Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tinné, Alexandrine

TINNÉ, Alexandrine (1839–1869), African traveller, born at The Hague on 17th October 1839, was the daughter of an English merchant and his wife, Baroness van Steengracht-Capellen. Her father died when she was five years old, leaving her the richest heiress in the Netherlands. After travelling in Norway, Italy, and the East, and visiting Egypt, when she ascended the Nile to near the equator, Mademoiselle Tinné left Europe again in 1861 for a prolonged sojourn in the Nile regions. Accompanied by her mother and her aunt, she set out from Cairo on 9th January 1862. After a short stay at Khartoum, the party ascended the White Nile as far as Gondokoro and explored a part of the Sobat, returning to Khartoum in November. Baron von Heuglin and Dr Steudner having meantime joined the ladies at Khartoum, the whole party set out in February 1863 to explore the Bahr-el-Ghazal. The limit of navigation at the Bahr-el-Homr was reached on 10th March. From Lake Rek a journey was made overland, across the Bahr Jur and south-west by the Bahr Kosango, to Jebel Kosango, on the borders of the Niam-Niam country. During the journey all the travellers suffered severely. Steudner died in April and Madame Tinné in June, and after many fatigues and dangers the remainder of the party reached Khartoum in July 1864. Mademoiselle Tinné returned to Cairo by Berber and Suakim. The geographical and scientific results of the expedition, largely into a new country, were highly important, as will be seen in Heuglin's narrative in Petermann's Mittheilungen (Erg.-hft, Nov. 15, 1865), and in his own Travels in the Region of the White Nile (1869). At Cairo Mademoiselle Tinné lived in somewhat Oriental style during the next four years, visiting Algeria, Tunis, and other parts of the Mediterranean. In January 1869 she started from Tripolis with a caravan, intending to proceed to Lake Tchad, and thence by Wadai, Darfur, and Kordofan to the Upper Nile. In July, however, on the route from Murzuk to Rhat, she was murdered by her escort.

Besides the references already given, see John A. Tinné's Geographical Notes of an Expedition in Central Africa by three Dutch Ladies, Liverpool, 1864.