9781422277027

His exploits made him famous throughout the world. In his zeal for continued exploration, he lost contact with the world outside Africa for six years, and an explorer named Henry Morton Stanley was sent to find Livingston in March 1871. Stanley found Livingstone eight months later in a small village in Tanganyika (now known as Tanzania) and pronounced what has been one of history’s most memorable greetings—“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Livingstone refused to leave Africa and return to “civilization.” He became sick from malaria and died there in 1873. MARY KINGSLEY Mary Kingsley was an English explorer and writer whose travels starting in 1892 began with the hope of finishing her father’s book on African culture (he had passed away the previous year). Many people, who warned her that the only non-African women to travel into dangerous territories in Africa were the wives of missionaries, frowned upon this journey. Mary ignored these prophets of doom and traveled widely in Africa, seeking out cannibals to study their religious practices, and collected previously unknown species of fish during her canoe journey on the Ogooué River. After her trip to Africa, she wrote two books and gave many lectures. She also criticized the missionaries of the Church of England for trying to convert the African people and corrupt their native religion. LEGEND OF THE MONKEY GOD A legend has been passed down since the 1500s about a “white city” called the City of the Monkey God, which had existed in the rainforests of Mosquitia (extending into both Nicaragua and Honduras in Central America) where explorers had located a gigantic buried statue of a monkey god. The legend said that anyone who entered

Chapter 1: Expeditions 13

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