LITTLE BIOGRAPHIES.—HOW SUCCESS IS WON.

There he remained for ten years. About that
time in his life he shipped as a cabin boy, and
came to America—to New Orleans. There he
sought employment, and he must have shown
some very good qualities, energy and ambition,
probably, for he was adopted by a merchant named
Stanley. However, a restless nature asserted it-
self, and presently he was off to see the world.
He stopped for a time in Arkansas, living in a log
cabin, and supporting himself in Thoreau-like sim-
plicity, no doubt, as he had no settled occupation.
His friends supposed him dead, when suddenly
he appeared among them, having come down the
Mississippi on a flat-boat. His adopted father
died soon after, without having made a will, and
the adopted son was again penniless. He now
sought his fortune in California, among the miners
and the Indians, and at twenty, having lived at
the South, he naturally entered the Confederate
Army. Soon, taken prisoner, and enjoying the
stir of battle, he joined the Union Army, and was
put on board a man-of-war, where he rose to the
position of acting ensign.

The war over, and feeling no disposition for a
civilian’s life, he resolved to join the Cretans, who
were trying to throw off the Turkish yoke. It was
at this point in his career that he had the good
fortune and the good sense to engage himself to
the ew York Herald as its correspondent. He
now travelled widely in the East, showing both
daring and good judgment in all his moves and
adventures. Returning, he took in the poor-house
in Wales on his way, and gave the inmates a good
dinner and a friendly talk.

The next year, still turning his love of travel
and adventure into business, he accompanied the
English army against Theodore, king of Abys-
sinla, writing graphic letters to the Herald, and
making a reputation for himself by sending news
of victory to the English press before it was con-
veyed officially. The following year he was sent
to report the civil war in Spain, where he showed
the same triumphing will, the same quickness of
decision, the same despatch, the same pluck and
fearlessness, and always the same masterly com-
mon sense; whatever he attempted he was sure to
accomplish.

One day as Stanley was sitting in his hotel in
Madrid, he received a telegram: “Come to Paris
on important business.” In two hours he was on
the cars. There he met Mr. Bennett. Mr. Ben-
nett said, “‘Draw a thousand pounds now, and
when you have gone through that draw another
thousand, and when that is spent draw another
thousand, and so on, but FIND LIVINGSTONE.”

What a tribute it was, that command! A laurel
branch, a ribbonof honor. Mr. Bennett knew all
the promising young men of the day, and he had
chosen him!

On the sixth of January, 1871, Stanley reached

 

283

Zanzibar, an island off the east coast of Africa.
From this point, he started off into the unknown
country. He knew that money would be useless
in the heart of Africa, as the natives do all
their trading by exchange. He had, therefore,
purchased three hundred and fifty pounds of brass
wire, twenty sacks of various colored beads, and
nearly four thousand yards of three different kinds
of cloth, to barter for food and service. These
goods, with his boat, etc., weighed six tons. With
this baggage, his train comprised twenty donkeys,
and one hundred and ninety men. He found his
progress a proceeding of quite as much peril as he
had counted upon. The roads were mere foot-
paths. Trees were felled to make bridges across
the streams. Now they waded to their necks in
swamps filled with alligators, and now, often on
their hands and feet, crept through miles of

HENRY M. STANLEY.

matted jungles, noisome with decaying vegetation.
Whenever they halted for rest, loathsome flies,
white ants and reptiles, crawled over them; while
on the march, elephants, lions and hyenas were
too plenty and too near for comfort. ‘The water
was so impure, also, that the donkeys died from
drinking it.

What strange, ignorant, warlike peoples they
found! Most of them lived in huts of mud and
grass, crawling in through asingle opening. They
were naked. The women wore great coils of