Beschreibung:

Henry Morton Stanley
Coomassie and Magdala. The Story of Two British Campaigns in Africa. (1874)
Published: Sampson Low, London, 1874
Edition: First Edition
xiv + 510pp + 48pp publisher's catalogue. 2 fold-out maps + 27 wood-engraved plates. "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. Henry Morton Stanley was Special Correspondent to the New York Herald newspaper and reported on several conflicts; in the 1860s, he witnesed two successful British military campaigns in Africa; the battles for the towns of Coomassie and Magdala. The British soldiers not only fought hard against the enemy, but also had to endure extremely harsh and gruelling climatic and geographical conditions. In particular, the fight for Coomassie took place in thick jungle and swampland; many of the troops who survived the battle were later to fall victim to malaria and other diseases. The victories were highly praised back in England and were widely thought to be some of the toughest battles of the period. The account of two British military campaigns in East and West Africa in 1868 and 1873-74, led by Sir Robert Napier and Sir Garnet Wolseley respectively, both of which Stanley accompanied as a war correspondent for the New York Herald . Napier s campaign in Abyssinia (Ethiopia) was conducted against Emperor Theodore, who was holding foreign hostages in his mountain fortress, Magdala. The fortress was stormed, his hostages were freed, and Theodore himself committed suicide. Wolseley s successful Kumassi campaign was carried out against King Koffee and the Ashanti in the jungles of what is now Ghana and Sierra Leone. His reports on the Abyssianian campaign, the earliest received even in London, established Stanley s reputation as one of the leading journalists of the time while his bravery in the march to Kumassi won him the highest respect of Wolseley and other English officers. Binding Condition: Very Good Overall Condition: Very Good