2 volumes, 8vo. 2 folding maps (2-in. closed tear to one, a few short tears along folds of the other), one chromolithographed plate; half-titles, publisher’s advertisements at the end of Vol. I. 20th-century brown crushed levant gilt, top edge gilt, stamp-signed by Birdsall; original cloth bound in. 

 

FIRST EDITION, “the record of a man who could become passionately absorbed in whatever he was engaged in” (Rice, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, p. 455). Defying an order not to travel for commercial purposes from the Foreign Office, Burton and his friend Verney Lovett Cameron were hired by the Guinea Coast Gold Company to prospect for gold across central Africa. Eventually, Burton was ordered back to his consular post in Trieste by the Foreign Office. Casada 65; Penzer, p. 106.