Very rare first edition, illustrated with two frontispieces, eighteen plates, and a folding map table bound at the end of the second volume.
Scattered foxing.
Half black shagreen bindings, smooth spines tooled in blind with fillets and small ornaments, gilt lettering at the foot of the spines showing some rubbing, marbled paper boards, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, light rubbing to the extremities, sprinkled edges, contemporary bindings.
Born at Versailles in 1809, Anne Jean-Baptiste Raffenel entered the Naval administration in 1825.
After several voyages, notably to Africa, the West Indies and the United States, he was posted to Senegal and from 1843 explored the Falémé river together with the regions of Bondou and Bambouk.
The account of this expedition was published in 1846 under the title Voyage dans l'Afrique occidentale (1 vol. in-8 and 1 atlas in-4). That same year, the Ministry of the Navy entrusted Raffenel with a more ambitious mission: to cross the African continent from west to east, from Senegal to Egypt via the sources of the Nile.
Armed with detailed instructions from the Académie des Sciences and provided with significant funding, he reached the upper Senegal basin in 1847, travelled through Kaarta on the right bank of the river, but was refused access to the Niger by El-Hadj Omar.
Reaching the borders of Ségou, he was betrayed by his guides and handed over to the Bambara, who held him captive for eight months. He returned to France in June 1848.
During his captivity he gathered the material for his Nouveau voyage dans le pays des Nègres: "Non seulement cette relation renferme un tableau complet de l'état social, moral et politique du Soudan occidental, mais elle contient en outre d'utiles réflexions sur les réformes et améliorations à introduire dans le gouvernement du Sénégal" (Hoefer).