Eugen Zintgraff (born 16 January 1858 in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

; died 4 December 1897 on

Tenerife Tenerife ( ; ; formerly spelled ''Teneriffe'') is the largest and most populous island of the Canary Islands, an Autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community of Spain. With a land area of and a population of 965,575 inhabitants as of A ...

) was a German explorer.

Work

In 1886, he was sent by the

German Foreign Ministry The Federal Foreign Office (, ; abbreviated AA) is the foreign ministry of the Federal Republic of Germany, a federal agency responsible for both the country's foreign policy and its relationship with the European Union. It is a cabinet-level ...

to carry out the first hinterland explorations in

Kamerun Kamerun was an African colony of the German Empire from 1884 to 1916 in the region of today's Republic of Cameroon. Kamerun also included northern parts of Gabon and the Congo with western parts of the Central African Republic, southwestern ...

. He ascended the

Wouri River The Wouri (also Vouri or Vuri) is a river in Cameroon. The Wouri forms at the confluence of the rivers Nkam River, Nkam and Makombé River, Makombé, northeast of the city of Yabassi. It then flows about southeast to the Wouri estuary at Douala ...

as far as the cataract of Jabassi. He also traced the course of the Old Calabar River into the country of the Banyang and established Batom station. In 1889 Zintgraff embarked on a major expedition to the northeast, becoming the first European to break out of the coastal jungles of

Cameroons British Cameroons or British Cameroon was a British mandate territory in British West Africa, formed of the Northern Cameroons and Southern Cameroons. Today, the Northern Cameroons forms parts of the Borno, Adamawa and Taraba states of Nigeri ...

, climbed into Babessong (Ashong) from where his party traveled to

Bali Nyonga Bali Nyonga is a town in the Northwest Region of the country Cameroon on the West Central borders on the continent of Africa. It is the home of the Bali Nyonga, a people of the Chamba Leko group - an entity that migrated from Chamba around 1600. ...

. Proceeding even further north, he arrived at the end of May 1888 at Ibi on the

Benue River Benue River (), previously known as the Chadda River or Tchadda, is a major tributary of the Niger River. The size of its catchment basin is 319,000 km2 (123,000 sq mi). Almost its entire length of Approximation, approximately is navigable dur ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zintgraff, Eugen German explorers of Africa People from Düsseldorf 1858 births 1897 deaths Explorers from the German Empire 19th-century German explorers