JAMES, F[rank] L[insly].

The rare deluxe issue with the natural history plates hand-coloured.

In 1884, James made his way, in company with his brother and four others, into the interior of the Somali country. In spite of previous attempts on the part of Burton, Speke, Haggenmacher, and others, this region had hitherto been unexplored beyond sixty or seventy miles from the coast. James now succeeded in getting as far south as the Webbe Shebeyli River, where he found a wide fertile country which markedly contrasted with the deserts he had traversed. The remarkable feat of taking a caravan of nearly a hundred people and a hundred camels a thirteen days' journey across a waterless waste led Lord Aberdare, in his annual address to the Royal Geographical Society in 1885, to describe the expedition as one of the most interesting and difficult in all recent African travel.