[ Stevens / Scouting for Stanley in East Africa ]
That's "Stanley" as in "Stanley and Livingstone" — Henry Stanley (birth name probably John Rowlands), the Welsh-born adventurer and journalist who set out on a quest to find news of the Scottish explorer, medical missionary, and abolitionist David Livingstone, who had gone to Africa on a second exploration in 1864 and had lost contact with the outside world. Stanley found Livingstone, and uttered his famous phrase, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" in November of 1871.
Thomas Stevens, a journalist and adventurer best known for being the first man to ride a bicycle around the world (1884 - 1887), undertook an expedition to meet up with Stanley, who at the time was in Africa on the notorious "Emin Pasha Rescue Expedition" of 1886 - 89, ostensibly undertaken to rescue Emin Pasha, a German doctor who was in charge of territory in what is now southern Sudan and who was beseiged by Islamist forces. Yet the "rescue" took a long route across Africa, fueling suspicion that one of its main purposes was to help extend European claims to African territory. This rescue expedition became notorious for its loss of life and extreme cruelty exhibited by its European members.
The only reference to Newfoundlands in this work is metaphoric, and occurs during Stevens' discussion — very much in the spirit of his time — of the character of the native Africans he has encountered, whom he regards as "Animals who would, if they possessed the power, kill or sell into slavery every chief, every man, woman and babe on the whole mountain outside their own people." (61) He further remarks that
It is, alas! only too true that the spirit displayed by the average chief is more ferocious, more atrociously bloodthirsty toward his fellows than that of the hyenas that prowl about his capital. I have yet to see an African in Africa with the "soul" of a Newfoundland. But then, come to think it over, he displays more noble qualities than most of us whites do, and why then should we, forsooth, expect to find his equal, or anything approaching him in people four thousand years behind the times? (62)