Description

Although ready for publication as early as 1860 Burton’s original manuscripts, compiled prior to his expedition to Lake Tanganyika with Speke, were lost for some years before being eventually returned to him following some bizarre coincidences. However, as he remarks in the Preface this long interruption gave him “time to work out the subject, and, better still, to write with calmness and temper upon a theme of the most temper-trying nature” (p.xii). Penzer, p88 89.