In the foreground, men paddle a canoe and in the background were several empty boats with fishing nets. This engraving is based on a sketch by Denham of Shari, or Chari, peoples in the Central Savanna region. Dixon Denham (1786–1828) was an English soldier and explorer. After serving in the Napoleonic Wars, Denham volunteered in 1821 to join Walter Oudney and Hugh Clapperton on an official expedition across the Sahara from Tripoli to in the Lake Chad basin of the Central Savanna region. After enduring danger and privation, they arrived at Kuka, the capital of Bornu, in 1823. While Clapperton and Oudney set out on a journey westward, Denham traveled the shores of Lake Chad and the lower courses of the Waubé, Chari and Logone rivers. After returning to England in 1825, Denham became the superintendent of Liberated Africans in Freetown in 1827, and the year after, he became governor of Sierra Leone.
Fishing Boats of the Shary
SI-OB-823
1822-1824
Fishing Boats of the Shary
Dixon Denham, Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824 (London: John Murray, 1826), facing p. 229.
English
Pre-Colonial Africa: Society, Polity, Culture
Africa--Central Savanna
Jerome Handler; Michael Tuite; Henry B. Lovejoy Graduate Research Assistants: Tiffany Beebe; Travis May
5-Apr-16; 21-Aug-19
Denham002