snow on my naked feet."

This little incident, related by Thurlow Weed himself, is a sample of the means by which he gained that knowledge and power which made him not only the "Nestor of American Journalists," but rendered him famous in national affairs as the "American Warwick" or "The King Maker."

There were no long happy years of schooling for this child of the "common people," whose father was a struggling teamster and farmer; no prelude of careless, laughing childhood before the stern duties of life began.

Thurlow Weed was born at Catskill, Greene County, New York, in 1797, a period in the history of our republic when there were very few educational opportunities for the children of the poor. "I cannot ascertain," he says, "how much schooling I got at Catskill, probably less than a year, certainly not a year and a half, and this was when I was not more than five or six years old."

At an early age Thurlow learned to bend circ.u.mstances to his will and, ground by poverty, shut in by limitations as he was, even while contributing by his earning to the slender resources of the family, he gathered knowledge and pleasure where many would have found but thorns and bitterness.

How simply he tells his story, as though his hards.h.i.+ps and struggles were of no account, and how clearly the narrative mirrors the brave little fellow of ten!

"My first employment," he says, "was in sugar making, an occupation to which I became much attached. I now look with great pleasure upon the days and nights pa.s.sed in the sap-bush. The want of shoes (which, as the snow was deep, was no small privation) was the only drawback upon my happiness. I used, however, to tie pieces of an old rag carpet around my feet, and got along pretty well, chopping wood and gathering up sap."

During this period he traveled, barefoot, to borrow books, wherever they could be found among the neighboring farmers. With his body in the sugar house, and his head thrust out of doors, "where the fat pine was blazing," the young enthusiast devoured with breathless interest a "History of the French Revolution," and the few other well-worn volumes which had been loaned him.

Later, after he left the farm, we see the future journalist working successively as cabin boy and deck hand on a Hudson River steamboat, and cheerfully sending home the few dollars he earned. While employed in this capacity, he earned his first "quarter" in New York by carrying a trunk for one of the pa.s.sengers from the boat to a hotel on Broad Street.

But his boyish ambition was to be a journalist, and, after a year of seafaring life, he found his niche in the office of a small weekly newspaper, the Lynx, published at Onondaga Hollow, New York.