sahara desert

In 1850 Heinrich Barth joined a small British expedition into unexplored regions of Islamic North and Central Africa. One by one his companions died and Barth alone eventually reached Timbuktu. His five and a half year 10,000 mile journey ranks among the greatest journeys in exploration and his discoveries are considered indispensible by modern scholars of Africa.

In 1880 the French government ordered a surveying expedition for a railway that would bring the fabulous wealth of Timbuktu in French Sudan to Paris. The expedition was a fiasco. Under-armed in hostile territory, native guides led the one-hundred man expedition into an ambush that stranded them without camels or supplies in the deserts of southern Algeria. Only a dozen malnourished men lived to tell their tale.

In 1815, the merchant ship, Commerce in Connecticut, with a crew of twelve men, set sail for the Cape Verde Islands after a brief stopover in Gibraltar. Weather and unfamiliar surroundings caused the ship to wreck on the inhospitable coast of Mauretania. Taken as slaves by regional nomads and separated (some never to be seen again), the twelve sailors endured great hardships. The book is based on an account of Captain Riley's ordeal: nine weeks of captivity, traveling inland nearly 800 miles, and finally to Morocco where he was ransomed by an American consul.

Michael Benanav recounts the experiences he had while traveling across the Sahara with the Caravan of White Gold, a group of men who risk their lives to transport slabs of solid salt for sale at market.