Beschreibung:

Autograph letter signed (“H. Barth Dr”), in English, “to Mr Crowe, H. Br. M´s Consul general in Tripoli”, written when preparing to set off into the interior of Africa, complaining that “The tenth of March, the day we fixed upon as the approximate term of our setting out on the expedition is gone and we do not yet see any propability, [sic] that we shall start very soon”, even though their intruments “without which we could not start” have at last arrived (“...at present there are not even the news of a caravan approaching...This uncertainty is indeed not enough to be lamented on, as the most favorable season of the year is passing by and as the very small means, which the British Government has placed at our disposal and whose scarcity is merely founded on the supposition of our going straight on, are wasted here...I beg You, dear Sir, to send to day...an official note to Mr Silver and to ask him, if he has any certain news about the caravan´s coming...If Mr Silver has no certain news, I for my part declare it impossible, to wait any longer for the caravan, and I am sure it will be possible, to get camels enough, to proceed on our way to Murzuk...”), and expressing his obligation for anything he can do “for the success of this Your Government´s expedition”, two pages, 8vo, integral blank, guard, “Austrian Consulate the 11th March 1850” BARTH PREPARES TO CROSS AFRICA ON HIS GREAT EXPEDITION OF 1850-55. The expedition had been sponsored by the British Government in an effort to suppress slavery, but in the event much of it was to be undertaken by Barth single-handed after the deaths of his fellow German Adolf Overweg and the expedition´s British leader James Richardson. Barth´s was one of the most fruitful journeys ever undertaken in Africa: in addition to crossing the Sahara, he was to traverse the country from Lake Chad and Bagirmi in the east to Timbuktu in the west, and travel as far as Cameroon in the south (covering some twelve thousand miles, including much of what is now Nigeria); during the course of which he made a minute study not only of history and topography of the lands through which he travelled, but of their peoples. He described his five-year journey in Travels and Discoveries in the North and Central Africa: being a journal of an expedition undertaken under the auspices of H.B.M.´s Government in the years 1849-1855 (1857-58). American Book Prices Current lists no manuscript by Barth having been sold at auction, nor were any included in the recent Spiro and Keynes sales.