As Kingsley set off on her first trip to Africa she was referred to a new "French book of phrases in common use in Dahomey." The opening sentence of the book was "Help, I am drowning.", followed by "Get up, you lazy scamps!" This was shortly followed by the question "Why has not this man been buried?" and its expected answer "It is fetish that has killed him, and he must lie here exposed with nothing on him until only the bones remain." Kingsley intended to travel frequently by boat and intended to expand on her father's study of fetish! Needless to say she left Liverpool harbour in August 1893 with "a feeling of foreboding."

During the long voyage to West Africa she was instructed by the cargo boat's skipper on the art of navigation. She later recorded her experiences of piloting a vessel of two thousand tons over the Forcados Bar and up several creeks of the Niger Delta. Kingsley also acknowledges that it was the same Captain Murray who "saw that my mind was full of errors that must be eradicated if I was going to deal with the coast successfully; and so he eradicated those errors and replaced them with sound knowledge from his own stores collected during an acquaintance with the West Coast of over thirty years. The education he has given me has been of the greatest value to me..."

First Trip Itinerary
Kingsley's first trip took her to San Paul da Loanda and Ambriz (just to the north), then to the port of Matadi, at head of the Congo River Estuary in the Congo Free State (now in Democratic Republic Congo), from there she travelled to Kabinda (now Cabinda) and through the Congo Français (Gabon). Her final leg was to Fernando Po and the port of Calabar in the (British) Oil Rivers Protectorate. Kingsley returned to Britain early in 1894.

Kingsley explored up river from Lambaréné by canoe, reaching parts of the "Great Forest" not yet seen by a European. She collected insect, shell, plant, reptile, and fish specimens for the British Museum, as well as studying the culture and religion of the resident Fans (Feng).

In July 1895 Kingsley turned her attention down river from Lambaréné and explored the lower reaches of the Ogowé. Shortly after reaching Lake Ncovi, Kingsley had her first encounter with the almost mythical African creature, the gorilla. (Until their "discovery" earlier that century by European Paul du Chaillu, the only evidence for the existence of gorillas had been a few skeletons. Strangely, when Du Chaillu had explored this same region of the Congo Français he was unable to "find" the Ogowé River.)

Kingsley sums up her feelings for the gorilla in her book Travels in West Africa: "I have seen many wild animals in their native wilds, but never have I seen anything to equal gorillas going through the bush; it is a graceful, powerful, superbly perfect hand-trapeze performance." Curiously though, Kingsley did not find the gorilla attractive: "I have no hesitation in saying that the gorilla is the most horrible wild animal I have seen. I have seen at close quarters specimens of the most important big game of Central Africa and, with the exception of snakes, I have run away from all of them; but although elephants, leopards and pythons give you a feeling of alarm, they do not give that feeling of horrible disgust that an old gorilla gives on account of its hideousness of appearance."

After a brief interlude during which she saved one of her African companions, Kiva, from being eaten by the cannibalistic Fans, Kingsley prepared for the long journey back to England, first travelling overland from Lambaréné to the Rembwé River, which she followed down to the coast and capital, Libreville. Kingsley stopped over briefly at the Spanish-claimed island of Corisco before heading up the coast of West Africa to the German colony of Cameroon. In September1895, caught by a whim, Kingsley decided to climb Mungo Mah Lobeh (the Throne of Thunder, now known as Mount Cameroon), which at 14,435 ft (4,095 m) is the region's highest peak, and enjoyed the fantastic view out across the Blight of Biafra to the Island of Fernando Po. It was here that Kingsley caught a cold in an unexpected tornado, which along with her sore feet, was one of only two things she ever complained about.

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