Book Review: Travels in West Africa

Recounting an encounter with a crocodile who "chose to get his front paws over the stern of my canoe, and endeavoured to improve our acquaintance," Mary Kingsley found she had to "retire to the bows... and fetch him a clip on the snout with a paddle." This is a captivating account of "One Woman's Epic and Eccentric Journey in the 1890s."

On the death of her parents, Mary Kingsley set out to study native religion and law in West Africa, and to complete the work done by her father in the study of comparative sacrificial rites and fetishes. Her story is remarkable because she had, till then, led the sheltered, middle-class life of a Victorian spinster. Her book is a testament to understatement and humour - few explorers made less of the hardships and dangers experienced whilst travelling. Miss Kingsley made two trips to West Africa, hacking her way through the jungle in the same clothes she wore back in England - their worth being proved when she fell, unscathed, into a spear trap. Travels in West Africa (1897) was written after her second journey - she had made preparations for a third but was diverted by the Boer War, South Africa, where she died of enteric fever while tending Boer prisoners.