His name was John Rowlands. "Home" was a London workhouse for poor boys. And he was six years old. He was nearly twenty before he found a real home in the United States and a new name—Henry Morton Stanley. But in those hard years he managed to get an education.

Adventure lay ahead. He was a soldier in one war, a reporter in another. Then came the big assignment from his editor—find the British explorer, Dr. David Livingstone! Dead or alive, Livingstone was somewhere in the steaming jungles of Africa.

So began the great adventure. With the same determination that young Rowlands showed in those workhouse years, the grown Stanley began the search. There were the dangers of attack by leopards, boa constrictors, and crocodiles. There were the hardships of heat, typhus, and wild, roaring rivers. And last, there were the spears of cannibals hurled from giant river riding canoes.

How Stanley finally succeeded in finding Livingstone and why he stayed to explore equatorial Africa is one of the great adventure stories of the 19th century.

From the dust jacket