Book excerpt: Henry Morton Stanley undertook the greatest African expedition of the 19th century to rescue Emin Pasha, last lieutenant of the martyred General Gordon and governor of the southern Sudan. Instead of ten months, the trip took three years and cost the lives of thousands of people, as Stanley's column hacked its way across the last great, unexplored territory in Africa. Stanley's secret agenda was territorial expansion on the model of Leopold's Congo or the British East India Company.