On the Threshold of Central Africa. A record of twenty years' pioneering among the Barotsi of the Upper Zambesi.
Year: 1897
Edition: First edition
Publisher: London; Hodder & Stoughton
Category: Africa
Original cloth gilt, 8vo., pp. (2), xxxiv, 663, (1), 2 (ads).
Hinges weak, missionary library label on inner frontboard, discrete number on foot of spine, name on title page, head and tail of spine as well as corners bumped, a small closed tear in the inner margin of the map and another one (6 cm) on a fold.
English translation of "Sur le Haut-Zambèze: Voyages et travaux de Mission."
This book was translated by the author's niece Catherine Winkworth Mackintosh, yet precedes the first French edition by one year.
There are 44 photographs h.t. and a coloured folding map.
François Coillard was born in Asnières-les-Bourges the 17th July 1834 and died at Lialui on May 27th 1904. In 1857 he went to Basutoland to serve as a missionary. In 1877 he made a northward journey through the Transvaal and across the Limpopo to Banyais country. From there he went Southwest to Shosong and from here, continuing alongside the borders of the Kalahari Desert, he reached the Sambezi River near the Victoria Falls where he met the Portuguese explorer Alexandre Alberto da Rocha de Serpa Pinto.
In 1884 he visited the Zambezi River region again and made further explorations.
Mendelssohn: "Mr. Coillard appears to have been a tactful and resourceful man, and his accounts of the customs of the natives, and of the political questions affecting the countries in which he resided, make the volume very useful as a reference work."Hess & Coger 5319, Hosken p. 48, Mendelssohn I, p. 351-2 (for the second edition of 1902).
Click on a picture to enlarge.
