MR. STANLEY'S MLSSION.*

THE least readable books of travel in the English language are those, Dr. Livingstone's included, which record the history of African explorations, as the most monotonously brutal are those which chronicle African "sport." Mr. Stanley had large odds in his favour in undertaking the narrative of his gallant achievement with the facile and practised pen of a " travelling correspondent." He has gifts for travel and adventure which would satisfy Leather- Stocking himself, if he would cultivate only, without abusing them. He describes admirably, and the pleasure his descriptions im- part is enhanced by recollections of books on Africa which left one's mind a blank concerning everything except pombe, slave-strings, and words which all began with M or N, as the case might be.

With minute, omnivorous observation, like the broker's-man faculty which Mr. Sala claims, with a certain sense of picturesque- ness, though he is apt to overstrain it, with a talent for adapta- tion which makes things we have already been told by other writers, and ought to have remembered, appear new, and with an occasional dash of sprightliness which, however, is never the highest humour, Mr. Stanley, seconded by one's hearty good-will, carries his reader pleasantly over much unpromising ground. His sketch of the town of Zanzibar is admirable ; for the first time we really see the place, and shake off the ghastly and disgusting im- pression made by Captain Burton's morbid description. The organi- sation of the expedition is very clearly detailed, though Mr. Stanley takes care to discredit the men praised by Captain Speke, and when he tells how he engaged the famous "Bombay," chief of Spoke's "faithfuls," mentions that he found him a thief, and that Speke had knocked several of his teeth out with a blow of his fist.

The journey of the caravan of 192 persons in five parties, from Bagamoyo, on the mainland, to Unyarnyembe, is narrated with great spirit, but with superfluous detail, especially of a personal nature. Mr. Stanley's English followers, two in number, turned out very badly, and died. Unnecessary and repulsive details of the illnesses of these persons are unfortunately not the only instances of coarseness in this book. The leader managed his men very well, but flogged them rather more than one likes to think of, especially as Dr. Livingstone never resorted to any such measures, and his experience even Mr. Stanley will hardly deride. From the story of how he flogged a woman of his camp who screamed (probably from fear and fatigue) as the caravan was passing stealthily through a village in the night we turn with disgust.

The incidents of the journey are graphically told, though not absolutely novel in kind, for the caravan route has often been de- scribed, and, but for fevers, which Mr. Stanley despises, and tsetse-fly, which he denies, is not very difficult. The composition of the book is loose and unequal, but the interest is well kept up, and when Mr. Stanley has to make a long loop in order to avoid a district whose tribes are at war,—when he joins an immense Arab caravan, about to thrash an impeding chief, and the chief thrashes them instead to • How I Found Livingstone; Travels. Adventures, and Discoveries in Central Africa; inducting Four Months Residence with Dr. Livingstone. By Henry M. Stanley, Travelling Correspondent of the New York Dauld. London: Sampson Low and Co.

such purpose that Mr. Stanley's men stampede ;—when he asks hie. boy Kalulu why he, too, did not run away, and Kalnla replies that he was afraid to do so lest his master should beat him, the story is very amusing. The actual meeting between Mr. Stanley and Dr.

Livingstone has been so often narrated, that the "march in" has. necessarily lost its dramatic effect, but it is admirably led up in. the most unaffected bit of writing in the work.

The book might with advantage have been divided, as the narrative naturally divides itself, into two parts, or better still,. cut down into a smaller volume. If, also, its publication had been deferred until Mr. Stanley had subsided from the condition of excitement and pugnacity which it indicates throughout, he would,.

no doubt, have suppressed some circumstances, and refrained from- several suggestions which render the narrative positively displeas- ing to persons who are freely willing to acknowledge the energy, the courage, and the spirit of adventure displayed in his achievement. As it is, the book is so distasteful as a literary production, it traverses so frequently all one's notions of propriety in style, manner, and feeling, it so frequently derogates from the scientific attitude claimed by its author,. that it is only by a strong effort one attains to justice in judging that which really was done. If, in some quarters, there still lingers, not indeed incredulity as to the facts of Mr.. Stanley's exploit, but a disposition to regard it rather as a.

piece of Yankee smartness,' effected by a peculiarly 'smart' agent, than as the heroic deed it loudly, and under some aspects,.

justly, claims to be ; if a strong flavour of Jefferson Brickism has- been attributed to it, the fault is not England's, not the critics', or the scientific bodies', but Mr. Stanley's own. His own, because the egotism which he apologises for with hardly-veiled exultation, and' the anger for which he does not apologise at all, have induced him to treat the public with a want of respect which, however the- public may tolerate it in the hurried and ephemeral writing of a newspaper correspondent, they invariably resent in the writer of a. work of pretentious size, material import, and semi-scientific character. Mr. Stanley is apparently incorrigible in the levity and' the riskiness of his self-esteem. The decision of the Royal Geo- graphical Society, founded on information of which Dr. Living- stone is still ignorant, that the Congo, not the Nile, is the great river to which his journeys have led him, was recorded some days before Mr. Stanley's book was published. Nevertheless, we find in the concluding chapter several pages of ridicule, occasionally bordering on abuse, of those eminent members of the Royal Geo- graphical Society who had questioned, chiefly on Dr. Schwein.- furth's representations, the identity of the Luabala with the Nile ; and the following reference to Colonel Grant, whose opinion the writer couples with Dr. Kirk's, and then adds, "Now let us. analyse the motives which underlie these adverse opinions ; we then shall know what value to place on them" :—

" As a friend of Spoke, and as his companion during the expedition. the gallant gentleman dislikes to hear any other person claiming to have discovered another Nile source. It is a piece of chivalrous friendship on his part, I will admit, but what does Colonel Grant know personally about Spoke's source of the Nile? Let Spoke himself testify :—' arranged that Grant should go to Kamrasi's direct, with the property, cattle, and women, taking my letters and a map for immediate despatch to Petherick, at Garai, whilst I should go up the river to its source or exit from the lake, and come down again, navigating as far back as possible.' This is evidence to prove that, personally, Grant never saw the river issuing out of the Victoria N'yanza. With the utmost good' faith and blissful innocence he struck off over land about sixty miles to Kamrasi's, whither he went like an ordinary messenger to convey Speke'a despatches, and while he is gone Spoke discovers the Ripon Falls' and then marches after Grant to Unyoro. The defence of Grant is. chivalry par excellence, but it is not geography."

