[NOTE. - The Following Chapters Of The First Edition Are Not Included
In This Edition:
- Chap.
Ii., The Gold Coast; Chap. iv., Lagos Bar;
Chap. v., Voyage down Coast; Chap. vi., Libreville and Glass; Chap.
viii., Talagouga; Chap. xvi., Congo Francais; Chap. xvii., The Log
of the Lafayette; Chap. xviii., From Corisco to Gaboon; Chap.
xxviii., The Islands in the Bay of Amboises; Appendix ii., Disease
in West Africa; Appendix iii., Dr. A. Gunther on Reptiles and
Fishes; Appendix iv., Orthoptera, Hymenoptera, and Hemiptera.]
INTRODUCTION.
Relateth the various causes which impelled the author to embark upon
the voyage.
It was in 1893 that, for the first time in my life, I found myself
in possession of five or six months which were not heavily
forestalled, and feeling like a boy with a new half-crown, I lay
about in my mind, as Mr. Bunyan would say, as to what to do with
them. "Go and learn your tropics," said Science. Where on earth am
I to go? I wondered, for tropics are tropics wherever found, so I
got down an atlas and saw that either South America or West Africa
must be my destination, for the Malayan region was too far off and
too expensive. Then I got Wallace's Geographical Distribution and
after reading that master's article on the Ethiopian region I
hardened my heart and closed with West Africa. I did this the more
readily because while I knew nothing of the practical condition of
it, I knew a good deal both by tradition and report of South East
America, and remembered that Yellow Jack was endemic, and that a
certain naturalist, my superior physically and mentally, had come
very near getting starved to death in the depressing society of an
expedition slowly perishing of want and miscellaneous fevers up the
Parana.
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