In African Forest And Jungle

In African Forest and Jungle is a travel and natural history book by Paul Du Chaillu (1831-1903), the French American explorer and writer whose mid-nineteenth-century expeditions in equatorial Africa produced the first scientific descriptions of the gorilla and various other Central African subjects to Western audiences.

Du Chaillu had grown up in French West Africa and conducted several expeditions into the interior of present-day Gabon and surrounding regions across the 1850s and 1860s. His Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa of 1861 was the major scientific and popular work that came out of these expeditions. In African Forest and Jungle works in a more accessible mode aimed at younger readers and at the broader popular American audience.

The book combines travel narrative with natural history description and includes substantial material on the various indigenous African peoples Du Chaillu encountered. The treatment reflects mid-nineteenth-century Western assumptions about African cultures and is dated in various ways for modern readers.