Harry Alis / Jean Dybowski / Eugéne Lenfant - À la Conquête du Tchad / La route du Tchad : du Loango au Chari / La Grande route du Tchad - 1891-1905

3 books about the French explorations in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Central Africa and the then French colony Chad.

- 'La route du Tchad: du Loango au Chari' by Jean Dybowski (publisher Firmin-Didot, Paris; 1893). Illustrated with 136 drawings after photographs, drawings and watercolors by the author.
Format: 27 x 17 cm. 372 pp. Red percaline binding with title in gold on the front board and a leather spine with 5 ribs, gilded edges. First edition. Portrait of the author as frontispiece. 1 folding map with: the routes traveled by the Jean Dybowski expedition (1891-1892).

- 'A la conquête du Tchad' by Harry Alis (pseudonym of the French journalist Jules Hippolyte Percher). Publisher: Hachette, 1891. Illustrated with 29 engravings and 4 maps. Written as a kind of homage to the explorer Paul Crampel who was killed that year during an expedition.
Format: 26 x 17 cm; 296 pp. The text pages show foxing. Marbled boards and endpapers with red leather spine and corners. Gilded title on the spine (5 ribs). Illustrations: portrait of Paul Crampel as frontispiece, 28 full pages and 5 maps (1 map of French Congo, 1 folding map (torn & yellowed, detached) of the Oubangui River; 1 folding map of Kaarta, 2 maps of French Sudan).

- 'La grande route du Tchad' by Eugène Lenfant (publisher Hachette, 1905). Report of an expedition commissioned by the Société de Géographie.
Format: 26 x 17 cm; 287 pp. Marbled boards and endpapers with red leather spine and corners. Gilded title on the spine (5 ribs). Spine detached. Illustrations: portrait as frontispiece, title vignette, 26 full pages, dozens of photographs (portraits; local life, landscapes, indigenous people...), 1 map of the route of Commandant Lenfant in the text + 1 large, loose color folding map.