HORNEMANN, FRIEDERICH KONRAD

born , September 1772, Hildesheim, Hanover died February 1801, Nupe kingdom [now in Nigeria] the first modern European to make the dangerous crossing of the northeastern Sahara. His journal, later published, contained a substantial amount of information on the then-unknown terrain and inhabitants of the central Sudan and western Sahara. In London (1796) he offered to serve as an explorer for the African Association. Disguised as a Muslim, on Sept. 5, 1798, at Cairo, he joined a caravan returning from Mecca and bound for the Maghrib (northwestern Africa). He traveled by way of the Siwa Oasis, Egypt, and Temissa, Fezzan, and reached Marzuq (now in Libya) on Nov. 17, 1798. There he remained until June 1799, when he went to Tripoli (now in Libya) to send his journals to London. He returned to Marzuq with the intention of traveling southward to the country of the Hausa people, now chiefly within Nigeria. Nothing more was heard of him until a report reached Marzuq in 1819 that he had reached Noofy (Nupe) and had died there in February 1801. An English translation of his journal, The Journal of Frederich Hornemann's Travels from Cairo to Mourzouck, appeared in 1802.