My answer to all questions, pertinent and impertinent, was, I am going to Africa.  Though my card bore the words

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|                                        |
|            Henry M.  Stanley.          |
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|  New York Herald.                      |
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very few, I believe, ever coupled the words `New York Herald’ with a search after “Doctor Livingstone.”  It was not my fault, was it?

Ah, me! what hard work it is to start an expedition alone!  What with hurrying through the baking heat of the fierce relentless sun from shop to shop, strengthening myself with far-reaching and enduring patience far the haggling contest with the livid-faced Hindi, summoning courage and wit to brow-beat the villainous Goanese, and match the foxy Banyan, talking volumes throughout the day, correcting estimates, making up accounts, superintending the delivery of purchased articles, measuring and weighing them, to see that everything was of full measure and weight, overseeing the white men Farquhar and Shaw, who were busy on donkey saddles, sails, tents, and boats for the Expedition, I felt, when the day was over, as though limbs and brain well deserved their rest.  Such labours were mine unremittingly for a month.

Having bartered drafts on Mr. James Gordon Bennett to the amount of several thousand dollars for cloth, beads, wire, donkeys, and a thousand necessaries, having advanced pay to the white men, and black escort of the Expedition, having fretted Capt.  Webb and his family more than enough with the din of preparation, and filled his house with my goods, there was nothing further to do but to leave my formal adieus with the Europeans, and thank the Sultan and those gentlemen who had assisted me, before embarking for Bagamoyo.

The day before my departure from Zanzibar the American Consul, having just habited himself in his black coat, and taking with him an extra black hat, in order to be in state apparel, proceeded with me to the Sultan’s palace.  The prince had been generous to me; he had presented me with an Arab horse, had furnished me with letters of introduction to his agents, his chief men, and representatives in the interior, and in many other ways had shown himself well disposed towards me.

The palace is a large, roomy, lofty, square house close to the fort, built of coral, and plastered thickly with lime mortar.  In appearance it is half Arabic and half Italian.  The shutters are Venetian blinds painted a vivid green, and presenting a striking contrast to the whitewashed walls.  Before the great, lofty, wide door were ranged in two crescents several Baluch and Persian mercenaries, armed with curved swords and targes of rhinoceros hide.  Their dress consisted of a muddy-white cotton shirt, reaching to the ancles, girdled with a leather belt thickly studded with silver bosses.