This book is a nineteenth century account of a British colonial official’s travels in Sierra Leone. The book plays into European perceptions of West Africa as ‘the white man’s grave’. Ideas that were popularised by reports on the climate of the region and the high mortality rates among white colonists due to a lack of immunity to tropical diseases such as malaria. Indeed, the title uses the phrase. Its author, George Alexander Lethbridge Banbury, was a colonial administrator in Sierra Leone in the 1880s and wrote this account of his experiences in the colony until forced to return to Britain due to contracting malaria.