Penguin Classic History S.
2 total works
The story of the Nile, from the Mountains of the Moon to the Mediterranean. The tale starts with Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke setting out to find the sources of the Nile. It continues with Baker of the Nile and his wife struggling with malaria, and of the famous greeting between Stanley and Livingstone. The book examines the results of their discoveries: the building of the Suez canal; the Khedive Ismail's appointment of Gordon as Governor-General of Sudan; and the story of the last days of Khartoum. The book concludes with Kitchener's military success at Omdurman which made Queen Victoria the ruler of the huge area from Alexandria to the highlands of Uganda and which resulted in the Nile being, for the first tiem, an open highway from Central Africa to the sea.
When Captain Cook entered the Pacific in 1769, it was a virgin ocean, pristine and savage, and its inhabitants lived a life of primeval innocence. Seventy years later, firearms, disease and alcohol had hammered away at this way of life until it crumbled before them, and where satan had sown. the protestant missionaries reaped. In this work, Alan Moorehead tells the tragic story of a great adventure which turned sour, in which good intentions led to disaster, corruption and annihilation. And ironically it was Cook, the greatest and most humane explorer of his day, who was to cause the fatal impact.