2 volumes, 8vo (188 x 125 mm). Half-titles, 2 lithographed folding maps with routes printed in color, chromolithographed frontispiece, 3 illustrations in text, 32pp. publisher’s advertisements at the end of Vol. I. (One map with a 3-mm. marginal tear repaired verso, some minor spotting.) Original red cloth decorated in black, ochre and gilt, bottom edges trimmed, others uncut (spines with sunning and rubbing, some minor soiling, hinges starting).

FIRST EDITION, “the record of a man who could become passionately absorbed in whatever he was engaged in, even a search for gold” (Rice). Defying an order not to travel for commercial purposes from the Foreign Office, Burton and his friend Verney Lovett Cameron were hired by the Guinea Coast Gold Company to prospect for gold across central Africa. Eventually, Burton was ordered back to his consular post in Trieste by the Foreign Office. Penzer, pp. 106-107; Rice, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, p. 582; Spink 71.