Henry Morten Stanley Famously Discovered Him
The New York Herald newspaper had dispatched Henry Morton Stanley to locate him in 1869. On November 10, 1871, he came across Livingstone in the village of Ujiji on the beaches of Lake Tanganyika, and he reportedly greeted him with the now-famous phrase "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Yes, said Livingstone, adding, "I feel grateful that I am here to welcome you." Stanley later tore the pages of this incident from his diary, raising the possibility that these infamous comments were a fabrication. These words are not mentioned at all in Livingstone's description of the encounter. The statement does, however, appear in a New York Herald editorial from August 10, 1872, and it is quoted without hesitation in both the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Stanley's awkward attempt to sound dignified in the African wilderness by delivering a formal greeting one might expect to hear in the confines of an upper-class London club, together with Livingstone being the only other white person for hundreds of miles, are what make the words memorable. But the Herald's readers quickly recognized Stanley's pretense. Tim Jeal, Stanley's biographer, remarked that Stanley battled his self-perceived weakness of coming from a lowly background throughout his life and created events to make up for this alleged shortcoming. According to Stanley's autobiography, the reason for this welcome was actually embarrassment because he dared not embrace Livingstone.
