by Mary Kingsley · 1897
Memoir · Classics · History
Mary Kingsley's account of her journeys in 1894 and 1895 through Gabon, the Ogowe river and Cameroon, travelling by canoe, climbing Mount Cameroon and living among the peoples she met. Lively, funny and observant.
Content note: Written in 1897 by a Victorian traveller, it reflects the colonial and racial attitudes of its time and uses outdated terms. It mentions cannibalism and hunting.
Setting forth how the voyager departs from England in a stout vessel and in good company, and reaches in due course the Island of the Grand Canary, and then the Port of Sierra Leone: to which is added some account of this latter place and the comeliness of its women. Wherein also some description of Cape Coast and Accra is given, to which are added divers observations on supplies to be obtained there.
The West Coast of Africa is like the Arctic regions in one particular, and that is that when you have once visited it you want to go back there again; and, now I come to think of it, there is another particular in which it is like them, and that is that the chances you have of returning from it at all are small, for it is a Belle Dame sans merci.
I succumbed to the charm of the Coast as soon as I left Sierra Leone on my first voyage out, and I saw more than enough during that voyage to make me recognise that there was any amount of work for me worth doing down there.
