Title: The Merchant's and Mariner's African Guide; containing an accurate description of the coast, bays, harbours, and adjacent islands of West Africa ... to which is added, a minute explanation of the various systems of traffic adopted on the Windward and Gold Coast, also hints to the mercantile navigator, etc. With plates.]Publisher: British Library, Historical Print EditionsThe British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the world's largest research libraries holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats: books, journals, newspapers, sound recordings, patents, maps, stamps, prints and much more. Its collections include around 14 million books, along with substantial additional collections of manuscripts and historical items dating back as far as 300 BC.The HISTORY OF TRAVEL collection includes books from the British Library digitised by Microsoft. This collection contains personal narratives, travel guides and documentary accounts by Victorian travelers, male and female. Also included are pamphlets, travel guides, and personal narratives of trips to and around the Americas, the Indies, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. ++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++ British Library Bold, Edward 1822 vi. 112 p.; 8 . 795.e.41.

This work of 1822 was written by Royal Navy Lieutenant Edward Bold to help sailors navigate from Britain to West Africa, via Madeira, the Canaries and the Cape Verde Islands. Bold was concerned about 'excessively erroneous hydrographic descriptions' that misled ships and put crews in danger. Writing after Britain's abolition of the slave trade, Bold was an advocate of developing other types of commerce with this region of Africa - an area, as he discovered, rich in valuable ivory - and part of the work describes the system of trade that stretched from port to port along the continent's western coast, including useful information such as that, upon arriving, sailors should indicate their desire to trade by 'firing a gun and hoisting your colours'. With its navigational detail and observations about trade, this work is a useful source on Anglo-African commerce in the nineteenth century.