Pursuing the Nile: The First Lake Regions

In 1859, when Richard Francis Burton had just returned from his three-year African expedition in search of the Nile sources, he first produced a mammoth article describing the journey, The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa. Burton was not yet completely estranged from his companion John Hanning Speke when this book-length article, running to over 450 pages, was written. It is more measured in tone than the two-volume travel narrative, The Lake Regions of Central Africa, that soon followed it. He concentrates less here on entertainment for armchair travellers, and has a freer hand to add substance to his material with footnotes. The wealth of additional detail, the relative absence of bitterness and, for Burton, the more modest length, reward the reader of this `First Lake Regions'. The Lake Regions of Central Africa supplements but does not supersede it. However, it has long been hard get hold of reissues of this landmark earlier version without access to research libraries. A table of contents was not present in the original and has been added. The index supplied with the original is retained, and the same page numbering is kept throughout. Since the original text did not include any illustrations, the exceptionally rare tinted plates from the first edition of The Lake Regions of Central Africa have been included. Substantial reproductions of the excellent woodcuts, and portraits of the principal figures, provide additional context. The original folding map is included in facsimile, with thorough magnification of detail in panels. In addition, a number of additional maps are reproduced, from the crude `slug' map concocted by the missionaries Erhardt and Rebmann, through the various manuscript and printed maps constructed in 1858 and later by Speke. Some important letters about the expedition are also included, along with facsimiles of the manuscripts.