Travel accounts take many forms, including formal reports, novels, memoirs, diaries, letters, and newspaper articles. When you read a travel account for the first time, puzzling out the form is sometimes difficult. Nevertheless, knowing the form of the account is very important, because this knowledge will give you important clues to the author’s purpose in writing the account and the decisions he or she made when writing it.

In this exercise, you will be presented with brief selections from several different accounts of journeys on the Congo River in the late 19th century. Read the text carefully and to try to determine its form of publication. After each account you will be asked to decide on the form. Once you find the correct answer, you can read a description of the text itself. As you read the selections, look for clues in the language to help you answer the questions correctly.