"Yes," said Stanley, "after you. I suppose you have heard of the New York Herald?"
"Yes," said the doctor.
"Well, Mr. Bennett, son of the proprietor, sent me, at his own expense, to find you."
Poor Livingstone could hardly comprehend the fact that an American, and a stranger, should expend $25,000 to find him, a solitary Englishman.
Stanley lived now some four months in the closest intimacy with Livingstone. Removed from all the formalities of civilized life—the only two in that far-off land who could converse in the English language, and who were of the same lineage and faith—their relations of necessity became very intimate. All restraint was thrown off, and this noble man poured into the astonished ears of Stanley all he had thought, prayed for, endured and suffered for the last long five years. It was a new revelation to his hearer. It opened up a new world; gave him a new and loftier conception of what human nature is capable of attaining, and he says: "I had gone over battle-fields, witnessed revolutions, civil wars, rebellions, emeutes and massacres; stood close to the condemned murderer to record his last struggles and last sighs; but never had I been called to record anything that moved me so much as this man's woes and sufferings, his privations and disappointments, which were now poured into my ear. Verily did I begin to believe that 'the gods above us do with just eyes survey the affairs of men.' I began to recognize the hand of an overruling Providence."
After resting for a week, during which time Stanley became thoroughly acquainted with Livingstone and learned to respect and love him more and more, the former asked the doctor if he would not like to explore the north end of the Tanganika Lake and among other things, settle the question whether the Rusizi River flowed into or out of the lake. The doctor gladly consented, and they set off in a canoe manned by sixteen rowers. The weather was fine, the scenery charming, and it seemed like floating through a fairyland. Day after day they kept on—landing at night on the picturesque shores, undisturbed, except in one or two instances, by the natives. The luxuriant banks were lined with villages, filled with an indolent, contented people. With no wants except food to eat, and the lake full of fish, they had nothing to stimulate them to activity or effort of any kind.
VILLAGE ON TANGANIKA LAKE.
Islands came and went, mountains rose and faded on the horizon, and it was one long holiday to our two explorers. As the rowers bent steadily to their oars and the canoe glided softly through the rippling waters, they spent the time in admiring the beautiful scenery that kept changing like a kaleidoscope, or talking of home and friends and the hopes and prospects of the future. A hippopotamus would now and then startle them by his loud snort, as he suddenly lifted his head near the boat to breathe, wild fowl skittered away as they approached, a sweet fragrance came down from the hill-sides, and the tropical sky bent soft and blue above them. The conventionalities of life were far away and all was calm and peaceful, and seemed to Stanley more like a dream than a reality. They were thus voyaging along the coast twenty-eight days, during which time they had traversed over three hundred miles of water.