"He may be, and he may not be."
"Well, I think he is alive," said Bennett, "and I am going to send you to find him."
"What!" cried Stanley. "Do you mean me to go to Central Africa?"
"Yes; I mean that you shall go and find him. The old man may be in want; take enough with you to help him, should he require it. Do what you think best—but find Livingstone."
In great surprise Stanley suggested that such a journey would be very expensive, but Bennett answered, "Draw a thousand pounds now; and when you have gone through that, draw another thousand, and when that is spent, draw another thousand, and when you have finished that, draw another thousand, and so on; but find Livingstone."
"Well," thought Stanley, "I will do my best, God helping me." And so he went off to Africa.
He had, however, been charged by his employer to fulfil other missions on the way. He made a journey up the Nile, visited Jerusalem, travelled to Trebizond and Teheran and right through Persia to Bushire, and consequently did not arrive at Zanzibar until the beginning of January, 1871.
Here he made thorough preparations. He had never been before in the Africa of the Blacks, but he was a clever, energetic man, with a genius for organisation. He bought cloth enough for a hundred men for two years, glass beads, brass wire and other goods in request among the natives. He bought saddles and tents, guns and cartridges, boats, medicine, tools, provisions and asses. Two English sailors volunteered for the expedition, and he took them into his service, but both died in the fever country. Black porters were engaged, and twenty men he called his soldiers carried guns. After he had crossed over from Zanzibar to the African mainland, the equipment of the expedition was completed at Bagamoyo, and Stanley made haste to get away before the rainy season commenced.
The great and well-found caravan of 192 men in all trooped westwards in five detachments. Stanley himself led the last detachment, and before them lay the wilderness, the interior of Africa with its dark recesses. At the first camping-ground tall maize was growing and manioc plants were cultivated in extensive fields. The latter is a plant with large root bulbs chiefly composed of starch, but also containing a poisonous milky juice which is deadly if the roots be eaten without preparation. When the sap has been removed by proper treatment, however, the roots are crushed into flour, from which a kind of bread is made. Round a swamp in the neighbourhood grew low fan-palms and acacias among luxuriant grass and reeds.
Next day they marched under ebony and calabash trees, from the shells of which the natives make vessels of various shapes, for while they are growing the fruits can be forced by outward pressure into almost any desired form. Pheasants and quails, water-hens and pigeons flew up screaming when the black porters tramped along the path, winding in single file through the grass as high as a man. Hippopotami lay snorting unconcernedly in a stream that was crossed.