Entries tagged with: west africa
3 result(s) displayed (1 - 3 of 3):
Circumnavigation of Africa
The truth is that it would be as easy to name the discoverer of gunpowder or steam-power as to find the first circumnavigator of the African continent. I have no difficulty in believing that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians were capable of making the voyage. They were followed to West Africa in early days, according to El-Idrisi and Ibn. el-Wardi, by the Arabs. The former (late eleventh century) relates that an Arab expedition sailed from Lisbon, shortly after the eighth century, and named Madeira and Porto Santo the ’Islands El-Ghanam and Rákah.’ However that may be, the first Portuguese occupants found neither men nor ruins nor large quadrupeds upon any of the group. The English accident of hitting upon Madeira, and the romantic tale of Master Robert à Machim, or Machin, or Macham, and Mistress Anne d’Arfet, or Darby, or Dorset, which would have suited Camoens, and which I have told...
Posted on May 31, 2007 3:27 PM
Wanderings in West Africa Excerpt
The following extract from ’Wanderings in West Africa,’ a book which I wrote in 1862 and published (anonymously) in 1863, will best explain the reasons which lately sent me to Western Africa:– In several countries, for instance, Dinkira, Tueful, Wásá (Wassaw), and especially Akim, the hill-region lying north of Accra, the people are still active in digging gold. The pits, varying from two to three feet in diameter, and from twelve to fifty deep (eighty feet is the extreme), are often so near the roads that loss of life has been the result. ’Shoring up’ being little known, the miners are not unfrequently buried alive. The stuff is drawn up by ropes in clay pots, or calabashes, and thus a workman at the bottom widens the pit to a pyriform shape; tunnelling, however, is unknown. The excavated earth is carried down to be washed. Besides sinking these holes, they pan...
Posted on May 30, 2007 12:27 PM
Gold Coast Cover
To the Gold Coast for Gold, A Personal Narrative by Richard F. Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron In Two Volumes–Vol. I. TO OUR EXCELLENT FRIEND JAMES IRVINE (OF LIVERPOOL, F.R.G.S, F.S.A, &C.) WE INSCRIBE THESE PAGES AS A TOKEN OF OUR APPRECIATION AND ADMIRATION FOR HIS COURAGE AND ENERGY IN OPENING AND WORKING THE GOLDEN LANDS OF WESTERN AFRICA ’Much have I travelled in the realms of gold’ Shakespeare...
Posted on May 29, 2007 6:13 PM
Movable Type search results powered by Fast Search