Book excerpt: James Kingston Tuckey (1776-1816) was a British naval officer who, after service in the Caribbean, Asia, and Australia, was asked by the British government to command an expedition to explore the Congo River. He was to ascertain, in particular, whether the Congo was connected to the Niger River. Tuckey traveled 480 kilometers up the Congo, mapping the river and gathering ethnographic and geographic information. Before he could complete his mission, he died of fever (on October 4, 1816, near Moanda, in the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo). This work consists of his journal, which he kept until shortly before his death, supplemented by observations by other members of the expedition. An appendix offers a basic vocabulary of two African languages, Malemba and Embomma.