(London: Macmillan, 1868).

RARE IN THE ORIGINAL CLOTH AND ONE OF THE SEMINAL WORKS ON THE EXPLORATION OF THE NILE SOURCES. Baker, Burton, and Speke had by this time finally proved (or so they thought) that the source of the White Nile lay in the Lakes Albert and N'yanza. In this volume Baker traces his discovery of the sources of the lower Nile in the Atbara River and the Blue Nile in Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia and Somalia).
Also of interest is the fact that Sir Baker went on these expeditions with his wife. Mrs. Baker should be considered an accomplished explorer in her own right. She shared in all of the hardships and dangers 19th Century exploration had to offer and her contributions to the expeditions are well documented.
The first editions of Baker s works are becoming increasingly difficult to procure. This printing of 1868 is formatted and bound and presented identical to the first. The importance of the debate over the source of the Nile, combined with Baker's very readable writing style, made his books enormously popular, with the result that they were reprinted a great many times over the following years. Item #29007

Rare Second Issuance, as the First Edition, in original cloth. With frontispiece portraits of Samuel and Mrs. Baker, 23 black and white wood-engraved plates, and two color maps, one folding and one full-page. 8vo, in the publisher s original royal blue polished cloth, the upper cover decorated with a pictorial vignette of an elephant in chase, a rider on horseback, hunters and a mountain scene, all in gilt, the spine lettered and lined in gilt and with a pictorial decoration of a giraffe in gilt. xxii, 596 pp. A well preserved, handsome copy in the original blue cloth, elusive thus. This copy with some rubbing at the tips and a small chip to the body of the spine panel. Some foxing to the prelims as is typical.