A voyage up the Senegal River to the Bambuhu Goldfields
Subtitle: photograph album
Published: 1900
Language: eng
Number of pages: 178
Other titles: Oran – Les Canaries – Le Sénégal  – Haut-Sénégal – Côte d’Ivoire
Description: Photograph album of a Voyage up the Senegal and Falémé Rivers to the Bambuhu (Bambouk)  Gold Fields, Showing Artisan Gold Mining on the Falémé River, Gold Digging under French Supervision in Sadiola and Sollan, Several Major Villages, their Chiefs, French “Mission’s” Camps, Tombaura Escarpment, Ethnographic Portraits of Native People, etc.]
Notes: Provisional cataloging from description supplied by vendor.

All photos with period pencil captions in French on the mounts. paper label with a handwritten title “Oran – Les Canaries – Les Senegal – Haut-Sénégal – Côte d’Ivoire” on the spine.  Five photos of Oran and Las Palmas and one photo of Saint Louis have been previously removed, binding mildly rubbed on extremities, boards with a couple of very minor stains, a couple of images are mildly faded.

Album depicting a voyage up the Senegal River and its tributary Falémé River to the Bambuhu/Bambouk goldfields known as sub-Saharan Africa’s major gold mining centre since the 12th century. In 1904-1921 the region was a part of the French colony of Upper Senegal and Niger (now the border region of eastern Senegal and western Mali). The compiler of the album – apparently a French official - went by a steamer of the local “Messageries fluviales” (three photos taken from a steamer show the quay in Saint Louis where it departed up the Senegal River). The traveller most likely worked for a French gold prospecting “mission” - several photos show its camps on the upper Falémé River - and reached as far south as Kéniéko (Mali) and as far east as the Tombaura Escarpment and the famous gold mines in Sadiola (both in Mali).

The vast majority of the photos illustrate the “Senegal-Mali” part of the voyage and start with the photos of a train of the Dakar - St. Louis Railway and the station at Pout, and seven photos of St. Louis (the Faidherbe Bridge, “place du gouvernement,” a street, the quay where the “Messageries fluviales” steamers depart, etc.) About twenty-five photos were taken during the voyage up the Senegal River before its confluence with the Falémé River and show the river banks, native scows and several villages - Podor (view from the river), Salde (street view, the ancient fort, native houses), Bakel (“grande place,” general view, the French post and its gun, native garrison posing in front of the post, the market square, two portraits of a Toucouleur/Tukulor woman), two villages on the Senegal between Bakel and the mouth of the Falémé River, etc.One hundred and twenty photos depict the trip up the Falémé River and to the Bambuhu goldfields. Interesting images show the villages of Senoudebou (four group portraits of the local chief and his suite with two portraits featuring the French, general view, “Cases de la concession de la Société”); Tomboura (featuring the French), Kakadian; Tantehoko village and “campemént de la mission” (three tents with a waving French flag, mission’s carpenter, Falémé River near the village, native people and huts, millet carriers and grinders, weavers, “place du village”); the mission’s porters resting at the Quida village; Faricounda (general view, two village scenes, six group portraits of teenage boys and dance scenes before the circumcision ceremony); Kakamba (two photos of quartz outcrops, village huts with a stuffed leopard - “fétiche”); Kolobo (native chief mounted on a horse, general view); Tintiba (Malinke with his quiver, a millet storage elevated on legs), &c. There are also numerous views of the Falémé riverbed on different locations (near Fatende, Dioubela, Moussala, Kenieko), the river’s banks and barrages, Falémé near the “Ouassa-Ouassa” and “Keniekenieba” islands, native canoes; fourteen views show the Tombaura Escarpment.About a dozen photos show the gold mines and village at Sadiola (“campement de la mission,” scenes of a tam-tam dance, workers at the gold mine, a local nobleman carrying a European umbrella, Sadiola chief, a griot with a musical instrument, a chief from Bourdala, etc.) About twenty images depict the native “artisan” gold mining on the banks of the Falémé River – a prospector digging a trench, a prospector at the river bank near Tantehoko, gold-bearing cliffs near Tantehoko, a prospector working with a picker, three photos of men washing and adjusting a rocker box, six photos of the Malinke girls washing gold-bearing sand (“laveuses de sables auriferes”), sand washers at Kolobo, gold diggers at Sollan supervised by French, and others.  Overall a visual source on the history of gold mining in the famous Bambuhu fields in the early 20th century.

Seven photos at the beginning were taken on the way to Dakar and show the port and quay of Oran (Algeria), Las Palmas, and a liner of the “Castle Line” en route to the Cape. Sixteen photos at rear show Conakry (Guinea), and several towns of Côte d'Ivoire - Sassandra, Grand-Lahou, Grand Bassam (the wharf, the bridge across the laguna, the boulevard, etc.) and the colonial capital Bingerville (the laguna, native houses), as well as a small government river steamer “Le Marigot.”.

Marbled endpapers.  Period brown quarter sheep with pebbled cloth boards.