Though still debated today whether he has a greater legacy as an adventuring journalist or imperial explorer, Henry Morton Stanley hunted down Dr. David Livingstone in Africa, helping pave the way for European and Western colonization of Central Africa.

Born in Wales as John Rowlands, Stanley’s childhood was rough: he was a bastard child and his remaining family gave him up at a young age to a workhouse for the poor. At 18, Stanley made the journey to America in 1859 in search of a new life. He disembarked in New Orleans where he found a new beginning, and a friend in wealthy trader Henry Hope Stanley, the man whose companionship he earned, and as a result, whose name he adopted.

Stanley made his way to journalism by way of the Civil War (he served on both sides), a stint in the Navy, and an expedition to the Ottoman Empire. The New York Herald’s James Gordon Bennett, Jr. took a liking to Stanley’s direct style of writing and his globespanning travel stories. Bennett tasked Stanley with the mission of traveling to Africa and finding the missing Dr. David Livingstone, a Scottish missionary and explorer who had gone to Africa the year before to discover the source of the River Nile, but hadn’t been heard from since. Reportedly, when Stanley asked about the budget, Bennett replied, “Draw £1,000 now, and when you have gone through that, draw another £1,000, and when that is spent, draw another £1,000, and when you have finished that, draw another £1,000, and so on — but find Livingstone!”

Stanley journeyed to Zanzibar in March 1871 and outfitted an expedition with the best materials and supplies he could afford, including some 200 porters he required for the trip. The 700-mile tropical forest trek soon turned nightmarish. Stanley’s thoroughbred stallion was bitten by a tsetse fly and died, many carriers deserted the travel party, and the rest were annihilated by disease. Both Stanley’s contemporaries and more recent authors describe Stanley’s brutish treatment of local porters and indigenous peoples, as evidence more reasons why the expedition quickly thinned. Nonetheless, Stanley trekked on through the Congo and discovered the missing Dr. Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. Upon finally encountering the disappeared doctor, Stanley reportedly greeted him with now famous phrase: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Stanley’s trademark phrase, as well as reports and writings on the expedition, helped to make his name.

Read more from Stanley about his journey in his book “How I Found Livingstone” here.