A detail from one of our highlights going to the Olympia Book Fair - remarkable original artworks, d

A detail from one of our highlights going to the Olympia Book Fair - remarkable original artworks, depicting an expedition in Central Africa. A detail of some of the original drawings and watercolours for the Charles S. L. Bateman’s book ’The First Ascent of the Kasai: being some Records of service Under the Lone Star’. The First Ascent of the Kasai … was published in 1889 — a handsomely illustrated volume that recorded the author’s part in an expedition to determine where the waters of the Kasai River emptied themselves. Charles Somerville LaTrobe Bateman joined the so-called ‘German Expedition’ (despatched by the Geographical Society of Berlin under the commission of Leopold II) on the return-leg of the river-voyage, which had succeeded in its initial aim of descending the Kasai to the Congo at Kwamouth; thereby confirming the Kasai as a tributary to the great river. Bateman and the expedition leader, Dr. Wolf, were tasked with ascending the Kasai in order to return the Bashilange-Baluba people (who had acted as guides for the descent) to their homeland at the headwaters of the river. Once there they had a second objective to fulfil: to establish a station at the confluence of the Lulua with Luebo, as a port for the station of Luluaburg. In addition to his primary duties as second-in-command to Wolf, Bateman found time to create a remarkable visual record of the expedition, that passed through the territories of the Chiplumba, Basongo-Meno, Bakuba and Bakete tribes. His drawings, watercolours and etchings of the native peoples, flora and fauna and river scenes, recorded things never before depicted (and in some cases seen) by Europeans. They subsequently provided the basis for the excellent plates in his book, which illustrate, inter alia, Hippopotami on the southern shore of Stanley Pool, Bakuba cups and knives, Lulua fish and Bakete hunters. -- source link

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