The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana
by Jess Nevins
The Lion City of Africa. A Story of Adventure (1890)
copyright © Jess Nevins 2022
The Lion City of Africa. A Story of Adventure was written by Willis Boyd Allen. Allen (1855-1938) was a lawyer, poet, naturalist, and author of numerous novels for children.
The Lion City of Africa is about David Livingston Scott, an American who from a young age was fascinated with Africa. After graduating from Harvard in the early 1870s he and his best friend Ned Hastings set off for Africa. David is exploring on behalf of the Smithsonian and Ned wants to hunt and kill some elephants. Unfortunately, the captain of the ship bringing them to Africa sells alcohol to the natives, and when David and Ned object to this they are stranded in Africa in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from the Congo. Luckily, they are near the village of natives they have come to know, and the natives feed them for several days. Eventually David and Ned get antsy and decide to leave, taking with them Mbongo, a native guide. They trek into the jungle, meeting and killing various forms of wildlife, including an aggressive and evil gorilla. David, Ned, and Mbongo are attacked by a group of cannibalistic dwarf “pygmies,” malformed, hideous, and ape-like, who attack them using spears and arrows poisoned with spider venom. David, Ned, and Mbongo hold their attackers off for a while, but eventually David is knocked unconscious and taken to the village of the natives. David learns that the natives are the Masongi and that they worship lions. The Masongi will attack and eat anyone and anything else, but they will not raise a weapon against lions, who accordingly prey on them. The Masongi sacrifice chosen victims to the lions by leaving the victims in Lion City, an abandoned city where a large pride of lions lives. Eventually David is brought to Lion City. The city is in the crater of an extinct volcano. It has regularly laid out streets and buildings and open squares and at one time was a human city but is now in ruins and is inhabited by a local tribe of lions. David, the Classicist, examines the city and is certain that it was built by Roman Jews centuries ago. After various alarums and excursions David and Ned are rescued from the Masongi by Mbongo and his tribe, and at the end of the novel David and Ned have returned to the United States with Lulua, a Masongi women who helped them at various times. David is intent on returning to Africa while Lulua is being educated in a southern college to become a missionary.
The Lion City of Africa is mildly entertaining as a Lost Race novel, although the Lost Race aspect is marginal at best. What will really hold the attention of the modern reader is the enormous amount of detail devoted to African flora and fauna. The novel has a large number of accurate illustrations of African animals and people, including lions, hippos, giraffes, gorillas, leopards, elephants, and crocodiles, and the narrative is realistic in its descriptions of Africa. Allen is not nearly as racist as he could have been, and while the portrayal of the Masongi is uncomfortable it seems to be based on the writings of someone with personal experience rather than being based solely on uninformed stereotypes. Boyd wasn’t an old Africa hand, but the modern reader won’t be able to see that from reading The Lion City of Africa.
Recommended Edition
Print: Willis Boyd Allen, The Lion City of Africa. A Story of Adventure. London: S.W. Partridge, 1892.