Synopses & Reviews
Text extracted from opening pages of book: JACOB WASSER MANN BULA MATARI STANLEY CONQUEROR OF A CONTINENT TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL LIVERIGHT-INOPUBLISHERS NEW YORK COPYRIGHT, 1933, BY LIVERIGHT, INC, MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR ix I. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 3 II. THE YEARS OF PREPARATION 26 III. FAVOURING FORTUNE 58 IV. DEFEAT AFTER VICTORY 100 V. THE GREAT HEART OF AFRICA 114 VI. ILLUSION 157 VII. A NEW MISSION 177 VIII. THE FOREST PRIMEVAL 200 IX. WHERE IS THE REAR COLUMN? 232 X. ATTEMPT AT AN INTERPRETATION 270 XI, THE EMIN PASHA PUZZLE 280 XII. UPSHOT 324 BIBLIOGRAPHY 339 INDtEX 341 ILLUSTRATIONS HENRY M. STANLEY Frontispiece THE MUTINY ON THE GOMBE RIVER 96 HENRY M. STANLEY 113 STANLEY AND HIS BOY 160 TIPPU-TIB 177 EMIN PASHA 240 HENRY M. STANLEY 257 HENRY M. STANLEY 336 INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR GOOD while ago, some of my friends asked me what I was working at. When I told them that I wanted to write a life of Henry Morton Stanley and had, with this end in view, been studying the subject for several years, they were very much surprised. What, they inquired, could interest me in a man whose doings had been of little moment in his lifetime and would leave no con spicuous traces in history a man whose name had al ready lapsed into oblivion? I dissented from these opinions. Stanley's name, I rejoined, was haunted by that melody of fame which arouses responses in the un conscious; it was characterised by the rhythms which derive from a mention by millions upon millions of tongues; and what they styled oblivion was no more than a passing forgetfulness. Of course, they conceded, they might be mistaken in theirjudgment of the man and his work; but it seemed to them that neither the man nor the work had been unique, representative, exemplary. What, then, distinguished Stanley, asked one of them, from the numberless worthy pioneers who had explored the African continent during the latter half of the nine teenth century; men as brave and self-sacrificing as he, but less pretentious, and equipped with far higher scien ix BULA MATARI tific qualifications? Why give him the preference over a Nachtigal or a Schweinfurth, a Rohlf s or a Livingstone, a Baker or a Casati ( to say nothing of a hundred others) ? Granted that Stanley is your hobby, said this critic somewhat mockingly, at least you will agree that the features in him that have attracted you need not necessarily convince us of the man's importance My answer was that I did not feel called upon to justify my undertaking. Certainly this particular ex plorer had a fascination for me, and there was, pre sumably, some deep-lying cause for the feeling he aroused. Maybe purely psychological issues were at work; something in his character, in his type, perhaps in the epoch. Still, I added, youthful impressions have undoubtedly played their part in the matter. Stanley's triumphs were gained when I was an adolescent; the whole world was talking of him then; he was the hero of the lads of my generation; his name was a trumpet-call; his mere existence stirred us as a child is stirred by a fairy-tale* So be it, at that date, intervened another of my friends; but now the romance has been dispelled. His picture is but one among many others, faded and dusty, hung in an out-of-the-way part of the gallery, which no one ever visits. To us, at any rate, Stanleyis an empty name. What is he to you? A geographer? A discoverer? An adventurer? Explain to us the lure. An awkward question How can we account for the lure which the destiny of one among thousands exerts upon our minds? Why should this career have been a revelation to the man's contemporaries; and why has the lapse of half a century thrown such a light upon his im INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR age that it is neither rendered deceptive by proximity, nor yet caricatured by remoteness? It was hard to explain, but I wanted to explain; so I spoke of the re markable inciden