HENRY DE MONFREID (1879-1974) was a French adventurer and author. He was famous for his various expeditions as adventurer, smuggler and gunrunner in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa coast from Ta...view moreHENRY DE MONFREID (1879-1974) was a French adventurer and author. He was famous for his various expeditions as adventurer, smuggler and gunrunner in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa coast from Tanzania to Aden, Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula and Suez.
Born on November 14, 1879 in Leucate, Aude, France, the son of artist painter Georges-Daniel de Monfreid, he went to Djibouti (then a French colony) in 1911 to trade coffee. He built a dhow and used it to traverse the Red Sea, had many adventures and eventually prospered. In the early 1920s he built a small house in Araoué, near Harar in Ethiopia; with the sale of hashish in Egypt passing through the area, he made enough profit to buy a flour mill and build a power plant in Dire Dawa. Between 1912-1940 Monfreid ran guns through the area, dived for pearls and smuggled hashish and morphine into Egypt. He converted to Islam during this period, which included taking the Muslim name Abd-el-Haï ("Slave of The Living One").
During WWII, Monfreid, by now over 60 years old, was captured by the British and deported to Kenya. After the war he retired to a mansion in a small village of la France profonde in Ingrandes, France, and settled down to a life of writing, turning out around 70 books over the next 30 years.
He died on December 13, 1974, aged 95.
IDA TREAT (1899-1978) was born in Joliet, Illinois and attended Western Reserve University. After earning a doctorate in letters at the University of Paris she returned in 1913 to Western Reserve to teach romance languages. In the 1920s she returned to France and worked as a writer and journalist. Whilst working as a correspondent for Paris Vu, she travelled throughout Europe, China, and the South Pacific. Her articles and stories appeared in U.S. periodicals such as The New Yorker, Harpers, and The Saturday Evening Post. In 1948 she joined Vassar as Professor of English and taught writing courses. She retired in 1954 and died in 1978.view less