Lake Tana and the Blue Nile. An Abyssinian quest.

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8vo, pp. xiv, 400; with folding frontispiece, 48 photographs on 24 plates, 1 geological section, 2 folding maps; a little light foxing, heavier on maps; a very good, clean copy in original green cloth with gilt lettering on spine; heavy fading, discolouring and spotting on spine, fading on parts of both upper and lower covers, some slight bumping to extremities.First edition recounting various expeditions around Lake Tana by major Robert Ernest Cheesman (1878-1962), the consul for north-west Ethiopia between 1925 and 1934. It may be said with more than a little confidence that the appointment of Cheesman (an experienced traveller and author of the 1926 travel account Unknown Arabia (1926)) to the post of consul was not based on Cheesman's prior expertise on Africa. As Cheesman writes, 'when in 1925 I was appointed His Majesty's Consul for North-west Ethiopia I must confess to a consultation of the map to find out exactly where my district was. Having discovered that Ethiopia was another name for the country better known in Europe as Abyssinia, and that it was to be found in the north-east corner of Africa, it took me some time to identify Dangila, where the Consulate was situated. The name was printed in very small type, and on some maps was omitted altogether' (p. 1). Fortunately enough Cheesman was prepared to remedy this potential inconvenience: armed with his newly acquired knowledge and a map with a larger typesetting, he spent many of his nine years as consul in Ethiopia organising numerous expeditions through areas which, as Cheesman's lengthy and frustrating hunt for an appropriate map in London suggests, were largely unknown to Europeans. This work (originally completed in 1934 but rewritten after the manuscript was stolen from Cheesman's motor car in London, and subsequently published in 1936), recounts a number of these expeditions, with the main focus being the area and rivers around Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia and the source of the Blue Nile. N° de ref. del artículo T5058.115

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