Sketches of a Missionary's Travels in Egypt, Syria, Western Africa

October 1833. Appointed missionary to Alexandria, the young Wesleyan Robert Maxwell Macbrair hates the sea. So he travels to Egypt overland, from Calais to Marseille, then along the coasts of Italy, among fussy customs officers, greedy innkeepers and quarrelsome fellow passengers.

He climbs Vesuvius with a guide who predicts an eruption, weathers a storm that drives his brig onto Zante, and discovers Alexandria, Cairo and the pyramids. Dressed as an effendi, wearing a turban, he twice sails up the Nile as far as Philae and the cataracts, among Copts, a hostile crew and the ruins of Thebes, in an Egypt that Muhammad Ali squeezes without mercy. He rides to Damascus and returns by way of Baalbek and the cedars of Lebanon. Then the plague comes down the river, and Alexandria empties.

Recalled to London, he sets out again for the Gambia. On MacCarthy Island he debates Islam with the marabouts, preaches to the Fula, translates the Gospel into Mandinka, and contends with fever, tornadoes and a British administration that turns a blind eye to slavery.

Caustic, pious, indignant, Macbrair looks at the East and at Africa with the eye of a man who lets himself be fooled neither by customs officers nor by tyrants. But what can a lone missionary do when those who ought to protect him become his adversaries?