The Zambezi Expedition: crocodile tracks, river animals, and local reports

Record summary

The Zambezi Expedition’s published reports and journals record river crossings, crocodiles, hippopotamuses, fish, snakes, and spoor observed by expedition members and African assistants. This corpus is useful for comparing how physical traces were logged during difficult river travel and how local warnings about dangerous animals entered European narratives. It may be searched for later claims about oversized or unidentified Zambezi creatures, but the expedition itself generally operated within conventional natural history. Researchers should distinguish Livingstone’s journal from later official expedition summaries.