CONSEQUENTLY, though the expedition was organized for this supreme moment, and every movement of it had been confidently ordered with the view of discovering him, yet when the moment of discovery came, and the man himself stood revealed before me, this constantly recurring doubt contributed not a little to make me unprepared for it. ‘It may not be Livingstone after all,’ doubt suggested. If this is he, what shall I say to him? My imagination had not taken this question into consideration before.
All around me was the immense crowd, hushed and expectant, and wondering how the scene would develop itself. Under all these circumstances I could do no more than exercise some restraint and reserve,* so I walked up to him, and, doffing my helmet, bowed and said in an inquiring tone,
‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’
Smiling cordially, he lifted his cap, and answered briefly, ‘Yes.’*
abridged
In the slightly longer account in ‘How I Found Livingstone’ Stanley wrote: “What would I not have given for a bit of friendly wilderness, where, unseen, I might vent my joy in some mad freak, such as idiotically biting my hand, turning a somersault, or slashing at trees, in order to allay those exciting feelings that were well-nigh uncontrollable.” The Autobiography from which our main passage is taken was unfinished at the time of Stanley’s death, and was edited and published by his widow in 1909.
Livingstone did not attempt dialogue in his own account of this historic meeting. But the Scotsman did record his intense emotion, his eagerness for news of events in the wider world (for example, ‘the terrible fate that had befallen France’ in being attacked by Prussia, and Britain’s new telegraph service to America), and that he afterwards began to enjoy his meals again.