passed away from my mind forever. “America
Visited”; this, with its historic scenes and
its endless suggestions of thought, has taken the
place of that fictitious region. Whether there
will ever be an “America Revisited” I
cannot say; but if there should be, it will then be
to me not the land of the Pilgrim Fathers and Washington,
so much as the land of kindly homes, and enduring
friendships, and happy recollections, which have now
endeared it to me. One feature of this visit I
fear I cannot hope to see repeated, yet one without
which it could never have been accomplished.
My two friends, to whom such a pleasing reference has
been made by Dr. Adams, who have made the task easy
for me which else would have been impossible; who
have lightened every anxiety; who have watched over
me with such vigilant care that I have not been allowed
to touch more than two dollars in the whole course
of my journey—they, perchance, may not
share in “America Revisited.” But
if ever such should be my own good fortune, I shall
remember it as the land which I visited with them;
where, if at first they were welcomed to your homes
for my sake, I have often felt as the days rolled
on that I was welcomed for their sake. And you
will remember them. When in after years you read
at the end of some elaborate essay on the history
of music or on Biblical geography the name of George
Grove, you will recall with pleasure the incessant
questionings, the eager desire for knowledge, the wide
and varied capacity for all manner of instruction,
which you experienced in your conversations with him
here. And when also hereafter there shall reach
to your shores the fame of the distinguished physician,
Dr. Harper, whether in England or in New Zealand,
you will be the more rejoiced because it will bring
before you the memory of the youthful and blooming
student who inspected your hospitals with such keen
appreciation, so impartially sifting the good from
the evil.
I part from you with the conviction that such bonds
of kindly intercourse will cement the union between
the two countries even more than the wonderful cable,
on which it is popularly believed in England that
my friend and host, Mr. Cyrus Field, passes his mysterious
existence appearing and reappearing at one and the
same moment in London and in New York. Of that
unbroken union there seemed to me a likeness, when
on the beautiful shores of Lake George, the Loch Katrine
of America, I saw a maple and an oak-tree growing
together from the same stem, perhaps from the same
root—the brilliant fiery maple, the emblem
of America; the gnarled and twisted oak, the emblem
of England. So may the two nations always rise
together, so different each from each, and representing
so distinct a future, yet each springing from the same
ancestral root, each bound together by the same healthful
sap, and the same vigorous growth.
HENRY MORTON STANLEY
THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT