As the author of some of the most popular books of African exploration in the late nineteenth century, Joseph Thomson earned fame not only for his discoveries but also for the humane manner in which he conducted his expeditions. Except for Henry M. Stanley, Thomson traveled more widely in Africa than any other European explorer, and he boasted that he never fired his gun in anger.

The youngest of five sons of William and Agnes Brown Thomson, Joseph Thomson was born on 14 February 1858 in Penpont, in Dumfries, Scotland. William, a stonemason said to have a constitution of iron, moved his family in 1868 to Gatelawbridge, where he ran his own quarry. According to James Thomson, his brother and his first biographer, Joseph early exhibited the traits of character that marked his adult careers as author and explorer: he was intellectually curious and morally upright, deploring the "profanity and indecent...