Park, Mungo - Travels in the Interior of Africa - 1858

One of the most popular travel books of the early nineteenth century

Park, Mungo
Travels in the Interior of Africa
London: Adam and Charles Black, 1858

12mo (18x13.5 cm); xvi, [1], 345 pages. Contains black and white illustrations. Half bound leather with marbled boards, new leather spine with gilt decoration and title.

Condition good minus: Recased with old marbles and endpapers. Exterior good. Inside moderate tanning, with light foxing and marking to pages. Heavier tanning to text block edges and prelims. Half-title missing top edge.

Park was a Scottish Africa explorer who was selected for a reconnaissance expedition with the intention of following the route pioneered by Daniel Houghton in an attempt to reach the River Niger and explore the river's true course. He set sail from Portsmouth in 1795 and, after much hardship and illness, reached the waters of the Niger a year later as the first of the modern Europeans. Park wrote a popular and influential travel book titled Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa in which he theorized the Niger and Congo merged to become the same river. He was killed during a second expedition after his party disappeared at Bussa (Nigeria), having successfully traveled about two-thirds of the way down the Niger.