COOMASSIE: The Story of The Campaign In Africa 1878-4, Being the First Part of the Original Volume entitled ‘Coomassie and Magdala’

London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co, 1896. First Separate Edition. With numerous illustrations from drawings by Melton Prior (special artist in Ashantee of the illustrated London News) and other artists, and a map. Small 8vo, full blue-green calf, the spine with raised band stippled in gilt, gilt fillet lines at the head and tail, red morocco lettering label, the covers with double gilt fillet border lines. vii, map, 212. A handsomely bound copy in excellent condition. IN A PLEASING FULL CALF BINDING.A very scarce title in the Stanley oeuvre. COOMASSIE AND MAGDALA is the story of the great British campaigns in East and West Africa. Here COOMASSIE is published for the first time in one volume of its own, a complete account of the British Campaign with some superb illustrations. Stanley wrote his description while a Special Correspondent of the New York Herald.
“Coomassie was a town insulated by a deadly swamp. A thick jungly forest - so dense that the sun seldom pierced the foliage; so sickly that the strongest fell victims to the malaria it cherished - surrounded it to a depth of 140 miles seaward, many hundred miles east, as many more west, and 100 miles north. Through this forest and swamp, unrelieved by a single novelty or a single pretty landscape, the British army had to march...” Henry Stanley, from his preface.