Savage Africa: being the narrative of a tour in equatorial, southwestern, and northwestern Africa....
New York: Harper and Brothers, 1864. 8vo. 452 pp., plus 6 pages of publisher’s advertisements. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. Folding map plus 28 text illustrations. Publisher’s original cloth, spine faded with very small tear at bottom; some browning on the first few (blank) leaves, otherwise an excellent copy. Item #15278
First American edition. At the age of 25, the author traveled to Africa using for the most part his own funds. He spent several months observing gorillas in South Africa and Angola, and provides some of the earliest depictions of gorillas and their habits, only a few years after the publication of Paul Du Chaillu’s description of the first sighting of a living gorilla by a western explorer. In addition to gorillas, he describes the people, culture, and way of life in Western Africa, with chapters covering cannibalism, the slave trade, fever and malaria, Sierra Leone, drugged elephants, Niger, the Congo and more. A popular success, the book helped to create the popular notion that Africa, the “dark” continent, was replete with savage beasts as well as natives.
Reade (1838-1875), a fellow of the Geographical and Anthropological Societies of London, was a British historian, explorer and philosopher. He was a frequent correspondent with Darwin, who utilized some of the information on expression of emotions and sexual characteristics provided to him by Reade in The descent of man (1871).
Price: $300.00