REVIEW.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5475, 14 October 1878, Page 3

REVIEW.

Stanley's new book.* Stanley's skill as an author almost equals his boldness as an explorer. That ho should in the space of five months produce a work in two volumes covering more than eleven hundred pages is nearly as wonderful as that he should travere the wide, and for the most part unknown continent of Africa. Yet there are no marks of haste. Every interesting and important point is treated with the fulness and care which it commands and deserves, For once we feel that the book is not too large ; we could not spare a single page. What with incidents of travel, photographs of faithful helpers or striking scenes, reports of lively conversations, or speculations as to the future of the fertile province the adventurous man passed through, the attention is arrested and maintained from the first page to the last. Nop, as we might have expected, is there a repetition of the matter which has already appeared in the Daily Telegraph. If the same incidents are given they are viewed from another standpoint, and altogether there Is a freshness and a vigor about the style which make the book the most acceptable, as it assuredly is the most valuable one of the whole year. It was in the office of the Daily Telegraph that Stanley’s idea of completing Livingstone’s work was endorsed and put into a definite practical shape. Ever since standing at the grave of Livingstone in Westminster Abbey, this idea had been haunting him, and again and again he vowed to devote himself to its realisation. While discussing journalistic enterprise in general with one of the staff, the editor entered. Stanley at once bi cached the topic of Livingstone's unfinished task, and in reply the editor said, “Could you, and would you, complete the work ; and what is there to do ?” Stanley answered : “ The outlet of Lake Tanganika is undiscovered. We know little of Lake Victoria; we do not even know whether it consists of one or many lakes, and therefore the sources of the Nile are still unknown. Moreover, the western half of the African continent is still a white blank.” “ Do you think you can settle all this if we. commission you,” said tho editor, “ While I live," replied Stanley, “ something will be done. If I survive the time required to perform all the work all ‘shall be done.” The matter was suspended till the following telegram was sent to Mr. James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald’. —“Will you join the Daily Telegraph in sending Stanley out to Africa to complete tho discoveries of Speke, Burton, and Livingstone ?” Within twenty-four hours the laconic answer was flashed under the Atlantic, “ Yes.— Bennett.” And Stanley entered upon the mission which he has now accomplished with such signal success, and tho account of which is given in tho two volumes before us. Tho general outline of the explorer's march across Africa is already famiMar to us through Mr. Stanley’s letters. It is pretty well known too that the three great problems of its geography whielwhe had to solve were—'The debated question of tho unity of tho Victoria Nyanza, the problem of the outlet of Tanganika, and that of tho destination of tho great Kiver Lualaba, discovered by Livingstone. How these problems have been triumphantly solved, m spite of obstacles which many others would have deemed simply insurmountable, is told by Mr. Stanley with great animation in the pages of hi» book. We may pass over tho chapters which describe ms quiet farewell in London and New York ; his run over to Zanzibar ; his financial arrangements with Tarya Topau, tho upright yet sagacious millionaire ; the selection of his men for the expedition ; the remodelling of the Lady Alice, and tho sailing of his fleet of six Arab vcphols to convey his party to the mainland. “Tho parting is over ! We have said our last words for years, perhaps for ever, to

* Thrtv.gh iht Da Coutlnenl. By Henry M. Stanley. 2 vols. Sampson and Co., London, 1878, (

