STANLEY, Sir Henry Morton (1841-1904). Autograph letter signed (‘Henry M. Stanley’) to Edward Levy, Uganda, 15 August 1875.

STANLEY, Sir Henry Morton (1841-1904). Autograph letter signed (‘Henry M. Stanley’) to Edward Levy, Uganda, 15 August 1875.

Two pages, 262 x 210mm, a carbon duplicate, the second page in inverse orientation. Provenance: Bloomsbury, 10 January 1991, lot 224.

An important letter written from the first trans-Africa expedition. ‘Our expedition is safely arrived in Uganda. Thank God. And I have from now until the latter part of November to reach the Albert Nyanza [Lake Albert] where I hope I shall meet some of [Major-General Charles George] Gordon’s officers, and get some ammunition, and a few more guns. I am short of 30 guns since I left Zanzibar […] 60 guns are not quite enough to cope with a powerful tribe. I am going to start to-morrow for Mtesa who may perhaps assist me with men as far as the Albert Nyanza – besides I want to propose to him a splendid project I have got in my head. Now if you will glance at my map in “How I found Livingstone” you will see that Uganda stretches close to the Albert within six or seven days’ march...’. Stanley goes on to outline his plan to create a trade alliance with King Mtesa [of Uganda], opening up a market for the king’s ivory, coffee and skins, in return for 500 men armed with spears. He notes how wisely he has acted in taking the expedition by water instead of overland, listing the potentially troublesome areas he has circumnavigated: ‘Now the expedition is still compact, and rich in cloth & beads, and strong enough to resist tribes numbering a thousand warriors’. He ends his letter promising to send a sketch map of the western and south-western portions of the Victoria Nyanza [Lake Victoria], before sending greetings to friends at home.

Between 1874 and 1877, Henry Morton Stanley undertook his second expedition to Central Africa; the first comprised the journey to find David Livingstone, culminating in the discovery of the missionary and explorer in 1871, living near Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania. The trans-Africa expedition had as its objective the mapping of the region’s lakes – Victoria, Albert, and Tanganyika – and rivers, including identifying the source of the Nile, and was financed from Britain by the Daily Telegraph, whose proprietor, Edward Levy-Lawson, 1st Baron Burnham (1833-1916) is the recipient of the present letter. Here, Henry Morton Stanley updates his patron on the progress of the expedition: after successfully circumnavigating Lake Victoria, the next goal was the exploration of Lake Albert.