Through the Dark Continent.

£2,750 · Offered by Shapero Rare Books

with signed letter to arrange meeting with the foreign secretary in preparation for the emin-pasha expedition With signed letter from Stanley arranging a meeting with Stafford Henry Northcote, 1st Earl of Iddesleigh 'at 6 pm Saturday next week'. Dated 3 January 1887, this letter was written in the three weeks that Stanley was back in London from the Congo hastily preparing the Emin-Pasha expedition. The meeting would never take place: Northcote died on the 12th of January, the Wednesday before the Saturday suggested, meaning Stanley presumably had to meet with his successor the Marquess of Salisbury instead. The story of the Anglo-American expedition to Central Africa, commanded by Stanley and undertaken between 1874 and 1877. The discovery of the course of the Congo, though the greatest, was but one of the many geographical problems solved during this memorable expedition. Vast in size, "the procession that departed from Bagamoyo (Tanzania) on 17 November 1874 stretched for more than half a mile and included dozens of men carrying sections of the Lady Alice, with which Stanley intended to explore Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and Livingstone's Lualaba River. During the next two and a half years, the expedition would struggle in temperatures reaching as high as 138 degrees; the powerful Emperor Mtesa of Uganda and the Wanyoro chief Mirambo would consume a great deal of Stanley's time and test his diplomatic skills; he would have to negotiate with a notorious Arab ivory and sl

• Binding: Hardcover

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