James Hingston Tuckey. Narrative of an Expedition to Explore the River Zaire, Usually Called the Congo, in South Africa,...

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Tuckey's Doomed Expedition to Explore the Niger

James Hingston Tuckey. Narrative of an Expedition to Explore the River Zaire, Usually Called the Congo, in South Africa, in 1816, Under the Direction of Captain J.K. Tuckey, R.N. London: John Murray, 1818.

First edition. Quarto. lxxxii, 498 pages. Complete with one folding map and thirteen engraved plates, one of which is hand-colored.

Contemporary red paper boards with green morocco spine label. Rubbing and wear to extremities; chipping at spine ends. Toning to page edges with mild, scattered foxing throughout. Bookplates on front pastedown. Housed in a custom clamshell box. A very good copy.

The Rosebery/Beckford copy with Beckford's pencil annotations on the front free endpaper. Captain Tuckey, in a specially built vessel, the Congo, sailed for Africa with dual tasks. The first was to determine if the Niger and Congo rivers were directly linked. The second was to assess the potential for developing trade with the peoples of the Congo Basin. The Congo sailed as far as the cataracts, but Tuckey was ultimately forced to travel overland. The expedition was severely curtailed when he and many of his crew were struck down by yellow fever. Tuckey's death ensured that the upper reaches of the Congo remained largely uncharted until Richard Lander later disproved the linked river hypotheses. In 1830, Lander was finally able to prove that the Congo and Niger never directly linked. From the Professor John Ralph Willis Collection of Rare Africana.