Stanley in Africa: The Wonderful Discoveries and Thrilling Adventures of the Great African Explorer, and Other Travelers, Pioneers and MissionariesBoyd, James P. (James Penny)
History
Stanley in Africa: The Wonderful Discoveries and Thrilling Adventures of the Great African Explorer, and Other Travelers, Pioneers and Missionaries
Boyd, James P. (James Penny)
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton), 1841-1904
In the fall of 1886, Stanley was summoned from the United States by
the King of Belgium to come and pay him a visit. That monarch seems to
have remembered what others had forgotten, that a European adventurer
and a European project lay buried somewhere beneath the Equator and in
the very heart of the “Dark Continent.” Stanley responded to the King’s
invitation, and out of the interview which followed sprang a reason for
his late and most memorable journey across equatorial Africa. But it was
deemed wise to interest other agencies, and so the British Geographical
Society was consulted and induced to lend a helping hand. In order to
further nationalize the projected journey a commission was formed under
whose auspices it was to take place. This enlisted for the moment the
sympathies of the German peoples, for the lost one was a German. So
grew up what came to be known as the “Emin Bey Relief Committee,” with
head-quarters at London, and with Sir William Mackinnon as its secretary.
And now, who is Emin Bey, or as he appears most frequently, Emin Pasha?
What is there about his disappearance in the wilds of Africa that makes
knowledge of his whereabouts and his rescue so desirable? What, of more
than humanitarian moment, can attach to a journey planned as this one
was? These questions are momentous, for they involve far more than mere
men or mere projects of rescue. They involve the aims and ambitions of
empires, the policies of dynasties, the destinies of future African
States and peoples. That these things are true will appear from the
answers which history makes to the above queries——a history which is
aglow with events and attractive in its details, however little it may
serve to reveal of the present plans of those who contribute most to its
making. Emin Pasha was born in the Austrian province of Silesia, and the
town of Opplen, in 1840, the same year as Henry M. Stanley. He studied
medicine at Breslau, Königsberg and Berlin, and entered upon the world as
a regular M.D. with a diploma from the Berlin University. Sometime before
the Russian-Turkish war he went to Constantinople and entered the Turkish
army with the title of Bey, or Colonel. A taste for travel took him to
the East where he acquired the oriental languages. On his return we find
him attached to the Imperial Ministry of Turkey, but only during part of
the incumbency of Midhat Pasha, who, finding his ministry opposed to his
ultra hatred of Russia, dismissed it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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