The Heart of Africa : Three Years' Travels and Adventures in the Unexplored Regions of Central Africa, From 1868 to 1871 by Georg August Schweinfurth; Ellen Elizabeth Frewer; William Winwood Reade - 1873-01-01

London, Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1873-01-01. Hardcover. Very Good. Octavo. xvi, errata, map, 559p., ill. pl.; x., map, 521p., ill. pl. Bound in modern green leather. Green cloth boards. Gilt lettering on red cloth label. Good binding and cover. Minimal shelfwear. Cut to title page bottom, most likely owners signature removal. Clean, unmarked pages. Maps are in excellent condition. Hilmy II, p. 225; Gay, 2568. Czech, p. 144. <br><br> Georg August Schweinfurth, was German botanist and traveler who explored the region of the upper Nile River basin known as the Baḥr al Ghazāl and discovered the Uele River, a tributary of the Congo. On his return to Berlin in 1866, from his first venture into Africa, he obtained a grant permitting him to conduct a botanical exploration in the Baḥr al Ghazāl region. In January of 1869 he went back by way of Suakin to Khartoum, where he began his ascent of the White Nile River and then ventured into the southwestern Sudan region with a party of ivory traders. He visited the Bongo and Mangbetu peoples as well as the allegedly cannibalistic Naim-Naim, who filed their teeth to points. He also provided the first authoritative account of the Congo Pygmies. Schweinfurth crossed the Nile-Congo watershed and, in March 1870, reached the westward-flowing Uele River, an affluent of the Congo, which he mistook for a part of the Niger River. His discovery of the Uele, however, helped toward a final estimate of the extent of the Nile system.