—and all this, unamended by so much as a foot-note, from a writer who, though he is unable to recognise that to Colonel Grant the word of his friend and associate was justly sufficient evidence.

for any statement made by Captain Speke, was tempestuously angry that his at first uncorroborated account of an unprecedented exploit performed by himself should not have been unhesitatingly accepted by a scientific body to whom he was wholly unknown,

and by a public to whom the name of the New York Herald is not an absolute guarantee for scrupulous accuracy,—all this, though he has already said (page 454.) :—" The river may be the Congo,

or perhaps the Niger But it would be premature to dogmatise on the subject. Livingstone will clear up the point himself ; and if he finds it to be the Congo, will be the first to admit his error." Reiterated instances of such petulance spoil this really interesting narrative, which is also pervaded by a graver defect. Mr. Stanley cannot give anyone who has ever ever had anything to do with Africa credit for good faith in either

his public or private relations. That unlucky continent, accord- ing to him, seems to demoralise everybody as it demoralized Mrs. Jellyby's household. Captain Speke sent his friend' out of the way of sharing the discoverer's laurels, and then won them himself by an enormous and costly falsehood. Captain Burton and Captain Speke did not agree, but they were both excessively afraid of fever, so that "the Lake Regions of Central Africa" did not frighten Mr. Stanley a bit,—its "wormwood-and-fever tone he re- garded as the result of African disease ;" and then does not the "erudite Burton" spell Tanganika with an unnecessary y, which the author gravely suppresses in a foot-note? Sir Samuel Baker is mockingly allotted "a corner" of the Albert Nyanza, much in the same way as a third in a swindle might be spoken of, in the tone of "they three sad rogues be ;" and the officers of the Living- stone Search Expedition suffer as much from Mr. Stanley's exploitation of the -abandonment of the expedition, as Dr. Kirk suffers from his unconcealed antipathy. Mr. Stanley would have done well if he had suppressed the chapter entitled "Valedic- tory." It is a compendium of all the faults of his intellect, on its moral and literary sides. And it offends English readers, to whom the excessive publicity of American life, the curiosity on one side, the tumbling on the other, which make literary people public pro- perty, are repulsive as a matter of taste, and intolerable as a ques- tion of manners. We are not interested in Mr. Stanley's im- pressions of the personal appearance of Lieutenant Dawson, the health of Mr. Oswald Livingstone, the rightful precedence of Mr. New, or the discipline of the English Naval Service. So far from sharing Mr. Stanley's surprise at Lieutenant Dawson's having chosen to return to England in another ship, we feel inclined to commend Mr. Dawson's prudence, and regret that he did not evince that salutary quality earlier. The public has long been in possession of Lieutenant Dawson's explana- tion of his conduct ; he has been exonerated by Sir Henry Rawlinson from actual blame, though not from a mistake in judg- ment, and it is hard on him to have his impulsive, rather foolish, talk to Mr. Stanley recorded in a big book, with all the circum- stantiality of an important dialogue, as it is hard on Lieutenant Henn to be whitewashed with such a brush as the author's. These matters, however, are trifling in comparison with the in- dictment of Dr. Kirk, which, to our profound regret, we find Mr. Stanley puts forth in this serious book, written for a public which is jealous of the reputation of its servants, and respects, if it does not "interview" and " ovate " them. Mr. Stanley's utterances might have passed as rash, as mere bounce, because Dr. Kirk had failed to see the god through the cloud, had believed the correspondent of the New York Herald to be that which he represented himself, and though he received him with a courtesy which =at have been, we think, exceptional, did not do a number of things which it would have been exceedingly improper for him to have done, and of whose pro- priety we should have had our doubts, even supposing Dr. Kirk had divined the truth. Dr. Kirk's reticence was perfectly right, and Mr. Stanley was just a little too smart for the occasion. Mr. Stanley's account of the detention at Bagamoyo of the goods' caravan destined for the relief of Dr. Livingstone at Ujiji, where he was generally believed by the authorities at Zanzibar to be, a detention which he states Dr. Kirk discovered only by going to the district for sporting purposes, is opposed to Dr. Kirk's own statement of the facts, and certainly to all the Consul's antecedents. No wonder such an account, carried to the intrepid old traveller, when he had been driven back by want and suffering, by treachery and desertion, from the point he bad gained with such terrible toil, created great bitterness of heart in him. No doubt that bitterness has passed away,—auch things do not linger with th.e large-souled,—but this book will reach Dr. Living- stone some day, and it will grieve him, by taking away a pleasant- ness from his recollection of the gallant white man who broke in with aid and cheerful companionship, on what was probably one of the drearies t experiences of his long and, for the most part, solitary career.

Mr. Stanley adds a postscript to this volume, in which he acknowledges that atonement has been made to him for certain slights which were inflicted upon him, and which are universally regretted. It would be well if he, too, in time and turn, should make atonement for the offences which render a book, anxiously expected, eagerly welcomed, and possessed of a great deal of merit, much leas useful than it otherwise would have been