Through the Dark Continent. Or The Sources of the Nile Around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa and Down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean.. This item is unavailable.Through the Dark Continent. Or The Sources of the Nile Around the Great Lakes of Equatorial Africa and Down the Livingstone River to the Atlantic Ocean.

First US edition, first published in the UK earlier the same year. 8vo., 2 volumes. Original dark green cloth with wraparound pictorial design in red, black, and gilt, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, brown coated endpapers. Portrait frontispiece in each volume and 32 plates, 10 maps in all, one double-page and 3 folding, the 2 larger folding coloured maps in end pockets of each volume, numerous wood-engravings to the text, many full-page. When the news of Livingstone's death reached him in 1874 Stanley wrote that he hoped to be selected to continue Livingstone's work in opening up Africa to the shining light of Christianity. His hopes were fulfilled with his next expedition in which he crossed central Africa from coast to coast, determining the connections between Lakes Nyanza and Tanganyika, laying the foundations of the Christian missions and following the curve of the Congo to the shores of the Atlantic. Stanley's description of this journey, as found here, was the first account to actually prove the source of the Nile. Although Speke correctly claimed in 1858 that Lake Victoria was the true source of the river, it took Stanley's circumnavigation of the Lake to establish it conclusively.…