The Expiring Continent: a Narrative of Travel in Senegambia with Observations on Native Character, the Present Condition and Future Prospects of Africa and Colonisation by Mitchinson, Alexander William - 1881

London: WM. H. Allen & Co. 1881. First Edition. Hardcover. Octavo, pp. Viii, 469. Frontispiece and 15 additional plates, fold-out map of the author's travels. Re-bound in modern half-calf with gilt spine titles and marbled boards. All page edges have original publisher's gilt. Sporadic age spotting and foxing throughout text including on the title page, map, and some plates. Mitchison was a Britisher raised and educated in Europe, primarily Russia. He had already traveled in Europe and Asia prior to reaching Africa. This book is a lively, well written and literary account of the author's travels from Spain and Portugal to St. Vincent and then deep up the Senegal and Gambia Rivers of West Africa. It was published in 1881, just after the Scramble for Africa began. Mitchison writes about the people he met on his travels, their customs and jobs, food, drink, and agriculture, the rich wildlife of the area, slavery and its abolition, the competition among Christianity, Islam, and paganism for the region's people, the differences between the British and French Empires, and the land and rivers. Mitchison is witty and has relatively few of the prejudices of his time. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 469 pages .