Travels in West Africa : Abridged Edition - Congo Francais, Corisco and Cameroons

In 1893, defying every convention of Victorian womanhood, Mary Kingsley set off alone for West Africa to collect botanical specimens. Unaccompanied except for native guides, she plunged boldly into forbidding jungles, often the first European--and almost always the first white woman--ever to arrive. Undaunted by tales of ferocious cannibals, she made friends with the tribes she met and collected priceless samples of flora and fauna. Along the way she fought off crocodiles with a paddle and hit a leopard over the head with a pot. When she fell into a trap lined with sharp sticks, she was saved by her voluminous crinolines--for she always dressed like a lady.__Travels in West Africa__is a book as vivid and unforgettable as the extraordinary woman herself."The charm of West Africa is a painful one: it gives you pleasure when you are out there, but when you are back here it gives you pain by calling you . . . Come back, come back, this is your home."--Mary KingsleyNational Geographic Adventure Classics is a series that celebrates the "100 greatest adventure books of all time," as compiled by a panel of experts for__National Geographic Adventure__. These titles have been carefully selected for their adrenaline quotient and their status as classics of the adventure genre.

In this rich compilation, Emeka Nwosu takes the reader to a journey of the issues that have helped to shape discourses on various aspects of the Nigerian state and society. The articles, originally published in his weekly column in the premier Nigerian daily newspaper, ThisDay, not only show his perspectives on these issues when they were written but also reveal how discussions on some of those issues have evolved over time and how they have mutated today.

Journalists, especially those who maintain regular columns, are often said to write 'history in a hurry'. For experienced writers like the author whose writings are research-based, it does not mean that what they write about is factually wrong but simply that their writings are infused with the passions and emotions that attended those issues as they unfolded.

This collection is therefore not only informed commentaries on some of the issues that have shaped the contour of the Nigerian state and society over the years but a good trip on the passions and emotions that attended those discourses. The articles, 66 of them, are written with remarkable candour and gusto and therefore a delight to read. They form a very important contribution to the corpus of works on Nigerian politics and society.

In 1893, defying every convention of Victorian womanhood, Mary Kingsley set off alone for West Africa to collect botanical specimens. Unaccompanied except for native guides, she plunged boldly into forbidding jungles, often the first European--and almost always the first white woman--ever to arrive. Undaunted by tales of ferocious cannibals, she made friends with the tribes she met and collected priceless samples of flora and fauna. Along the way she fought off crocodiles with a paddle and hit a leopard over the head with a pot. When she fell into a trap lined with sharp sticks, she was saved by her voluminous crinolines--for she always dressed like a lady. Travels in West Africa is a book as vivid and unforgettable as the extraordinary woman herself. "The charm of West Africa is a painful one: it gives you pleasure when you are out there, but when you are back here it gives you pain by calling you . . . Come back, come back, this is your home."--Mary Kingsley National Geographic Adventure Classics is a series that celebrates the "100 greatest adventure books of all time," as compiled by a panel of experts for National Geographic Adventure . These titles have been carefully selected for their adrenaline quotient and their status as classics of the adventure genre.

An unabridged republication of the original account by Mary Kingsley of her solo journey into uncharted regions of the Congo. Undertaken when her parents died in 1892, the journey involved a sheltered unmarried Victorian woman in dangerous exploits hacking her way through jungle, surviving gunshots from hostile tribesmen and attacks from animals, and myriad unladylike forms of travel, all while garbed in the traditional constrictive clothing of the era. Her account is humorous and was published to great acclaim in 1897. Annotation ©2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Supported by a family inheritance that gave her £500 a year, Mary Henrietta Kingsley traveled to Africa to complete the book her father had started. The subject was the culture of Africa and Kingsley stayed with local people while she learned to survive in the African jungles, studied cannibal tribes, discovered new species of fish, and climbed Mount Cameroon by a route untouched by any European before her. Kingsley's ideas greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and the African people and her 1897 account, Travels in West Africa , quickly became a best-seller. Mary Henrietta Kingsley (1862 - 1900) was an English writer and explorer who greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and African people. Her father was a doctor and worked for George Herbert, 13th Earl of Pembroke. Her mother was an invalid and Mary was expected to stay at home and look after her. Mary had little formal schooling but she did have access to her father's large library and loved to hear her father's stories of foreign countries. Her father died in February 1892. Her mother also died just five weeks later .. Newly abridged and illustrated with sketches and maps from their journals, this is the classic, firsthand account of Lewis and Clark's epic voyage through the unknown territory of the American West