Despatch from His Majesty's Agent and Consul-General at Cairo,

blue books on the nile

Fine pair of official government reports on basin and lakes of the Nile. The first work is the first modern hydrographical survey of the Upper Nile, produced before the Aswan Dam had finished construction, and the second gives a full account of Sir William Edmund Garstin's (1849-1925) extensive survey of the Nile around Lake Edward, the Semliki River and the Lake Albert, and its tributaries into Uganda conducted in 1903. Together they represent the first attempt to understand the Nile in a modern hydrographical context and contain the most detailed survey of the Upper Nile of its time.

From the noted collection of Humphrey Winterton, one of the greatest collectors of East Africa in the last quarter of the twentieth century, whose library was dispersed by Sotheby's in 2003.

First editions; 2 vols, 4to (33 x 22 cm); 13 folding colour maps, plans, and cross sections, 6 of which folding, discreet library stamp to title; [and] 46 photographic plates, 41 maps, plans, and cross-sections, including 6 large folding; in the original printed blue wrappers, preserved in modern quarter calf clamshell box, bookplate to pastedown of box, both volumes with a little rubbing to spines and in fine condition.