A Narrative of the Expedition Sent By Her Majesty's Government to the River Niger, in 1841. Under the Command of Captain H. D. Trotter by Captain William Allen. Richard Bentley. 1848. 2 volumes. 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Vol 1 - pages xviii, 509, Vol 2 - pages viii, 511  Hardcovers with no dustjacket. Both books appear to have been professionally rebound with leather spines and cover tips and cloth covers and new endpapers. Bright gilt lettering on both spines. There is some wear and abrasions to the spines and cover tips. Previous owner book plate inside front covers of both volumes. Previous bookseller pencil notations on the reverse side of the front endpaper and the next blank page. I see some light foxing on some of the pages. I see no other previous owner markings.  No tears, unpublished folds or creases to pages except the fold-outs do have some minor tears and incidental creases. Binding is tight with no looseness to pages. Not ex-library, not remaindered and not a facsimile reprint. For sale by Jon Wobber, bookseller since 1978. LE16a

"In 1839, the abolitionist Thomas Fowell Buxton established the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and for the Civilization of Africa in order to end enslavement across Africa. The society had the support of Prince Albert and intended to create a ‘New Africa’, where Christianity and European ideas of commerce would replace Indigenous religions and customs.

The society sponsored a missionary expedition into Nigeria in 1841, with the backing of the British government, in an attempt to achieve its aims. Officially known as the African Colonization Expedition, it consisted of three steamships Wilberforce, Soudan and Albert, led by the Scottish naval officer Henry Dundas Trotter and arrived in West Africa in July 1841. They purchased land at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers at Lokoja and began to establish a mission station. While well prepared for missionary work and negotiations with African states—vocabularies of Indigenous languages were produced prior to the voyage (see RCIN 1074173), interpreters were hired at Sierra Leone and anti-slavery treaties were negotiated with the Aboh and Igala kingdoms—the expedition was unprepared for the diseases of West Africa. Around 50 of the 150 Europeans died and 130 suffered from fever. Due to the high death toll, the mission was abandoned, and the remaining members returned to Britain in 1842.
This account of the expedition by William Allen, commander of the Wilberforce and the naturalist T. R. H. Thomson was published in 1848." - https://www.rct.uk/collection/1024342/a-narrative-of-the-expedition-sent-by-her-majestys-government-to-the-river-niger