Henry M Stanley, an American traveller, born near Denbigh, Wales, in 1840. His original name was John Rowlands. At the age of three he was sent to the poorhouse at St. Asaph, where he remained till he was 13, receiving there a good education. For a year he was a teacher at Mold, Flintshire, and then shipped at Liverpool as a cabin boy on a vessel bound to New Orleans. There he found employment with a merchant named Stanley, who subsequently adopted him and gave him his name. His benefactor died intestate, and young Stanley at the outbreak of the civil war enlisted in the confederate army, was taken prisoner, volunteered in the United States navy, and subsequently became an acting ensign in the iron-clad Ticonderoga. After the close of the war he travelled in Turkey and Asia Minor, and in 1866 visited Wales. He gave a dinner to the children in St. Asaph poorhouse, telling them in a speech that whatever success he had attained, or would attain in the future, he owed to the education ho received there. In the spring of 1867 he returned to the United States, and in 1868 accompanied the British expedition to Abyssinia as correspondent of the " New York Herald." In 1869 he was sent to Spain in the same capacity, and on Oct. 17 of that year was commissioned by the proprietor of the " Herald " to find Dr. Livingstone. After attending the opening of the Suez canal, he visited Constantinople, Palestine, the Crimea, the valley of the Euphrates, Persia, and India, and sailed from Bombay Oct. 12, 1870. He arrived at Zanzibar Jan. 6, 1871, and set out for the interior of Africa on March 21, with 192 followers.

He found Dr. Livingstone at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika, Nov. 10, explored with him the northern portion of the lake, and began his return voyage on March 14, 1872. He arrived in England late in July, and gave an account of his expedition before the British association at Brighton, Aug. 16. On Aug. 27 the queen sent him a gold snuff box set with diamonds, and on Oct. 21 he was banqueted by the royal geographical society. In November he published "How I found Livingstone" (London and New York). In 1873 he received the patron's medal of the royal geographical society. After the death of Livingstone, Mr. Stanley was commissioned by the proprietors of the "New York Herald" and the London "Telegraph" to explore the lake region of equatorial Africa. As reported in his letters to those journals, he left the coast in November, 1874, at the head of 300 men, diverged from the usual road at Upwapwa, reached the western frontier of Ugongo on Dec. 31, struck direct across an almost level plain, and at Tchi-wyu, in the Urimi country, about the latitude of Ujiji, he found the waters flowing northward. Thence he followed the course of the river Shemeeyu for 350 m., and reached Kage-hyi, on the Victoria N'yanza lake, Feb. 27, 1875, having lost 194 men by death and desertion.

He launched a boat conveyed in pieces from the coast, and circumnavigated the lake, assisted by 30 canoes lent him by Mtesa, king of Uganda. His circumnavigation covered about 1,000 m.; he minutely explored the inlets, and found that the opinion of Burton and Livingstone, based on native reports, that N'yanza is a collection of lagoons, is wrong, and that Speke and Grant were right in declaring it to be one large lake, containing many islands. On April 17 he started to complete his exploration of the W. side of the Victoria N'yanza. He proposed next to cross the intervening country and explore the Albert N'yanza.