After leaving the workhouse, at age 15, where he had done cleaning and bookkeeping, and later traveling to New Orleans, he began pretending to be an American. He called himself Henry Morton Stanley and told of taking the name from his adoptive father—a fiction, whom he described as a kind, hardworking cotton trader in New Orleans.
The will required to be strengthened to resist unholy desires and low passions, and was one of the best allies that conscience could have. Fever seized them, wrecked minds and bodies.
Good nature was banished by anxiety Calmly setting rules for how to behave in the future, one often makes unrealistic commitments. Save it for emergencies. Stanley had first encountered the miseries of the African interior at the age of 30, when the New York Herald sent him in to find Livingstone, last heard from some two years earlier, somewhere on the continent.
Stanley spent the first part of the journey slogging through a swamp and struggling with malaria before the expedition narrowly escaped being massacred during a local civil war. After six months, so many men had died or deserted that, even after acquiring replacements, Stanley was down to 34 men, barely a quarter the size of the original expedition, and a dangerously small number for traveling through the hostile territory ahead.
But one evening, during a break between fevers, he wrote a note to himself by candlelight. But death—not even this; I shall not die, I will not die, I cannot die! Writing such a note to himself was part of a strategy to conserve willpower that psychologists call precommitment. The essence is to lock yourself into a virtuous path. So you make it impossible—or disgraceful—to leave the path. Precommitment is what Odysseus and his men used to get past the deadly songs of the Sirens.
He had himself lashed to the mast with orders not to be untied no matter how much he pleaded to be freed to go to the Sirens. They prevented themselves from being tempted at all, which is generally the safer of the two approaches. No one, of course, can anticipate all temptations, especially today.
But the technology that creates new sins also enables new precommitment strategies. A modern Odysseus can try lashing himself to his browser with software that prevents him from hearing or seeing certain websites. A modern Stanley can use the web in the same way that the explorer used the social media of his day.
He vowed to weigh himself every day and reveal the results on Twitter—which he did, and lost 60 pounds in five months. The efficacy of such contracts with monitors and penalties has been independently demonstrated by researchers. Imagine, for a moment, that you are Stanley early one morning. You emerge from your tent in the Ituri rain forest. It has been dark for months.
Your stomach, long since ruined by parasites, recurrent diseases and massive doses of quinine and other medicines, is in even worse shape than usual. Dozens of people were so crippled—from hunger, disease, injuries and festering sores—that they had to be left behind at a spot in the forest grimly referred to as Starvation Camp. For Stanley, this was an easy decision: shave. Why would somebody starving to death insist on shaving? You might think the energy spent shaving in the jungle would be better devoted to looking for food.
Nothing had been heard of the great Scottish missionary-explorer for almost a year, when he was reported to be somewhere near Lake Tanganyika. Setting off on his quest, Stanley first stopped at Egypt to report on the opening of the Suez Canal.
Travelling through Palestine, Turkey and India he eventually arrived on the east coast of Africa near Zanzibar. In March , decked out in dazzling white flannels and mounted atop a thoroughbred stallion Stanley set out on his mile overland trek. A small army of guards and bearers brought up the rear. Vital supplies were lost as native bearers deserted the expedition and for those that stayed, a host of exotic diseases took a heavy toll. Tribes of warring natives showered the unwelcome visitors with spears and poisoned arrows.
Together Livingstone and Stanley explored the northern end of Lake Tangayika but Livingstone, who had been travelling extensively throughout Africa since , was now suffering the ill-effects. Livingstone eventually died in on the shores of Lake Bagweulu.
His body was shipped back to England and buried in Westminster Abbey — Stanley was one of the pall-bearers. He journeyed into central Africa circumnavigating Victoria Nyanza, proving it to be the second-largest freshwater lake in the world, and discovered the Shimeeyu River.
In , with Leopold's support, Stanley returned to Africa where he worked to open the lower Congo to commerce by the construction of roads. He used brutal means that included the widespread use of forced labour. Competition with French interests in the region helped bring about the Berlin Conference in which European powers sorted out their competing colonial claims in Africa.
Stanley's efforts paved the way for the creation of the Congo Free State, privately owned by Leopold. In , now back in Europe, Stanley married and then began a worldwide lecture tour. He became member of parliament for Lambeth in south London, serving from to He was knighted in He died in London on 10 May Search term:.
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