Reproduction of the original.

When the missionary David Livingstone, one of the nineteenth century's great explorers, was persumed lost or even dead in Central Africa, The New York Herald sponsored an expedition to search for him, assigning the noted adventurer and journalist Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904)to lead the undertaking.

Portrait of James Gorodn Bennett; A view of Zanzibar; A view of Bagamoyo; Simbamwenni, the lost city; Discomforts of African travel, the Makata swamp; Shaws' mode of marching; the lake and peak of Ugumbo; Mount Kibwe, and the valley of the Mukondokwa River ...

Livingstone's 1840s expedition into Africa, the "Dark Continent", caught the public's imagination. In 1864 he returned to Africa and all but disappeared. Public interest ran so high, that in 1869 the publisher of the New York Herald commissioned reporter Henry Stanley to go and find him. This book is Stanley's account of his adventure, and the moment he found Livingstone, in which he uttered the famous words: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

This study examines and explains how British explorers visualized the African interior in the latter part of the nineteenth century, providing the first sustained analysis of the process by which this visual material was transformed into the illustrations in popular travel books. At that time, central Africa was, effectively, a blank canvas for Europeans, unknown and devoid of visual representations. While previous works have concentrated on exploring the stereotyped nature of printed imagery of Africa, this study examines the actual production process of images and the books in which they were published in order to demonstrate how, why, and by whom the images were manipulated. Thus, the main focus of the work is not on the aesthetic value of pictures, but in the activities, interaction, and situations that gave birth to them in both Africa and Europe.

In 1841, a twenty-eight-year-old Scottish missionary, David Livingstone, began the first of his exploratory treks into the African veldt. During the course of his lifetime, he covered over 29,000 miles uncovering what lay beyond rivers and mountain ranges where no other white man had ever been. Livingstone was the first European to make a trans-African passage from modern day Angola to Mozambique and he discovered and named numerable lakes, rivers and mountains. His explorations are still considered one of the toughest series of expeditions ever undertaken. He faced an endless series of life-threatening situations, often at the hands of avaricious African chiefs, cheated by slavers traders and attacked by wild animals. He was mauled by a lion, suffered thirst and starvation and was constantly affected by dysentery, bleeding from hemorrhoids, malaria and pneumonia. This biography covers his life but also examines his relationship with his wife and children who were the main casualties of his endless explorations in Africa. It also looks Livingstone’s legacy through to the modern day. Livingstone was an immensely curious person and he made a habit of making meticulous observations of the flora and fauna of the African countryside that he passed through. His legacy includes numerable maps and geographical and botanical observations and samples. He was also a most powerful and effective proponent for the abolition of slavery and his message of yesterday is still valid today in a continent stricken with drought, desertification and debt for he argued that the African culture should be appreciated for its richness and diversity. But like all great men, he had great faults. Livingstone was unforgiving of those that he perceived had wronged him; he was intolerant of those who could not match his amazing physical powers; and finally and he had no compunction about distorting the truth, particularly about other people, in order to magnify his already significant achievements. Illustrations: 40 colour illustrations

A collection of writings on travels undertaken in the Victorian era. The texts collected in these volumes show how 19th century travel literature served the interests of empire by promoting British political and economic values that translated into manufacturing goods.