Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa [Paperback]

"This edition is well analyzed, with a lengthy introduction and voluminous footnotes that significantly add to an understanding of the original document. Important for any collection on Africa . . ." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

One of the most lively and inspirational accounts of the exploration of Africa.

"In a time when the world has grown tame and we have to manufacture our adventures, Mungo Park's Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa is both an education and a delight. The Africa he entered was uncharted and unknown, the farthest outpost of a truly wild and richly mysterious planet. He was the first European to go there and come back again, and he rewarded his society - and ours - with a geographical and anthropological marvel of a book, an adventure story to cap them all." --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

In 1795, at the age of twenty-four, Mungo Park began a journey from the Gambia into the uncharted interior of the African continent. Travelling with only native guides, and later entirely alone, his goal was to become the first European to reach the River Niger and the fabled city of Timbuctoo. The journey took him through warring African kingdoms and the fringes of the Sahara Desert, leading him into great physical hardship and danger. He endured imprisonment by a Moorish chief for several months, was repeatedly robbed, and came close to death from thirst and starvation. He eventually reached the Niger and mapped part of its course, before being forced to turn back. He had long been given up for dead by the time he returned to the Gambia in 1797. Throughout the journey he kept meticulous notes, which he transcribed into Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa on his return to Britain. His simple and modest account of his journey and the conditions he encountered along the way has been an inspiration to travellers and writers ever since it was first published in 1799. More than a travel journal, it is a story of adventure and survival that offers a unique insight into conditions in West Africa before widespread European settlement.