Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890)

WEST AFRICA 1861-62 On January 22, 1861, just a month after his return from America, Burton was married to Miss Isabel Arundell. In spite of continuous lobbying for the position of consul in Damascus, he was offered the desultory post of Her Majesty's Consul for Fernando Po and the Bight of Biafra by the then Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell. He accepted the post at the end of March and departed on the African Steam Ship Blackland from Liverpool at the end of August. The voyage took him down the west coast of Africa and included brief stops at Freetown, Sierra Leone, The Cape of Cocoa Palms, Cape Coast Castle and Lagos. En route Burton wrote (and sketched) an account of the voyage and penned the preface at Fernando Po in December 1862. The resulting Wanderings in West Africa from Liverpool to Fernando Po was published in two volumes in London the following year. The volumes were conceived as part travellers handbook ('In writing these pages, then, it has been my object to lay down what a tolerably active voyager can see and do during the few hours allowed to him by the halt of the mail packet' ibid., Preface) and part investigation of 'the subject of West African mortality', this latter an ever present threat along the regions pestilential coast. His two volumes identify its causes ('principally the bad positions of the settlements') and discuss the local topography, climate, peoples, customs and trade. Shortly after arrival at Fernando Po, a trip to Lagos for provisions extends into a fully fledged diplomatic mission to Abeokuta to assuage the local chieftain and, on the return to Fernando Po, Burton's first ascent of the highest of the Cameroons mountains. His observations, surveys and sketches comprise his next two volumes, Abeokuta and the Camaroons Mountains (London, 1863). The second volume is essentially a geographical reconnoiter, though the preface insists 'The desire for adventure was subsidiary to higher views' and he does propose a cure for the 'yellow fever haunted coast' in the healthier high ground of the Cameroons, returning to the inevitable subject of mortality in West Africa LIVERPOOL TO FERNANDO PO None of the following four lots illustrating scenes described in Wanderings in West Africa were engraved, the two volumes featuring only one map (The West Coast of Africa) and one illustration (The Juju, or Sacrifice House, Grand Bonny River, from a Sketch by the Author)

Details

Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890)

Freetown, Sierra Leone, from the Sea, 1861

pencil, pen and ink on two joined sheets
5 x 13 7/8in. (12.7 x 35.2cm.)
with annotations by Burton describing four of the principal buildings "Govt. House", "Hospital", "Hospital" and "Jail" and the ship Athenia at anchor. The latter is probably the Athenian of the African Steam Ship Line

Lot Essay

The peninsula of Sierra Leone was first settled in 1787 by Captain Thomson with four hundred freed slaves and sixty Europeans following a proposal to found a colony of liberated African slaves. After several false starts it transferred its right to the Crown in 1807 and the inhabitants depended on trade centred at Freetown

'Nothing can be viler than the site selected for Freetown ... This capital of the unhappy colony lies on the north coast of the S'a Leone peninsula on a gentle declivity ... The principal buildings are placed to catch the sea breeze. Here, as at Zanzibar, the temperature becomes unendurable where the wind cannot reach. Those that strike the eye, beginning from the right, are as follows ... the gaol, a large barn-like structure, faced with a plain black wall. The Colonial Hospital, a kind of bungalow, fronts King Jimmy's bridge, a long causeway through whose single central arch a rivulet of sparkling water finds its way to the sea. At the mouth of the little ravine lies the crowded fish-market, upon a sandy turf scattered over with boats and canoes. On the left of the bridge is a mass of tall buildings ... Between the warehouses, but on a higher level ... is St. George's, once a church, but now promoted to Cathedralcy ... The back ground is a green curtain of grass and fruit trees ... The ground rises gently, but decidedly, with a grassy explanade, cut by red paths to the Barracks that crown the crest of a lumpy hill. Halfway up the ascent is Government House ... on the right, at some distance, is the Military Hospital...' (R.F. Burton, Wanderings in West Africa from Liverpool to Fernando Po, London, 1863, I, pp. 201-6)

More from Topographical Pictures

View All