TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR DISTRICTS OF AFRICA: Performed in the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797. With an Account of a Subsequent Mission to That Country in 1805. By Mungo Park, Surgeon. To Which is Added an Account of the Life of Mr. Park. by Park Mungo - 1817, 1816

London: Printed for John Murray, 1817, 1816. 2 volumes. Very Early Octavo Two Volume Printing, “A New Edition”, being the second Murray enlarged edition. With a large folding engraved map to illustrate the journal, the routes shown in colour. 8vo, three-quarter contemporary calf over marbled paper-covered boards, the spines with multi-gilt ruled raised bands, two compartments lettered and ruled in gilt. xx, 560; xvii, cviii, 301 pp. A very fine, handsome and proper set, the text clean and crisp and unpressed, the map in an excellent state of preservation, the bindings very proper and original. A SCARCE PRINTING AND A VERY PLEASING COPY OF THIS HIGHLY IMPORTANT AND SEMINAL WORK OF AFRICANA, AND A WORK WHICH IS ESPECIALLY SCARCE IN CONTEMPORARY BINDINGS. The African Association of London’s previous four expeditions to explore the Niger river had failed by the time they charged Park, a Scotsman, with the commission to explore the Gambia, Senegal, and Niger rivers in 1795. He covered well over 100 miles before he fell ill in 1797 and returned back to England. His unaffected style and natural sense of storytelling in the subsequent publication of his adventures make this one of the most popular accounts of African exploration. He returned to Africa in 1805 to search for the source of the Niger in a canoe, and met great hardships both on the river and with the natives that eventually cost him his own life and the life of his men.
“Until the publication of Park’s book in 1799 hardly anything was known of the interior of Africa, apart from the northeast region and coastal area...Park’s TRAVELS had an immediate success and was translated into most European languages. It has become a classic of travel literature, and its scientific observations on the botany and meteorology of the region, and on the social and domestic life of the Negroes, have remained of lasting value. Park’s career was cut short, but he made the first great practice advance in the opening-up of Central Africa.” PMM 253. A rare copy of this milestone Africana.
After the publication of the TRAVELS, Park withdrew to the quiet life of a country physician. He soon became bored with this existence and returned to Africa in 1805. He traveled on the Niger by canoe, but failed to reach the source of the river. He and his companions were killed by natives at Boussa after their canoe foundered on the rapids.