3-075-056 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Emin Pasha Relief Expedition - Stanley's departure from Yambuya Camp: giving final Instructions to Major Barttelot, from a sketch by Mr. Herbert Ward, 1887, (1890). 'Mr. Stanley, with the advance column..started on their arduous march eastward, up the river, through an utterly unknown forest country...The following extract from one of Mr. Stanley's letters...[explains] the parting instructions..."Major Edmund Barttelot, being senior of those officers with me, was appointed commandant...the Major was to remain at Yambuya...The instructions were explicit, and intelligible." It is well known...that there was great difference of opinion between the members of the expedition left at Yambuya as to what ought to be done some months afterwards, when they had heard nothing further of Mr. Stanley...We have Major Barttelot's letters of June 1888, explaining the reasons for his decision, after long and painful suspense, to follow the route of Mr. Stanley...and the disastrous consequences...with the lamented death of Major Barttelot by assassination, ought not to prejudice our judgment of the propriety of the movement, under circumstances that Mr. Stanley had never foreseen'. Barttelot was possibly the inspiration for Kurtz in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". From "Illustrated London News", 1890.