BY THE FIRST AFRICAN BISHOP IN THE ANGLICAN CHURCH
CROWTHER, Samuel Ajayi.
Journal of an Expedition up the Niger and Tshadda Rivers, undertaken by Macgregor Laird, Esq. in connection with the British Government, in 1854 …
London, T.C. Johns for Church Missionary House and Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1855.
8vo, pp. xxiii, [1], 234; one engraved folding map by John Arrowsmith; occasional light foxing, particularly to map, slight stain to pp. 172-3; overall very good in original dark blue embossed cloth by Kelly & Sons, London, spine lettered in gilt, yellow endpapers.
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Journal of an Expedition up the Niger and Tshadda Rivers, undertaken by Macgregor Laird, Esq. in connection with the British Government, in 1854 …
First edition, a very nice copy, of this journal of the 1854 British Niger expedition by the Nigerian traveller and linguist Samuel Crowther (c. 1807–1891), who would later become the first African bishop in the Anglican Church.
Of Yoruba parentage, Crowther was sold to Portuguese slavers in 1822 but was freed by the Royal Navy and cared for by the Church Missionary Society. In 1827 he returned to Africa to study and then tutor at Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone. An interpreter for the ill-fated 1841 Niger expedition, Crowther undertook pioneering studies of the Yoruba and other Nigerian languages. In 1864 he was consecrated bishop of Western Africa.
This Journal records Crowther’s experiences on the expedition undertaken by the Scottish explorers Macgregor Laird (1808–1861) and William Balfour Baikie (1825–1864) up the Niger and Benue rivers as far as Muri, providing much information on the local tribes and their languages, with word lists at the end. Thanks to the pioneering use of quinine, as advocated by Baikie, not a single member of the party died.
Hess & Coger 7015.
