Before the major colonization of Africa by Europe, the first few English adventures were sent to map terrain, collect samples and specimens, and steal--or gather artifacts for scientific societies, museums, and other sponsoring agencies. Upon some great and exciting success, the church begins sending missionaries and using their stories in services and disseminating religious periodicals.
These explorers relied heavily on African and Arab intermediaries who provided them with all things they would need such as porters, supplies, protection, intelligence, and other such things, for such long journeys. One of the largest difficulties crossed by such explorers was their deep moral abhorrence of slavery of any kind and yet their constant need to use it to get all of their things to their faraway destinations. All the Explorers were quick to distance themselves from the practice but never so far as to not utilize its uses in the faraway field of their adventures. Britain was never told of these things and the Explorers presented themselves as public opponents of the African ad Arab slave. Only one major public explorer named Richard Burton thought that perhaps slavery and polygamy might have a function in African societies that are lost on the Victorian society, he is wildly condemned for such views.
These Explorers were treated as heroes and celebrities, when the British Association for the Advancement of Science announced Speke and Burton as speakers nearly 1,500 people bought tickets, and upon Stanley writing a book 'In Darkest Africa' (1890) sold 150,000 copies. Large crowds would gather to shake their hands and cause 'chaos, with people clambering over the pews to try and shake his hand'. Though they were met with lots of positive public favor the Explorers themselves were far more morally ambiguous and very very unsure where the actual source of the Nile was.