Across Africa

The first European to cross Central Africa from East to West. V.L. Cameron's Across Africa is essential reading for anyone interested in the exploration of the then Dark Continent. In 1875 Verney Lovett Cameron staggered into Loanda, in then Portuguese West Africa. He was the first European to cross the continent from East to West, suffering starvation, disease and malaria on the way - as well as being embroiled in a native African war en route. Of his two British companions, one turned back before the Tanganyika - and the other shot himself as he could not take it any more. Not only an epic tale of exploration of the then Dark Continent, Across Africa describes the horrors of the slave trade in pre-colonial Africa at first hand.