The Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa, in the Year 1805 (Second Edition, First Issue)

PARK, Mungo (ed. John Whishaw). The Journal of a Mission to the Interior of Africa, in the Year 1805; Together with Other Documents, Official and Private, Relating to the Same Mission. To Which is Prefixed an Account of the Life of Mr. Park. London: Printed for John Murray, by W. Bulmer and Co., 1815.

Quarto. Half brown calf and marbled paper boards. Folding map as frontispiece, complete as issued; no further plates, engravings, or musical notation present in this edition. xvii, [i], 373pp. Scattered contemporary pencil annotations throughout, the majority confined to the rear appendix. Second edition, first issue.

Mungo Park (1771–1806) was a Scottish surgeon and explorer who, in 1795, became the first European to reach the Niger River and record its actual direction of flow, surviving an expedition of extraordinary hardship that made him, on his return to Britain, one of the most celebrated explorers of his generation. His account of that first journey, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa (1799), became an immediate bestseller and remains a genuine classic of travel literature, valued as much for its careful observations on West African botany, meteorology, and social life as for its adventure narrative.

Park returned to Africa in 1805 at the head of a substantially larger, government-sponsored expedition, intending to trace the Niger to its outlet. This was a mystery that had occupied European geographers since antiquity and would not finally be resolved for another twenty-five years. The expedition was catastrophic from the outset: disease, hostile terrain, and violent encounters reduced Park's party from around forty men to a mere handful by the time they reached Bussa (in present-day Nigeria) where their canoe was attacked and Park and his remaining companions were killed, their final fate unknown to Britain for years afterward. Park had, fortunately, sent his journals back to the coast via intermediaries before this final, fatal stage of the journey, and it is this material that forms the substance of this volume, published posthumously in 1815 under the sponsorship of the African Institution and edited, with a prefixed biography of Park, by John Whishaw.

Very good. Binding tight, sound. Rubbing to cover edges and corners with some wear and loss to leather and paper. Cover boards marked with some spots of wear. Contents near fine, generally bright and clean throughout with some small and scattered markings here and there. Scattered pencil annotations present, chiefly to the rear appendix. Folding map in fantastic condition, free from tears.

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Catalogue Number: HH000680