Item Detail
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3381
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Kingsley, Mary
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A.L.S. "H.B.M. Consulate, Old Calabar, West Africa 12-3-95." To "My Dear Rose"
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8vo
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8 pages
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Vault MSS SC 673
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A remarkable letter. This lady, niece of Charles and Henry Kingsley, novelists, was one of those extraordinarily intrepid lady travellers which only England seems able to produce. She travelled alone among the most cannibalistic tribes of West Africans. She wrote two books on this part of the world before dying at an early age. Her letters are very scarce. In this letter she speaks at great length (close to 1,300 words) of her activities in Old Calabar and other places in West Africa. ...You have no conception of the unaltered state of savagery this region is in...This Brass outbreak has been a demonstration to the full. Brass has been under missionary influence for years and years and yet they turned to the other day and killed and eat seventy Kru men prisoners in cold blood. Civilization just peeped out in one or two chiefs who had their Kru-men done up into curry or collops in