PREEACE. 



The position of an explorer of unknown countries 

 in England is peculiar, and very difficult. If lie 

 returns home with nothing new or striking to relate 

 he is voted a bore, and his book has no chance of 

 beins: read ; if he has some wonders to unfold, con- 

 nected with Geography, the Natives, or Natural 

 History, the fate of Ab^^ssinian Bruce too often awaits 

 him : his narrative being held up to scorn and ridi- 

 cule, as a tissue of figments. 



It was my lot, on the publication of my first 

 volume of travels in Equatorial Africa, to meet with 

 a reception of that sort from many persons in England 

 and Germany. In fact I had visited a country pre- 

 viously unexplored by Europeans — the wooded region 

 bordering the Equator, in the interior of Western 

 Africa — and thus it was my good fortune to observe 

 the habits of several remarkable species of animals 

 found nowhere else. Hence my narrative describing 

 unknown animals was condemned. The novelty of 

 the subject was too striking for some of my critics ; 

 and not only were the accounts I gave of the animals 

 and native tribes stigmatized as false, but my journey 

 into the interior itself was pronounced a fiction. 



