Through the Dark Continent; or The Sources of the Nile Around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa and Down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean. (COMPLETE IN TWO VOLUMES)

Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, London, 1878. Book. Good. Hardcover. 1st Edition. First edition, complete in two volumes. 8vo. xv, 522pp and ix, 566pp + xxxii publisher's advertisements (dated April 1878). Original publisher's brown cloth, gilt- and black lettered at the spine and upper boards with a double rule and brown and gilt stamped topographical design. With a different portrait frontispiece to each volume, 34 plates, 115 illustrations, and 10 maps including two large folding examples in pockets to the rear boards (one of which is a facsimile, and the other exhibiting some careful taped repair to some of the natural folds). Some bruising to the backstrip ends. Edges spotted and with a little discolouration to the rear board of the first volume. The protective frontispiece tissue absent from both volumes, resulting in some off-set browning from the plates to the adjacent title pages, and some spotting to the preliminary leaves and to very occasional leaves throughout. The outer rear hinge of the second volume slightly split (a result of the facsimile map being on slightly thicker paperstock). Some unsightly creasing to the final page of the publisher's catalogue. A nice sound set of Stanley's account of his 1874-77 Central African expedition: a 7,000 mile trek exploring Lake Victoria, Lake Tanganyika, and the Lualaba and Congo rivers, and ultimately determining the source of the Nile..