Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51 Under the Orders and at the Expense of Her Majesty's Government (Complete‪)‬

The task of the Editor of these volumes has been principally one of arrangement and compression. The late lamented Mr. James Richardson left behind him a copious journal, comprised in eight small but closely-written volumes, besides a vast heap of despatches and scattered memoranda; and, at first sight, it seemed to me that it would be necessary to melt the whole down into a narrative in the third person. On attentively studying the materials before me, however, I perceived that Mr. Richardson had written in most places with a view to publication; and that, had he lived, he would soon have brought what, on a cursory examination, appeared a mere chaotic mass, into a shape that would have accorded with his own idea of a book of travels. Such being the case, I thought it best—in order to leave the stamp of[vi] authenticity on this singular record of enterprise—to do little more than the author would himself have done.