Richard H. Stone (1837–1915) was an American Baptist missionary who lived in Yorubaland (south-west Nigeria) for six years between 1859 and 1869, and In Africa's Forest and Jungles – which is edited by his great-granddaughter – is an eyewitness account of Yoruba life and culture. It is a personal narrative of encounters with common and aristocratic natives, religious personnel and indeed the flora and fauna of the Yoruba nation during the second half of the nineteenth century. It is an exposé of the material and institutional culture of the Yorubas by a participant-observer whose nuanced exposition of events, especially of the Ibadan–Ijaye wars and their dramatis personae, offers new insights into the political and military cross-currents among the tribal constituents of the Yoruba nation during the nineteenth century.

Some of the key figures whom Stone met included Kurunmi, the enigmatic generalissimo of the Ijayes, Ibikunle (r. 1851–64), Ogunmola (r. 1865–7) and, from the Ibadan side, Lamuye (d. 1906). His report on his various interactions with these people and many others, provides rare details about diplomacy and intrigues among the locals at that time. But this title is also significant in two other ways. First, Stone's journal on some of his daily activities, the pictures, and the correspondences with James B. Taylor, the secretariat of the Southern Baptist Convention in America, reveal a lot about the perception and attitude of the denomination and its aficionados towards Africa, and indeed towards the Yoruba. Second, In Africa's Forest and Jungles offers new evidence about, on the one hand, religious interactions among the church people and the natives, and on the other, the status of the Muslims, their institutions, and the perceptions of Christians – or more specifically the perceptions of Stone – regarding Muslims and their interactions with other religionists. Significantly, we know that the Islamic legal system was in practice among the Egba (pp. 101–2) from an early period, and that Islam may have had a firmer foothold in Yorubaland, specifically in Iwo (p. 166), earlier than has hitherto been acknowledged in the existing literature.

The documentary importance and uniqueness of this work notwithstanding, some of the Western stereotypes about the ‘other’, and indeed about black Africa, are too evident to be ignored, if only to illustrate the conformity of the author with the trends of his time. For instance, he regards his first sojourn (1859–63) ‘as four years of stay away from civilisation’ (p. 125) among ‘the tortured slaves of superstition’ (p. 13); ‘those who dwell in pagan darkness’ (p. 129), but who nonetheless exhibited an unfamiliar bravery in war. Moreover, Stone's motivation to visit Africa was inspired, in the first place, by a desire to contribute his ‘quota to the great work which was stopped by Mohammedan ferocity and Roman superstition’ (p. 150), a fact which reveals his support for the Baptist denomination at the expense of other varieties of Christianity, and indeed other religions.

By and large, this book represents interesting archival material for all those interested in African (Yoruba) history and processes of proselytisation in Africa. It will doubtless inspire new investigations into some of the dimensions adumbrated in existing narratives on social and political discourse among the Yoruba people and their missionary principals at the twilight of the nineteenth century.