As a newspaper correspondent he was sent in 1869 to central Africa to find the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone; two years later he found him on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. After Livingstone’s death, Stanley continued his exploration, charting Lake Victoria (1874), tracing the course of the Congo (1874–77), mapping Lake Albert (1889), and becoming the first European to discover Lake Edward (1889). Stanley also helped establish the Congo Free State (now Zaire), with Belgian support, from 1879–1885.