Henry Morton Stanley Quotes

You can find it on almost any tree. As we made our way through the forest, it was literally raining rubber juice. Our clothes were full of it. The Congo has so many tributaries that a well-organized company can easily extract a few tons of rubber per year here. You only have to sail up such a river and the branches with rubber hang almost up to your ship.

I was interested the other day in making a curious calculation, which was, supposing that all the inhabitants of the Congo basin were simply to have one Sunday dress each, how many yards of Manchester cloth would be required, and the amazing number was 320,000,000 yards, just for one Sunday dress. Proceeding still further with these figures, I found that two Sunday dresses and four everyday dresses would in one year amount to 3,840,000,000 yards, which, at 2d. per yard, would be of the value of £16,000,000. The more I pondered upon these things, I discovered that I could not limit these stores of cotton cloth to day dresses. I would have to provide for night dresses also, and these would consume 160,000,000 yards. Then the grave clothes come into mind, and, as a poor lunatic who burned Bolobo Station destroyed 30,000 yards of cloth in order that he should not be cheated out of a respectable burial, I really feared for a time that the millions would get beyond measurable calculation. However, putting such accidents aside, I estimate that, if my figures of population are approximately correct, 2,000,000 die every year, and to bury these decently, and according to the custom of those who possess cloth, 16,000,000 yards will be required, while the 40,000 chiefs will require an average of 100 yards each, or 4,000,000 yards. I regarded these figures with great satisfaction, and I was about to close my remarks upon the millions of yards of cloth that Manchester would perhaps be required to produce, when I discovered that I had neglected to provide for the family wardrobe or currency chest, for you must know that in Lower Congo there is scarcely a family that has not a cloth fund of about a dozen pieces of about 24 yards each. This is a very important institution; otherwise how are the family necessities to be provided for? How are the fathers and mothers of families to go to market to buy greens, bread, oil, ground nuts, chickens, fish, and goats, and how is the petty trade to be conducted? How is ivory to be purchased, the gums, rubber, dye powders, gunpowder, copper slugs, guns, trinkets, knives, and swords to be bought without a supply of cloth? Now, 8,000,000 families at 300 yards each will require 2,400,000,000. You all know how perishable such currency must be; but if you sum up these several millions of yards, and value all of them at the average price of 2d. per yard, you will find that it will be possible for Manchester to create a trade, in the course of time, in cottons in the Congo basin, amounting in value to about £26,000,000 annually. I have said nothing about Rochdale savelist, or your own superior prints, your gorgeous handkerchiefs with their variegated patterns, your checks and striped cloths, your ticking and twills. I must satisfy myself with suggesting them; your own imagination will no doubt carry you to the limbo of immeasurable and incalculable millions.

England would not have managed the Congo better than King Leopold has done if she had been mistress of it, as she might have become in 1877.

[The whole Congo without—the lower Congo] isn't worth a penny.

I crossed Africa from East to West and from West to East, and I never saw any excesses committed. I do not think that from this point of view there is a single sovereign living who has done so much for humanity as Leopold II."

I am certain that not one of the countries who are invited by the newspapers to put itself in its (Belgium's) place would have been able to do better.

Socialism is a return to primitive conditions.

The Portuguese provinces are governed by men whom I hold to be animated with as sincere a hatred against the slave trade as any English or American philanthropist has shown. It would really be one of the riskiest undertakings for any slave trader to attempt to revive the slave trade on Portuguese territory today, either by sea or by land. It cannot be denied that there is some traffic on the frontiers of the colonies of Portugal by Portuguese subjects, when they succeed in escaping the surveillance of the authorities; however, it is essential to make a clear distinction between the African Portuguese and the European Portuguese.

I was received with an overwhelming display of military and civilian tributes, all the way to the royal palace where I was to stay, troops were lined up behind which enthusiastic people were chanting their viva, it seemed to me that a major change had come in the Belgian public opinion on the importance of the Congo, when I first went there, the Belgian newspapers spouted nothing but criticism, they were completely dumbfounded, the king was recognized as the great benefactor of the nation.

I had on the Congo under my orders three hundred men, English, Germans, Dutch, Portuguese, Belgians. I found no difference between them. All did their best according to their means. All were in the course of duty the object of some charge. I examined the charges minutely and always found them to be without foundation. That did not prevent these stories reaching Banana, and from there, Europe.

Though many illusions are of a character we should gladly cherish, yet the sooner we lose some of them, the sooner we gain the power of seeing clearly into things. The one who possesses least has the best chance of becoming wise. The man who travels, and reflects, loses illusions faster than he who stays at home.

What does the greatness of a monarch consist in? I fit is the extent of his territory, then the Emperor of Russia is the greatest of all. I fit is the splendour and power of military organization, then William II [of Germany] takes first place. But if royal greatness consists in the wisdom and goodness of a sovereign leading his people with the solicitude of a shepherd watching over his flock, then the greatest sovereign is your own.

As seen in my loneliness, there was this difference between the Bible and the newspapers. The one reminded one that, apart from God, my life was but a bubble of air, and it bade me remember my Creator; the other fostered arrogance and loneliness.

When I was on the Congo and accused a tribe of cannibalism, it replied : "We are not cannibals, but our neighbors are." The neighboring tribe said : "It is not we, it is the next tribe that you will meet" ; and that tribe referred us on to the next, and so on continually. They seemed to be ashamed of their cannibalism. They concealed it. Yet there was no doubt as to the existence of the practice. It was very seldom that I could discover the guilty. How, then, in recruiting its troops, was the Congo to distinguish the black cannibals from those who were not cannibals?

The barge was an invention of my own. It was 40 feet long, 6 feet beam, and 30 inches deep, of Spanish cedar 3/8 inches thick.