Title: Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa: Containing a Description of the Several Nations for the Space of Six Hundred Miles up the River Gambia

Description

Francis Moore was a clerk, and later a factor, for the Royal African Company. Moore lived on the Gambia River from November 1730 to May 1735, and represented the commercial interests of the company. This work consists of the personal journal that Moore kept at the time, which remains an important source of information about pre-colonial Gambia. Moore’s journal includes discussions about natural history, descriptions of the different ethnic groups living along the river, and observations on everyday and economic life. Also included are accounts of the slave trade, and in particular the story of Ayuba Suleiman Diallo (known in England as Job ben Solomon), the son of a Muslim cleric who was abducted as a slave, ransomed by London philanthropists, and ultimately returned to Africa. Moore accompanied Diallo back to Senegal in 1734. In addition to Moore’s journal, the book contains the journal from a voyage by Captain Bartholomew Stibbs up the Gambia in 1723, and translations of several non-English sources on African geography, including writings by the 16th-century Moroccan traveler Leo Africanus and by the celebrated 12th-century Arab geographer Al-Idrisi.