Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa:

A lovely copy of one of the most important and influential books dealing with the exploration of the interior of Africa.

Mungo Park, a young Scottish doctor, made his first journey in 1795 in search of the Niger. He spent two years travelling deep into the interior of Africa and his book provides a fine and vivid narrative of his adventures and his coming to grips with civilisations and customs unimagined by this reserved and rather diffident man. The journey was sponsored by the African Association in the hope of solving the riddle of the Niger, no doubt enthused by Bruce's success on the other side of the continent. After the failure of four previous expeditions it sent out Park with instructions 'to pass on to the River Niger either by way of Bambouk or by such other route as should be found most convenient and to ascertain the course and, if possible, the rise and termination of that river'. Setting out from the Gambia, Park marched east to Bambuk, crossing the Faleme and the Senegal, and on the 20th of July 1796, he 'saw with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission - the long sought-for, majestic Niger, glittering to the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly to the eastward'.

First edition; 4to (27.5 x 22 cm); engraved portrait frontispiece, three folding maps and charts, two botanical engraved plates and three copper-engraved plates after drawings by the author, 2 engraved plates of music, armorial bookplate to pastedown, a little offsetting from plates, otherwise a bright and wide-margined copy; contemporary speckled calf, gilt rolls to board borders and edges, gilt spine with gilt morocco lettering piece, joints professionally restored, a near-fine copy; xxviii, 372, xcii, [2] pp.

PMM 253; Cox I, 394; Hilmy II, p93.