An Ill-Fated Trio on African Adventure
DENHAM, Dixon, Hugh CLAPPERTON, and Walter OUDNEY.
Narrative of travels and discoveries in northern and central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824 … extending across the great desert to the tenth degree of northern latitude, and from Kouka in Bornou, to Sackatoo, the capital of the Felatah empire. London, John Murray, 1828.
2 vols, 8vo, I: pp. xii, [4], 471, [1]; II: pp. iv, 467, [1]; with 13 plates and 2 folding maps, illustrations in text; occasional light spotting, foxing on plates, some tears to map in vol. 1 and repair to verso; a good copy; bound in contemporary half calf with marbled boards, black morocco spine labels, turquoise endpapers, edges stained red; wear to spines, corners and edges, some rubbing to covers; with occasional stamps of the Free Public Library, Richmond, Surrey.
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Narrative of travels and discoveries in northern and central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824 … extending across the great desert to the tenth degree of northern latitude, and from Kouka in Bornou, to Sackatoo, the capital of the Felatah empire.
Third edition recounting the attempt of Dixon Denham (1786-1828), Hugh Clapperton (1788-1827) and Dr Walter Oudney (1790-1824) to trace the course of the Niger river. With previous attempts to trace the Niger having ended in disaster, Denham, Clapperton and Oudney were dispatched on an expedition in 1822 to approach the river from Tripoli. A veteran of Waterloo and a friend of the Duke of Wellington, Denham was given command but treated his colleagues with such contempt that he soured relations between them from the start. After being delayed at Murzuq, the party crossed the skeleton-littered Sahara and reached Kuka (Kukawa) in the kingdom of Bornu (later Nigeria) in February 1823. Here the party separated, with Clapperton and Oudney making for Kano and Denham investigating Lake Chad. Following Oudney’s death, Denham and Clapperton undertook a terrible desert crossing back to Tripoli and reached England in June 1825. Although it failed to find the Niger, the expedition opened much of north central Africa to European knowledge.
‘Denham, fêted in London as the hero of the expedition, and elected a fellow of the Royal Society, published his Narrative ... in which he suppressed as much as possible all mention of his companions, and took the credit for some of their discoveries. Written in a lively style, and embellished with engravings of his own sketches, it became one of the classics of its genre’ (ODNB).
A first edition was published in 1826; this edition, the third, appeared two years later. Although the title-page and preface continues to make reference merely to ‘the late Doctor Oudney’, the truth was that Clapperton himself had died the previous year while being detained in the Fulani capital of Sokoto, and that Denham would soon join his erstwhile companions (although we should not call them friends), when he succumbed to malaria in June 1828 in the British colony of Sierra Leone (of which he had shortly before been appointed governor-general).
Howgego C33/D18; Ibrahim Hilmy I, p. 172 (first edition).