REAR. TIPPOO TIB’S GRAND CANOES GOING DOWN THE CONGO.
HENRY M. STANLEY, FROM A LATE PORTRAIT.
THE RESCUE OF EMIN.
In the fall of 1886, Stanley was summoned from the United States by the King of Belgium to come and pay him a visit. That monarch seems to have remembered what others had forgotten, that a European adventurer and a European project lay buried somewhere beneath the Equator and in the very heart of the “Dark Continent.” Stanley responded to the King’s invitation, and out of the interview which followed sprang a reason for his late and most memorable journey across equatorial Africa. But it was deemed wise to interest other agencies, and so the British Geographical Society was consulted and induced to lend a helping hand. In order to further nationalize the projected journey a commission was formed under whose auspices it was to take place. This enlisted for the moment the sympathies of the German peoples, for the lost one was a German. So grew up what came to be known as the “Emin Bey Relief Committee,” with head-quarters at London, and with Sir William Mackinnon as its secretary.
And now, who is Emin Bey, or as he appears most frequently, Emin Pasha? What is there about his disappearance in the wilds of Africa that makes knowledge of his whereabouts and his rescue so desirable? What, of more than humanitarian moment, can attach to a journey planned as this one was? These questions are momentous, for they involve far more than mere men or mere projects of rescue. They involve the aims and ambitions of empires, the policies of dynasties, the destinies of future African States and peoples. That these things are true will appear from the answers which history makes to the above queries—a history which is aglow with events and attractive in its details, however little it may serve