Mary Kingsley · 1897 · river
Mary Kingsley's 1897 book. A Victorian woman who had spent thirty years keeping house sailed for West Africa alone after her parents died, traded cloth and fish-hooks up the rivers of Gabon, canoed the rapids of the Ogooue among the Fang, and climbed Mount Cameroon by a face nobody had used - throughout in a long black skirt, which she insisted saved her life.
- 1Liverpool
With both parents dead and a life of nursing them behind her, Mary Kingsley takes ship for West Africa - a coast whose reputation among Liverpool traders was such that they advised her, seriously, to make a will first.
- 2Freetown
She works down the coast learning the trade that will pay for the journey, buying and selling cloth, tobacco and hooks - which she preferred to travelling as a guest, because a trader is dealt with honestly and a lady is not.
- 3Libreville
In Gabon she collects fish and beetles for the British Museum, several species new to science, and travels among peoples the coast Europeans had opinions about and no acquaintance with.
- 4Lambarene
Up the Ogooue by canoe through rapids and into Fang country, trading her way from village to village - falling into a game pit and being saved, she noted, by the thickness of a good Victorian skirt.
- 5Mount Cameroon
She finishes by climbing Mount Cameroon, thirteen thousand feet, by the south-east face which no European had attempted - reaching the top in cloud, seeing nothing whatever, and recording the fact without complaint.