The two letters for New
York were for James Gordon Bennett, junior, as he alone, not his
father, was responsible for the Expedition sent under my command.
I beg the reader's pardon for republishing one of these letters
here, as its spirit and style indicate the man, the mere knowledge
of whose life or death was worth a costly Expedition.
Ujiji, on Tanganika, East Africa, November, 1871.
James Gordon Bennett, Jr., Esq.
My Dear Sir, - It is in general somewhat difficult to write to one
we have never seen - it feels so much like addressing an abstract
idea - but the presence of your representative, Mr. H. M. Stanley,
in this distant region takes away the strangeness I should otherwise
have felt, and in writing to thank you for the extreme kindness
that prompted you to send him, I feel quite at home.
If I explain the forlorn condition in which he found me you will
easily perceive that I have good reason to use very strong
expressions of gratitude. I came to Ujiji off a tramp of between
four hundred and five hundred miles, beneath a blazing vertical
sun, having been baffled, worried, defeated and forced to return,
when almost in sight of the end of the geographical part of my
mission, by a number of half-caste Moslem slaves sent to me from
Zanzibar, instead of men.
