Sir Richard Burton (1821–1890) the famous Victorian explorer, began his career in the Indian army in 1842. While in India he developed his linguistic talent, mastering more than forty different languages and dialects. He turned to writing books in the 1850s and, over the remaining forty years of his life, published dozens of works and more than one hundred articles. Burton wrote this two-volume work, published in 1863, while working as the British consul in Fernando Po (modern-day Equatorial Guinea), West Africa. In Volume 1 Burton describes his journey to Abeokuta, the capital of the Egba tribe of the Yoruba nation (which was located in the south-west of present-day Nigeria). Burton gives detailed descriptions of the people he meets – including the king – and considers the relationship between the Egba and British in the context of the latters' ambitions in West Africa.