Stanley in the Rufiji | Baker & Sons Co

The scenes which each bend and curve of the river, as we ascended, disclosed were of exceeding beauty. Both banks of the river were clothed with dense foliage of varied green of a uniform height, which gave it an appearance of a broad canal, with a tall, green hedge on each side.
Its banks were the homes of vast numbers of aquatic birds; hippopotami sported in its depths; and on the gray spits of sand numbers of crocodiles basked in the hot glowing sunshine. Altogether it was a grand picture, and most alluring to the explorer.

Sir Henry Morton Stanley
Friendly Encounter on the Rufiji River
Printed December 3rd, 1874
NEW YORK HERALD

At half-past three on the afternoon of September 30th, 1874, Sir Henry Morton Stanley set off from the Island of Zanzibar in the Yarmouth Wave, a large sailing ship designed for exploration of the East African coast on the Indian Ocean. He had a crew of 29 other passengers, two Englishmen, twenty-four freed slaves, two cabin boys and a thoroughbred bull terrier named Jack. Stanley was an African explorer, already made famous by his discovery of the lost Dr. David Livingstone (1872).

In the fall of 1874, his sights were set on the navigation of the Rufiji River in modern day Tanzania. From Zanzibar, he traveled south along the coast until he found the delta of the famous river. From there, he and his crew sailed inland, upriver, in a boat designed for deeper waters. Nevertheless, Henry Morton Stanley successfully explored and chronicled the Rufiji River.

By his accounts, dispatched 150 years ago to the NEW YORK HERALD, on the same spot where Baker & Sons Safari Lodges are built at the river’s banks, Stanley anchored his ship.

Of his descriptions detailing the beauty of the wild river, not much has changed.