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 2 Burton discusses his expedition to the mountains on the coast of Cameroon, where he climbed to the peak of Mount Cameroon, an active volcano. This volume also has extensive appendices that include lists of plants collected on his expeditions, notes about the wildlife living in the mountains, and observations about the climate and temperature of the region.