Alexander Keith Johnston (cartographer, 1844)

Alexander Keith Johnston (born November 24, 1844 in Edinburgh , † June 28, 1879 at Rufiji , East Africa ) was a Scottish cartographer and explorer .

Life

Alexander Keith Johnston, son of the cartographer of the same name Alexander Keith Johnston (1804–1871), enjoyed his father's lessons. He also stayed in Germany (Leipzig) for a long time for his training, then published several smaller treatises and maps on physical geography and undertook a long research trip to Paraguay from 1874 to 1875.

Then he turned mainly to Africa, which he dealt with in a volume written for Stanford's Compendium of geography and travel in 1878 (3rd edition by Ravenstein, 1884), and constructed an excellent General Map of Africa published in 1879 .

In 1878 the London Geographical Society entrusted him with the management of an expedition which opened a path to the northern end of Lake Nyassa and later explored the unknown land between Lake Nyassa and Lake Tanganyika.

After visiting the mountains of Usambara from Zanzibar and making inquiries about the route to be followed, he began the march from Dar es Salaam on May 14, 1879 , but died on June 28 in Berobero, only about 200 km inland Dysentery .

Joseph Thomson , the second in command, took over the lead and led the expedition both to Nyassa and further north through the country of Uhehe to the southern end of Lake Tanganyika. His biography can be found in Joseph Thomson's travel book To the central African Lakes and back (1881).

Works

• Africa . Ed. and extended by Keith Johnston. With ethnolog. appendix by AH Keane. London: Stanford, 1878. Stanford's Compendium of geography and travel.
• A short geography of Africa for the use of candidates at the Cambridge local and other examinations . 2nd ed.London: Stanford, 1889.

literature

• James McCarthy: Journey into Africa: The Life and Death of Keith Johnston, Scottish Cartographer and Explorer (1844–1879) . Caithness, Scotland: Whittles Publishers, 2004, ISBN 1-904445-01-2 .

This article is based on a text in the public domain from Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition from 1888 to 1890.

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