PARK, Mungo (1771-1806). Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa: performed under the Direction and Patronage of the African Association in the years 1795...1797. London: G. & W. Nicol, 1799. 4to (269 x 206 mm). Engraved portrait frontispiece of Park by T. Dickinson after H. Edridge, 5 engraved plates (2 folding), 3 folding maps (one with routes outlined in color), and 2 leaves of engraved music. (Lacking half-title, some offsetting, some staining and scattered foxing, heaviest on title-page, mostly to margin on preliminary leaves.) Early 19th-century dark blue straight-grained morocco gilt, spines gilt, edges gilt. Provenance: George C. Ayre (bookplate).FIRST EDITION OF THIS CLASSIC OF TRAVEL LITERATURE. Park's narrative is valued as a great travel book, and "for its scientific observations on the botany and meteorology of the region, and on the social and domestic life of the negroes"(PMM 253). [Uniformly bound with:] The Journal of a Mission to the Interiors of Africa, in the year 1805. London: W. Bulmer and Co. for John Murray, 1815. Folding engraved map hand-colored in outline. (Occasional marginal staining.) Second (and best) edition of Park's tragic expedition to the Niger, in which he and nearly all of his men died.