Travels in West Africa

PREFACE

To THE READER.---What this book lacks is not a simple Preface but an apology, and a very brilliant and convincing one at that. Recognizing this fully, and feeling quite incompetent to write such a masterpiece, I have asked several literary friends to write one for me, but they have kindly but firmly declined. They stated that it is impossible to satisfactorily apologize for my liberties with Lindley Murray Lindley Murray (1745–1826) was a famous grammarian whose textbooks were the standard for English grammar for decades. and the Queen's English A term referring to standard, "correct" British English.. I am therefore left to make a feeble apology for this book myself. All I can personally say is that it would have been much worse than it is had it not been for Dr. Henry Guillemard original: "Dr. Henry Guillemard"—likely Henry John Guillemard (1852–1933), a prominent English traveler, physician, and zoologist., who has not edited it—for if he had, the whole work would certainly be better—but who has most kindly gone through the proof sheets. He has lassoed prepositions which were straying outside their sentence stockade and taken my