Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

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[163] and the Adirondacks in 1850, and others gave accounts of the splendid ‘wilderness’ of Northern New York, it remained for W. H. H. Murray, a clergyman, to stir up sportsmen and travellers on this topic with his enthusiastic book on the region, Adventures in the wilderness, or camp life in the Adirondacks (1869), which earned for him the title of ‘Adirondack’ Murray.

American travellers and explorers extended their researches to the veritable ends of the earth, and their literary product was enormous. Africa came in for examination, too. Paul B. DuChaillu explored in West Africa in 1855-59 and reported the surprising gorilla; and in 1863-65 he reported pygmies, both bringing the reproach of prevarication against him. He was not long in being vindicated. He published Explorations and adventures in Equatorial Africa (1861), A journey to Ashango land (1867), The country of the Dwarfs (1872), and Stories of the gorilla country (1868). Then he turned his attention to the north and gave us The land of the Midnight Sun (1881), The Viking age (1889), The land of the long Night (1899).

An American newspaper correspondent was sent to seek the lost Livingstone, and Henry M. Stanley tells his remarkable story in How I found Livingstone (1872). He became the foremost African explorer, and wrote Coomassie and Magdala (1874), through the dark Continent (1878), in Darkest Africa (1890), the Congo and the founding of its free State (1885). This ‘free’ state turned out to be anything but free and became the centre of a storm of controversy. The story of the Congo free State (1905) by H. W. Wack controverts the charges, but those who know refuse to accept it.

Another part of Africa long had received attention: Egypt. The list of American travellers and explorers in that ancient land is almost beyond recording. Here again Bayard Taylor is found with his A journey to Central Africa (1854), and George W. Curtis¹ wrote Nile notes of a Howadji (1851); W. C. Prime gives us Boat life in Egypt and Nubia (1868); Bishop Potter, The Gates of the East, or a Winter in Egypt (1876).

But the most prominent American in the Egyptian region was Charles Chaille — Long, who carried on some extensive explorations along the upper Nile. His chief literary works are: Central Africa . . . an account of expeditions to Lake Victoria