Long’s Naked Truth
LONG, Charles Chaillé.
Central Africa: naked truths of naked people. An account of expeditions to the Lake Victoria Nyanza and the Makraka Niam-Niam, west of the Bahr-El-Abiad (White Nile). New York, Harper & Brothers, 1877.
8vo, pp. xv, [1], 330, 6 (publisher’s catalogue); with 21 illustrations, both in text and plates, and 1 folding map; toned, some quires a little loose; good in publisher’s blue cloth with gilt vignette on upper cover, gilt lettering on spine, publisher’s monogram stamped in blind on lower cover, brown endpapers; some wear to extremities and light marks to covers.
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Central Africa: naked truths of naked people. An account of expeditions to the Lake Victoria Nyanza and the Makraka Niam-Niam, west of the Bahr-El-Abiad (White Nile).
First American edition recounting Charles Chaillé Long’s expedition from south Sudan through Uganda to Lake Victoria, featuring one of the great subtitles of nineteenth-century exploration literature.
Long (also written ‘Chaillé-Long’) left Cairo alongside General Charles Gordon in February 1874, travelling to the Sudanese outpost of Gondokoro, just outside of Khartoum. From there he proceeded southwards into Uganda with the intention of signing a new treaty, on behalf of the Khedive of Egypt, with Muteesa I of Buganda (or ‘M’Tsé’), and with the hope of doing some more exploring on the way. Long eventually got as far south as Lake Victoria, before returning to Khartoum via Kuruma Falls and Lake Ibrahim. His account is filled not only with a description of his perilous journey but also (as the subtitle would suggest) with numerous observations and sketches of the different tribes Long encountered along the journey.
The first edition of Long’s account was published in London in 1876; this, the first American edition, was published the following year.