Through the Dark Continent.

with als to confirming a meeting with the foreign secretary ahead of the emin-pasha expedition

With ALS from Stanley confirming 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 prior to 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 train of the expedition stretched over half a mile on its leaving Tanzania. What followed was two and a half years of tortuous slogging travel through the heart of Africa, broken by long diplomatic negotiations between Stanley and the Emperor Mtesa of Uganda and the Wanyoro chief Mirambo, constant friction with their infamous guide through the rain forest named Tippu-Tib, and fending off more than thirty attempted attacks and incursions by local tribes.

Stanley, after two months of meticulously circumnavigating Lake Victoria, proved the only outlet was Ripon Falls and to his mind making it the source of the Nile. He then proved there was no connection between Lake Albert and Lake Tanganyika, and also proving the Lualaba was not part of the Niger or Nile rivers but ultimately flowed into the Congo. The journey in the end covered over seven thousand miles and immortalised Stanley as one of the greats of African exploration.

First edition; 2 volumes, 8vo (23 x 15.5 cm); autograph letter signed loosely inserted to vol. I, 2 frontispiece portraits, 10 maps including 2 large folding maps in pockets at rear, 33 wood-engraved plates, illustrations in the text, discreet W.H. Smith blindstamps to endpaper of vol. I; publisher's original gilt pictorial cloth with Africa shown in relief with route across in gilt, spines lettered in gilt, a little rubbed, hinges of vol. I cracked but firm, a very good set; xiv, [1], 522; ix, 566 pp.

Mendelssohn II, p.380.