About this time, in the same year, the famous Henry Morton Stanley returned to London from his adventurous discovery and relief of Dr. David Livingstone.  The distinguished missionary and explorer died not long afterwards, and the fame of his brilliant discoveries and heroic life aroused great sympathy and interest in African exploration.  The great river which Livingstone had explored was believed by him to have been the Nile, but was more correctly thought by others to have been the Congo River.  On account of the interest aroused in Livingstone, the New York Herald and the Daily Telegraph of London decided to send Stanley on a fully equipped expedition to solve the many problems relating to the heart of Africa about which the civilised world was still in the dark.

Stanley chose the route of Zanzibar, and, landing there, he went up the course of the river and crossed the country to the Victoria Nyanza by the way of Unyamwezi.  He reached the lake by the end of February, 1875.  On March the 8th he set out to explore the shores of the lake, and mapped the whole region, including its bays, islands, and archipelagoes, with a considerable amount of accuracy.  He also examined Napoleon Gulf, and reached as far as Ripon Falls, at which point the waters of the lake flow towards the Albert Nyanza.  He then verified the accuracy of Speke’s supposition that the Victoria Nyanza really was the main source of the White Nile.  Stanley set out from Uganda at the end of the year 1875, and travelled across the country to the Congo.  About the same time three English surveyors, Colonels Purdy, Colston, and Sidney Enser, made several topographical reports on much of the territory between the Bahr-el-Ghazel, the Shari, and the Nile.  Later on, in 1876, General Gordon sent Romolo Gesei, an Italian in the service of the khedive, to navigate and to explore Lake Albert Nyanza.  In the following year Colonel Mason, an American, surveyed the lake, of which he made an accurate topographical chart.

In the year 1880, Mr. E. G. Ravenstein, an eminent geographer, made some valuable surveys of eastern equatorial Africa, which had the effect of inciting the Royal Geographical Society to send out, in 1882, an expedition under Joseph Thomson, a brilliant young African explorer, in order to find out a direct route to the Victoria Nyanza.  Thomson set out from Momhasa early in the year 1883, but he never succeeded in realising the purpose of his mission.

Emin Pasha, as we have seen, was the governor appointed by the khedive to rule the Egyptian equatorial provinces.  He made a few discoveries, such as the Semliki River, which was called by him Divern.  Whilst he was engaged in travelling through the Bahr-el-Ghazel district, the revolt of the Mahdi occurred, and Emin Pasha was isolated from the outer world.  In the year 1886 Doctor Junker returned to Europe from Emin, and roused great interest by his account of the adventures of the pasha, whom most people had believed to have died, but whom they now learned had set up an independent sovereignty in the heart of Africa, awaiting anxiously the advent of a relief expedition.  Then Henry M. Stanley volunteered to go out on a relief expedition to bring Emin Pasha home.