Wanderings in West Africa from Liverpool to Fernando Po.

'Newly married and needing employment, Burton approached the Foreign Office for a consular position, hoping for the post at Damascus. Instead, he was offered the consulship at Fernando Po, a small, unhealthy island in the Bight of Biafra on the west African coast. When he accepted the position on 27 March 1861 he requested to retain his commission in the Bombay army, but he was struck from the list, thereby losing not only his half pay but also any prospect of a pension or sale of his commission, an action about which he always complained bitterly. Burton did not permit Isabel to accompany him to Fernando Po, which he described as "the very abomination of desolation". He slipped away from the post at every opportunity for excursions on the African mainland or to meet Isabel in the Canaries or England. Although he loathed Fernando Po, he worked continuously at his writing with Wanderings in West Africa and Abeokuta and the Cameroons Mountains both appearing in 1863' (ODNB).

First edition; 2 vols, 8vo (19.5 x 14 cm); folding map as frontispiece to vol. I, plate of the JuJu House as frontispiece to vol. II; publisher's original purple pebble-grained cloth housed in modern cloth slipcase, gilt lettering to spine, triple blind panel to the boards, a couple small rubs to joints of vol. II, a very good attractive set; x, 303; vi, 295 pp.

Cardinall 498; Casada 70; Howgego IV, B97; Penzer, pp. 71-2.