The story of his life may be condensed into a brief space——brief yet eventful as that of a conqueror, moved ever to conquest by sight of new worlds. Henry M. Stanley was born in the hamlet of Denbigh, in Wales, in 1840. His parents, who bore the name of Rowland, were poor; so poor, indeed, that the boy, at the age of three years, was virtually on the town. At the age of thirteen, he was turned out of the poor-house to shift for himself. Fortunately, a part of the discipline had been such as to assure him the elements of an English education. The boy must have improved himself beyond the opportunities there at hand, for in two or three years afterwards, he appeared in North Wales as a school-teacher. Thence he drifted to Liverpool, where he shipped as a cabin-boy on a sailing-vessel, bound for New Orleans. Here he drifted about in search of employment till he happened upon a merchant and benefactor, by the name of Stanley. The boy proved so bright, promising and useful, that his employer adopted him as his son. Thus the struggling John Rowland became, by adoption, the Henry M. Stanley of our narrative. Before he came of age, the new father died without a will, and his business and estate passed away from the foster child to those entitled at law. But for this misfortune, or rather great good fortune, he might have been lost to the world in the counting-room of a commercial city. He was at large on the world again, full of enterprise and the spirit of adventure. The civil war was now on, and Stanley entered the Confederate army. He was captured by the Federal forces, and on being set at liberty threw his fortunes in with his captors by joining the Federal navy, the ship being the Ticonderoga, on which he was soon promoted to the position of Acting Ensign. After the war, he developed those powers which made him such an acquisition on influential newspapers. He was of genial disposition, bright intelligence, quick observation and surprising discrimination. His judgment of men and things was sound. He loved travel and adventure, was undaunted in the presence of obstacles, persistent in every task before him, and possessed shrewd insight into human character and projects. His pen was versatile and his style adapted to the popular taste. No man was ever better equipped by nature to go anywhere and make the most of every situation. In a single year he had made himself a reputation by his trip through Asia Minor and other Eastern countries. In 1866 he was sent by the _New York Herald_, as war correspondent, to Abyssinia. The next year he was sent to Spain by the same paper, to write up the threatened rebellion there. In 1869 he was sent by the _Herald_ to Africa to find the lost Livingstone.