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Thirty years passed and though he went back home several times he always returned to Africa and at last he disappeared. He was given up for lost, and his countrymen thought him dead. But some people in our country got the idea that he might still be alive, so they sent a newspaper reporter named Stanley to look for him. They thought a reporter could find him if anybody could. Stanley landed on the west coast of Africa and asked the black men by signs if any one had seen a white man. Most of the black men said “no”—thirty years was too long a time to remember—in fact, most that were alive then were dead. But some black men said they had heard their fathers say that a white man had once passed through that way, and they pointed toward the east.So Stanley kept on going east and still east. After a long, long while he came to a long, long lake that hasa long, long name—Tanganyika. When he reached this lake an old white man came to meet him. Stanley said, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” just as if he were greeting a stranger whom he had been sent to meet at the railroad station. Of course, it was Livingstone, and Stanley tried to get him to go back with him.
But Livingstone said, “No, my work is here, teaching the black people about God and curing their bodily diseases. I’ll not go back until I’m dead. When I am dead, then I want to go home to be buried in England.” So Stanley had to return without him.
Two years after that, with no one around him but black men, Livingstone died. He was on his knees at prayer when his black servant boy found him dead. All the black men loved him, and knowing that he wanted to be buried in England, they prepared his body by the sort of embalming they knew and bore it on their shoulders foreight hundred miles—it took two months—until they reached the coast.
