Book description
Alone in Africa -
Mungo Park Park's 1795-7 odyssey in search of the Niger first
awakened the world to the feasibility of a white man penetrating
sub-Saharan Africa. But unlike his illustrious successors, this quiet
tenant farmer's son from the Scottish Borders travelled alone;
relieved of his meager possessions, he was soon wholly dependant on
local hospitality. In what he called "a plain unvarnished
tale" he related horrific ordeals with admirable detachment -
never more tested than on his return journey through Bamako, now the
capital of Mali.
The Road to Kano -
Hugh Clapperton In one of exploration's unhappier sagas two
Scots, Captain Hugh Clapperton and Dr. Walter Oudney, were saddled
with the unspeakable Major Dixon Denham on a three year journey to
Lake Chad and beyond. Clapperton mapped much of northern Nigeria and
emerged with credit. Major Denham also excelled himself, twice
absconding, then accusing Oudney of incompetence and Clapperton of
buggery. Happily the Major was absent in 1824, after nursing his dying
friend, Clapperton became the first European to reach Kano.
Down the Niger - Richard Lander As Clapperton's
manservant, Lander attended his dying master on his 1825 expedition to
the Niger and was then commissioned, with his brother John, to
continue the exploration of the river. The mystery of its lower course
was finally solved when in 1831 they sailed down through Nigeria to
the delta and the sea. Unassuming Cornishmen, the Landers approached
their task with a refreshing confidence in goodwill of Africans. It
paid of in a knife-edge encounter at the confluence of the Benoue,
although Richard subsequently paid the price with his life.
Arrival in Timbuktu - Heinrich Barth Born in Hamburg,
Barth was already an experienced traveler and a methodical scholar
when in 1850 he joined a British expedition to investigate Africa's
internal slave trade. From Tripoli the expedition crossed the Sahara
to Lake Chad. Its leader died but Barth continued on alone, exploring
vast tract of the Sahel from northern Cameroon to Mali. Timbuktu,
previously visited only by A. G. Laing and René Caillié, provided the
climax as Barth, in disguise, approached the forbidden city by boat
from the Niger.
My Ogowé Fans -
Mary Kingsley Self-educated while she nursed her elderly
parents, Mary Kingsley had known only middle-class English domesticity
until venturing to West Africa in 1892. Her parents had died and,
unmarried, she determined to study "fish and fetish" for the
British Museum. Her 1894 ascent of Gabon's Ogowé River (from Travels
in West Africa, 1897) established her a genuine pioneer and an
inimitable narrator. She died six years later while nursing prisoners
during the Boer War.
