Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

November 10, 1871 - 7 months and 20 days into a tortuous overland trek from Zanzibar to Lake Tanganyika, the journalist Henry Morton Stanley approached a sickly old man who was living among the natives and asked the iconic question, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” The man responded, “Yes.”

4 years before that, Dr. David Livingstone, a well-known Scottish missionary, explorer, and anti-slavery advocate had gone missing deep inside Central Africa while searching for the headwaters of the Nile and documenting the East African slave trade. The world assumed he was dead.

Newspaper magnate, James Gordon Bennett Jr. seized upon the mystery as a huge opportunity to create a story that would captivate a global audience. So he hired Stanley, a reporter/soldier of fortune, to put together an expedition to find Livingstone.

Stanley assembled a massive entourage, including porters, soldiers, translators, guides and an impressive network of caravans to keep his army supplied. They crossed jungles and deserts, got tangled up in local conflicts and wars. Over 100 men were lost along the way. Stanley almost died multiple times from dysentery, malaria, smallpox and starvation.

But finally, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in modern-day Tanzania, Stanley was led to a mysterious white man who was living there. And the rest is history…or is it?

Many historians are skeptical of the almost too good to be true encounter, especially its scripted dialog, but the fact is Stanley did locate Livingstone. He offered to escort him home, but Livingstone refused. He said his work documenting the horrors of slavery was not done.

Stanley and his expedition went back to civilization and Livingstone died a year and a half later.

In an interesting postscript, Livingstone’s African attendants removed his heart and buried it under a sacred tree. They then carried his body 1,000 miles to the coast so he could be returned to Britain. He was eventually buried in Westminster Abbey.