Alexandre de Serpa Pinto

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Alexandre de Serpa Pinto : biography

April 10, 1846 – December 28, 1900

In 1890 The Daily Picayune falsely reported that Serpa Pinto committed suicide in a dramatic fashion:

A dispatch from London, June 12, says: Major Serpa Pinto, the African explorer, is chagrined because he was not consulted with regard to the Conceiro expedition which met with such a sad fate in southern Africa. He committed suicide to-day in a novel and startling manner. He made a funeral pyre of fourteen barrels of gunpowder, wrapped himself in a Portuguese flag and set fire to the fuse. The desperate man was blown to atoms by the explosion. He left a paper saying that he sought to secure a patriotic death.The Daily Picayune, 16 June 1890, "Blew Himself to Atoms. The Startling Suicide of Serpa Pinto the Explorer", New Orleans, LA, pg. 2

The event actually happened, but with the Portuguese explorer and trade-man Silva Porto.

Serpa Pinto died on December 28, 1900 in Lisbon.

Exploration

Also in 1869, Pinto went to eastern Africa on an exploration of the Zambezi River. Eight years later he led an expedition from Benguela, Portuguese Angola, into the basins of the Congo and Zambezi rivers. The town of Menongue was named Serpa Pinto, after him, up to 1975.

In 1877, he and Lieutenant Commander Capelo and Lieutenant Ivens, both of the Portuguese navy, were sent to explore the southern African interior. All three had African experience and seemed to be the right age and temperament for the work. They left Benguela in November. Soon after their departure, however, they parted company at Bié, Capello and Ivens turning northward whilst Serpa Pinto continued eastward, gradually shifting his course to the south.C E Nowell, (1947). Portugal and the Partition of Africa, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 19, No. 1, p. 7. He crossed the Cuando (Kwando) river in June 1878 and in August reached Lealui, the Barotse capital on the Zambezi. There he received assistance from the missionary François Coillard, enabling him to continue his journey along the Zambezi to the Victoria Falls. He then turned south and arrived at Pretoria in northern South Africa on February 12, 1879. Capelo and Ivens emerged at Dondo, on the Cuanza River in northern Angola.C E Nowell, (1947). Portugal and the Partition of Africa, p. 8. Serpa Pinto was the fourth explorer to cross Africa from west to east, and the first to lay down a reasonably accurate route between Bié (in present-day Angola) and Lealui. In 1881 the Royal Geographical Society awarded him their Founder’s Medal, "for his journey across Africa … during which he explored five hundred miles of new country". The account of his travels appeared in English in two volumes entitled How I crossed Africa (London, 1881).