Scarce. Although a missionary work, the book is full of valuable topographical information as well as containing interesting data on natural history, and the peoples of the region.

The Universities' Mission to Central Africa (c.1857 - 1965) was a missionary society established by members of the Anglican Church within the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, and Dublin. It was firmly in the Anglo-Catholic tradition of the Church, and the first to devolve authority to a bishop in the field rather than to a home committee. Founded in response to a plea by David Livingstone, the society had two major goals: to establish a mission presence in Central Africa, and to actively oppose the slave trade.

To advance these goals, it sought to send a mission led by a bishop into Central Africa; Charles Mackenzie was duly consecrated in 1860 and led an expedition in 1861 up the Zambezi into the Shire Highlands. This first expedition was more or less disastrous. The area chosen as a base, near Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi), proved highly malarial; Bishop Mackenzie died there of the disease on 31 January 1862, along with many local people and three others among the tiny missionary party.

First edition. 8vo. xii, 493 pp., 22 pages of ads dated 1866 at end, 2 maps, 8 plates, illustrations in text, original green blindstamped cloth gilt, gilt roundel to uppper cover, lightly soiled, neatly recased.