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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 49, 7 December 1899, Page 15

More than a year ago William Bonny, the last survivor of the ill-fated rearguard of Stanley's Emm Relief Expedition was discovered in a London workhouse. The publication of his circumstances enabled him to spend the last year of life more comfortably than would otherwise have been the case, for old friends rallied round him and removed him to quarters where he could get better attention and nursing. He died a few weeks ago, and was buried in the presence of the few friends who had made his latter days easier. An early death was all he gained from his adventures in Africa — that and some little glory, which, as may be gathered, was of small material service to him. The glory was mainly the praise Stanley gave him in his book. ' With a force composed of men like William Bonny,' he wrote, ' it would have been easy to conquer the entire Soudan.' Every member of the expedition had a good word: for Bonny, and this was all the more to his credit from the fact that the expedition was not exactly a happy family. But it seems that the financial rewards of exploration in Africa are very badly divided. Stanley has made many thousands of pounds out his travels— £40,000 is said to have been paid him as his profits on Darkest Africa. But his lieutenants can look back to no such splendid rewards. Bonny was three years with Stanley, and his salary was £100 a year 1 He also received £300 as a bonus, making £600 in all, and when from this sum the cost of the necessary outfit, when the expedition reached civilisation, and the expense of living during months of convalescence had been paid little was left, when Bonny reached England. By the terms of his contract he could not write any book which might interfere with the success of Stanley's, and in a few years, his health shattered by African fever and its resulting disease, he had to seek the shelter of a workhouse. It is gome comfort that he did not die there, but there seems to be a screw loose somewhere that he should ever have been so reduced.