Page "Jean Baptiste Douville" Paragraph 4

Mile Audrun, a lady to whom he was about to be married, committed suicide from grief at the disgrace ; and the adventurer withdrew in 1833 to Brazil, and proceeded to make explorations in the Amazon Basin.

According to Dr G. Gardner, in his Travels in the Interior of Brazil ( 1846 ), he was murdered in 1837 on the banks of the São Francisco River for charging too high for his medical assistance.

Douville may well have explored part of the province of Angola, and Sir Richard Burton maintained that the Frenchman's descriptions of the country of the Congo were lifelike ; that his observations on the anthropology, ceremonies, customs and maladies of the people were remarkably accurate ; and that even the native words used in his narrative were " for the most part given with unusual correctness.

" It has been shown, however, that the chief source of Douville's inspiration was a number of unpublished Portuguese manuscripts to which he had access.