Journal of an Expedition up the Niger and Tshadda Rivers

An 1854 expedition to West Africa as experienced by the Sierra Leonean clergyman and linguist Samuel Crowther.

Written in 1855 from the unusual perspective of a freed slave turned linguist and clergyman, this eventful journal charts the steamboat Pleiad's expedition along the rivers of West Africa. It contains a detailed account of the explorers' interactions with native peoples and their encounters with slavery and tribal conflict.Captured by slavers as a boy, freed by the Royal Navy, and raised at a mission, Samuel Crowther in 1864 became the first African to be ordained as an Anglican bishop. As a priest, he accompanied the Scottish merchant MacGregor Laird on his expedition to West Africa in 1854, and celebrated Sunday services in a variety of bizarre locations and perilous conditions. This 1855 book is Crowther's detailed record of his journey aboard the steamboat Pleiad. Written from the unusual perspective of an African-born, London-educated clergyman, it is a congenial and evocative account of the day-to-day difficulties confronting the explorers, their interactions with native peoples, and encounters with slavery and civil war. Crowther, a keen linguist, went on to publish several books on African languages including Nupe, Igbo and Yoruba. This book includes a substantial appendix comparing the grammar and vocabularies of the languages he encountered.