kindly men I Thick shadows full upon jthe distant laud aud over the sllfent :.sea, and oppress our throbbing regretful hearts, as we glide away through the dying light towards the dark continent before us." After arriving at the mainland, and frightening the people of Bagamoys out of their wits by his motley and to all appearance rowdy followers, Stanley began bis march towards the interior, his route lying nearly in the track of the previous explorers, Burton, Speke, and Cameron. At a point 400 miles from the sea r Edward Pocock,one of the three brave Englishmen who went with Stanley, met with his death from typhus fever, and was buried at tho foot' of an acacia tree, on ,17th Jauu . ary, 18/5. “We read," says Stanley, “the beautiful service for the dead, and out of re-, spect for the departed, whose frank, sociable,: and winning manners had won their friendship and regard, nearly all the surrounding natives were pivsent to pay a last, tribute of sighs to poor Edward Pocock." Some thirty days later the welcome tidings : ran through the camp that the Lake (Nyanza) . was not far off. Frank Pocock strode forward, and gaining the brow of a hill, and taking a, lui"~sweeping look at something, waved ; bis hatband then came rushing to Stanley with the words, “I have seen -he Lake, sir ; it is grand." Before nightfall the party were safely ensconced in tho village of Kagehyi, after their one hundred and three days’ march from the sea at the average rate of seven miles a day. From this point the intrepid explorer breaks new ground ; for although Speke and Grant, had touched at points on the northern and western shores of Lake Nyanza, tho eastern coast was still au unknown land. In this neighborhood it was that Stanley met with,'the first of the many hostile tribes, through whom he literally had to fight - his way. We pause to remark that the affair: of Bambireh Island is put iu a very different light now that the whole story is fully told. The circumnavigation of this lake, and the consequent proof of its unity, is the first direct and definite discovery to be credited to The American explorer. Some pages of the first volume are filled with descriptions of the beautiful scenery around this lake, with au account of Stanley’s interview with the good King Mtesa, and with ardent wishes for the civilisation of the degraded people over whom he and similar chiefs hold sway. Here is a glimpse of the lake as far as language can give it, aud here also are some of the feelings which the sight of it inspired. Ascending a projecting bluff, Stanley “.gazed on the grand, encircling prospect It is a spot from which undisturbed the eye may roam over one of the • strangest yet fairest portions of Africa—hundreds of square miles of beautiful lake scenes—a great length of grey plateau wall, upright aud steep, but indented with exquisite inlets, half-sur-rounded by embowering hundreds of square miles of pastoral upland dotted thickly with villages and groves of banana. From my lofty eyrie I can pale-blua columns of ascending smoke from village fires, and upright thin figures moving about who as little think that human eyes survey their forma from this summit as the tho eyes of the Supreme in Heaven are upon them. How long, I wonder, shall the people of these lands; remain ignorant of Him who created the gorgeous sunlit world they look upon each day ? How long shall their untamed ferocity be a barrier to the Gospel, and how long shall they remain uuvisited by the great Teacher ? . . . Oh, for the hour when a band of philanthropic capitalists shall vow to rescue these beautiful lands, aud supply the means to enable the Gospel messengers to come and quench the murderous hate with which man beholds man in the beautiful lands around Lake Victoria 1" (223). One of these natural and sensible aspirations has already been realised. A special mission has been organised in response to this appeal, and is now successfully established in the very heart of this immense yet benighted continent. Pitt’s celebrated prophecy' appears to bo on the eve of fulfillment.

At the end of the first, volume the reader finds himself with the courageous explorer sit Ujiji, on the western shore of Bake Tangauika, on the very spotVhere, in November 1871, tho most famous of African travellers was met by the youngest of them, with the words, ‘ Dr. Livingstone, I presume.’ There it was that the two share I the bottle of champagne which had been carried so far in anticipation of such a happy event. On May 27th, 1876, Stanley is again at Ujiji, the same grand beauty of the lake being again before his eyes. “The surf ia still as restless aud the sun as bright ; the sky retains its glorious azure aud the palms all their beauty \ but the grand old hero, whoso presence once filled CJjiji with such absorbing interest for me, was gone.” (509). There again Stanley completed what Livingstone began. The outlet of Targanika was a mystery, and, strange to say, Stanley leaves it still a mystery. He has sailed all round its shores, aud finds that though its waters arc fresh it has, no outlet to the sea. Probably, like some of the American lakes, its surplus waters are

carried by underground channels to some distant river at a lower level than the lake itself. Bo this as it may, Stanley navigated every corner of it, and found that while rivers were flowing into it none were flowing out of it. The entire coast-line of the lake is 930 miles, its length is 329 miles, and its breadth from ten to forty-five miles, and the voyage round it took fifty-one days. We come now to the third point cleared up by Stanley's recent discoveries—tho identity’ of the Lualaba and the Congo. By a rapid march Stanley reached Nyaagwe, the Arab station on tho former river. This was the ; farthest point northwards of Livingstone’s jourueys. There it was also that Cameron was compelled to retain, the Arabs refusing to sell the canoes for a voyage which they believed would lead him to certain death. There it was that Stanley entered upon the dark unknown. He may be pardoned his mingled feelings of sad foreboding ami joyful expectation. “ What a forbidding aspect had the Bark Unknown which confronted us ! I could not comprehend in the least what lay before us. Even the few names which I had heard from the Arabs conveyed no definite impression to my understanding. They conveyed no idea, and signified no object. They were barren names of either countries, villages, or people involved in darkness, savagery, ignorance, and fable." On the other hand theiunflinching traveller says :—“ A secret rapture filled my soul as I gazed upon the majestic stream. The great mystery that for all these centuries Nature had kept secret from the world of science was waiting to be solved. For 200 miles I had followed one of the sources of the Lualaba to the confluence, and now before me lay the superb river itself ? My task was to trace it to the ocean." (93, vol. II.) The way this task was accomplished is told iu the following three hundred pages. To fully understand and appreciate it tho. reader must go to the volume itself. A mere string of names would bo useless, and to raako novel and striking extracts where all is so interesting and good is very difficult. After all his hopes and fears, alter all his hardships and hair-breadth escapes, one can fully understand tho successful explorer’s pride aud joy as he emerged from the dark interior aud glided through the broad portal into the still broader Atlantic. Taking a farewell glance at the river henceforth to be known as the Livingstone, Stanley might well say for himself and followers that “his heart was suffused with the purest gratitude to Him whoso hand had protected us, and who had enabled us to pierce the dark continent from east to west, aud to trace its mightiest river to its ocean bourne ”