The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mission; or Scenes in Africa, by
Captain Frederick Marryat

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Title: The Mission; or Scenes in Africa

Author: Captain Frederick Marryat

Release Date: May 21, 2007 [EBook #21555]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MISSION; OR SCENES IN AFRICA ***

Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England

The Mission in Africa, by Captain Marryat.

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Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848.
He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to
writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which are
among the very best of English literature, and some of which are still
in print.

Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his
stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, he
never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary
genius.

"The Mission in Africa" was published in 1845, the twenty-second book to
flow from Marryat's pen.

This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was reformatted
in 2003, and again in 2005.

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THE MISSION IN AFRICA, BY CAPTAIN FREDERICK MARRYAT.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE EXPEDITION.

It was in the autumn of the year 1828, that an elderly and infirm
gentleman was slowly pacing up and down in a large dining-room. He had
apparently finished his dinner, although it was not yet five o'clock,
and the descending sun shone bright and warm through the windows, which
were level with the ground, and from which there was a view of a
spacious park, highly ornamented with old timber. He held a newspaper
in one hand, and had the other behind his back, as if for support, for
he was bent forward, and looked very feeble and emaciated.

After pacing for some time, he sat down in an easy chair and remained in
deep thought, holding the newspaper in both his hands.

This old gentleman's name was Sir Charles Wilmot. He had in early life
gone out to India as a writer, and