The next year, 1868, he returned to the United States, and in the following year was sent by the _Herald_ into Spain, to follow the fortunes of the civil war there, as correspondent. Like everything else that he undertook, he performed his duties more than faithfully. Exposure, danger, hardships, nothing interfered when there was a prospect of acquiring valuable information. It mattered not to him whether he was on the margin or in the vortex of battle--he never thought of anything but the object before him and toward which he bent all his energies. His letters from the seat of war not only gave the best description of the battles fought and of the military position of affairs, but, also, of the political state of the kingdom. But while he was here, considering himself fixed down for an indefinite period, for Spain is proverbial for the protracted duration of its civil wars, Mr. Bennett, in Paris, was planning an expedition to go in search of Dr. Livingstone, buried, alive or dead, somewhere in the heart of Africa. The sympathies of everybody were enlisted in his fortunes, yet the British government, though he had done so much to enhance the fame of his native country, refused to stir a step toward ascertaining his fate, discovering his whereabouts, or relieving him if in want. The Royal Geographical Society, ashamed of the apathy and indifference of the government, had started a subscription to raise funds from private sources to defray the expenses of an expedition to go in search of him. In the meantime this American editor, scorning alike state patronage or private help, conceived the bold project of finding him himself. Looking around for a suitable leader to command an expedition, his eye rested upon Stanley in Spain. And here should be noted the profound sagacity of Mr. Bennett in selecting such a leader for this desperate expedition, that was to go no one knew where, and end no one knew how. Most people thought it was a mammoth advertisement of the New York _Herald_, nothing more. If he was in earnest why did he not select some one of the many African explorers who were familiar with the regions of Central Africa, and had explored in the vicinity of where Livingstone was, by the best judges, supposed to be, if alive? Men, for instance, like Speke, Baker, Burton, Grant and others. This certainly would have given great eclat to the expedition, and, if it failed in its chief object, would unquestionably have furnished new facts for the geographer and the man of science. But to send one who made no pretensions to science, no claims to be a meteorologist, botanist, geologist, or to be familiar with astronomical calculations, all of which are indispensable to a great explorer, seemed absurd.