Heinrich Barth · 1857 · overland

Heinrich Barth's five volumes, published in 1857 and among the most reliable accounts of Africa written in the nineteenth century - because he learned the languages, checked what he was told, and went home without a legend. Five and a half years, eleven thousand miles, and almost no readers.

1. 1
   Tripoli

   March 1850, and a British expedition leaves for the interior with Barth as one of two Germans attached to it - the leader dead within a year, the other German dead soon after, and Barth continuing alone for four more.

2. 2
   Murzuk

   The Fezzan, and the caravan south - Barth almost dying of thirst within weeks after walking off alone to climb a hill and losing the route, which he describes with a scientist's calm.

3. 3
   Ghat

   The Tuareg oasis, and the beginning of the relationships that made the whole journey possible - Barth learning Arabic, Tamasheq, Kanuri, Hausa and Fulfulde, which is why his account is worth what it is.

4. 4
   Agadez

   The Air massif, and the first European to reach the city - a month there, a plan of the place, and a copy made of the Agadez chronicle, which is now the main source for its history.

5. 5
   Kano

   The great Hausa trading city, described in a chapter that runs to fifty pages - markets, dye pits, cloth production, the slave trade, and a population estimate historians of West Africa still use.

6. 6
   Kukawa

   Bornu, and the base for the next three years - the Shehu tolerating a Christian in his capital, and Barth accompanying slave raids he found appalling and recorded in full.

7. 7
   Lake Chad

   Surveyed and its shifting shoreline mapped - and beyond it the Bagirmi country, where Barth was detained for two months and lost most of what he had collected.

8. 8
   Yola

   South into Adamawa and the Benue, and the first European to see it - establishing that the Benue is a tributary of the Niger, which settled a question London had been arguing about for fifty years.

9. 9
   Timbuktu

   West across the Sahel and the Niger to the city Laing had been killed reaching and Caillie had barely survived - Barth living there six months under the protection of a sheikh who hid him from those who wanted him dead.

10. 10
    Say

    The long road back east along the Niger, and then across to Bornu - by which time Barth had been given up for dead in England and his obituaries written.

11. 11
    Tripoli

    August 1855, five and a half years out and eleven thousand miles travelled - and five volumes published in 1857 that nobody read, in a Britain that wanted an explorer with a simpler story.