Henry Morton Stanley - Researching The Congo River

Researching The Congo River

In 1874, the New York Herald, in partnership with Britain's Daily Telegraph, financed Stanley on another expedition to the African continent. One of his missions was to solve a last great mystery of African exploration by tracing the course of the Congo River to the sea. The difficulty of this expedition is hard to overstate. Stanley used sectional boats to pass the great cataracts separating the Congo into distinct tracts. After 999 days, on 9 August 1877, Stanley reached a Portuguese outpost at the mouth of the Congo River. Starting with 356 people, only 114 had survived the expedition, of whom Stanley was the only European.

He wrote about his trials in his book Through the Dark Continent.