John Davidson (traveller)
English traveller in Africa
John Davidson (1797–1836) was an English traveller in Africa.
Early life
He was son of a tailor and army clothier in Cork Street, London, and originally from Kelso, and was born on 23 December 1797. He went to school at a private academy near London, and when sixteen years old at his own request was apprenticed to Savory & Moore, the chemists and druggists, in which he later purchased a partnership.
He became a pupil at St George's Hospital, and entered the University of Edinburgh with the intention of becoming a doctor. His health failing, however, he went to Naples in the autumn of 1827. From Naples he went through Styria and Carniola to Vienna, made an excursion through Poland and Russia, and returned home by way of Hamburg.
Traveller
Davidson went to Egypt at the end of 1829, visited the Pyramids, and passed overland to Cosseir, where he embarked for India on his way to China and Persia. An attack of cholera, however, drove him back to Cosseir. He made an excursion through Arabia, and visited Palestine, Syria, the Greek Isles, Athens, and Constantinople. He collected geographical information, which he later communicated to in papers read to the Royal Society and the Royal Institution of London.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Davidson (traveller)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.