NARRATIVE OF AN EXPEDITION TO EXPLORE THE RIVER ZAIRE

To which is added the journal of Professor Smith; some general observations on the country and its inhabitants; and an appendix: containing the natural history of that part of the kingdom of Congo through which Zaire flows

Published by permission of The Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty

First Edition: lxxxii, 498 pages, large folding map as frontispiece, 13 engraved plates – 1 hand coloured, several other sketches in the text, bound in half calf with brown cloth sides, red leather title labels on the spine, with the exception of the hand coloured plate the plates are browned and foxed and staining in the text (as is often the case), edges uncut so giving generous margins, some pages unopened, a good copy.

James Kingston Tuckey (born August 1776, Greenhill, County Cork, Ire.—died Oct. 4, 1816, near Moanda, in modern-day Dem. Rep. of the Congo) British naval officer and explorer who investigated the course of the Congo River and the kingdoms of the interior of West Africa. After service in the Caribbean, India, and the Far East, Tuckey was sent to Australia in 1802 to help found the British colony of New South Wales. There he explored the interior and surveyed the harbour of Port Philip. Captured at sea by the French during his journey home, he wrote an influential work on maritime geography while he was interned in France. In 1815 he was appointed commander of an expedition to search for a connection between the Congo and Niger rivers. Though the expedition failed in its primary object and Tuckey himself died of fever during it, he did travel 300 miles (480 km) up the Congo River and sent back ethnographic and geographic information on the interior for his Narrative of an Expedition to Explore the River Zaire (1816). (https://www.britannica.com/biography/James-Kingston-Tuckey)