Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger

This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Richard and John Lander's expedition journal opens as both a personal record of hardship and a bold answer to one of geography's oldest riddles: the course and termination of the Niger, or Quorra. The authors present their notes as immediate, honest field observations, shaped by illness, heat, and the punishing demands of travel, while also defending exploration itself as a necessary struggle against distance, uncertainty, and imperfect knowledge. The book surveys centuries of speculation, from Herodotus, Strabo, Pliny, Mela, and Ptolemy to Arab writers, Portuguese coast explorers, and later mapmakers such as De Lisle and D'Anville, all of whom tried and failed to fix the river's true path. The narrative then follows the modern search: the African Association's expeditions, Ledyard's abortive mission, Lucas, Houghton's fatal attempt, and Mungo Park's breakthrough journey to the Niger, where he confirmed its eastward flow. Yet the river's end remained disputed, fueling theories involving the Congo, lakes, swamps, or the Gulf of Guinea, until Park's second expedition ended in tragedy at Boossà. The journal then shifts to vivid travel writing through towns, markets, plantations, and river crossings, recording local customs, crowded compounds, women's labor, mourning practices, and the daily dangers and frustrations of overland discovery.