THE EXPLORATION DIARIES OF H. M. STANLEY

Sir Henry Morton Stanley, explorer-journalist of ""Dr. Livingston"" fame, is seen intimately and without his journalist facade in this recently unearthed diary. Discovered by his grandson Richard, it deals with an arduous and almost fatal expedition across Africa from 1874 to 1877. The expedition, one of the most famous of its time, was officially recorded by Stanley in Through The Dark Continent, published in 1879. The diary of course is full of the material Stanley later used for the book---the native villages (and his skilled drawings of them), the constant threat of illness and death, the terrible heat and torrential rain storms, and the lurking violence of hostile native tribes always waiting just beyond the next hill. But better yet, there is the picture of Stanley himself---the dauntless, grimly determined man, the man who faces and overcomes death countless times. A picture of a brave Victorian with a superhuman will to live emerges from these pages.