Wanderings in West Africa from Liverpool to Fernando Po
By a F.R.G.S.

In this 1863 work, explorer Sir Richard Burton recounts life, work and death in nineteenth-century West Africa.

Richard Francis Burton (Author)

9781108030519, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 17 April 2011

322 pages, 1 map
21.6 x 14 x 1.8 cm, 0.41 kg

Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) was a British explorer, writer and ethnologist best known for his travels in Asia and Africa in the nineteenth century. This is his account, originally published in 1863, of his mission to investigate mortality in West Africa. In Volume 1 he describes his departure from England, with accounts of the landscapes, buildings, cultures and cuisines that characterized his journey from Liverpool through Madeira and Tenerife, before recalling his first impressions of Africa on arriving in Bathurst on the Eastern Cape. In the final two chapters he recounts his findings in Sierra Leone and Cape Palmas, revealing how the positioning of settlements exposed their inhabitants to disease, adverse weather conditions, poverty and malnourishment. Set within a fascinating historical, political and cultural context, and written in vivid detail, Burton's memoirs remain of great interest and relevance to anthropologists, historians and geographers today.

Preface
1. Outward bound
2. A day at Madeira
3. A day at Tenerife
4. A day at St. Mary's, Bathurst
5. Three days at Freetown, Sierra Leone
6. Six hours at the Cape of Cocoa Palms.

Subject Areas: African history [HBJH]