DENHAM, DIXON (1786-1828), English traveller in cen tral Africa, was born in London. He served in the campaigns in Portugal, Spain, France and Belgium, and received the Waterloo medal. In 1821 he volunteered to join Dr. Oudney and Hugh Clapperton (q.v.), who had been sent by the British Government via Tripoli to the central Sudan. He joined the expedition at Murzuk in Fezzan. The pasha of Tripoli did not at first provide the promised escort, but the expedition eventually left Murzuk at the end of 1822. Thence it made its way across the Sahara to Bornu, reached in Feb. 1823. Here Denham, against the wish of Oudney and Clapperton, accompanied a slave-raiding expedi tion into the Mandara highlands south of Bornu. The raiders were defeated, and Denham barely escaped with his life. When Oudney and Clapperton set out, Dec. 1823, for the Hausa States, Denham remained behind. He explored the western, south and south-eastern shores of Lake Chad, and the lower courses of the rivers Waube, Logone and Shari. In Aug. 1824 he returned to England. He had just been appointed governor of Sierra Leone when he died of fever at Freetown on May 8, 1828.
See Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa in the Years 1822-24 (1826) , the greater part of which is written by Denham; Dr. Robert Brown, The Story of Africa, vol. i. chap. xiii. (1892) .