SCOUTING FOR STANLEY IN EAST AFRICA

First edition. 288 pages, frontispiece portrait of the author, 15 black and white plates, working loose at the front and back hinges, but holding on to the netting, original dark green cloth with gilt vignette on upper cover, titled gilt on the spine, scuff marks on the upper cover, a very good copy.

Thomas Stevens (born 24 December 1854, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, died London, 24 January 1935, aged 80) was the first person to circle the globe by bicycle. He rode a large-wheeled Ordinary, also known as a penny-farthing, from April 1884 to December 1886.

In searching for Henry Morton Stanley in Africa he led a six-month expedition, writing for the newspaper of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and hunting big game. He found Stanley's camp in a race with the rival New York Herald and wrote his book, Scouting for Stanley in East Africa It concluded: By the end of February 1890, I was again in New York. I had been gone fourteen months. I had not 'found Stanley,' as Stanley had found Livingstone in 1871; the circumstances were altogether different. I had, however, gratified a pardonable journalistic ambition in being the first correspondent to reach him and to give him news of the world, after his long period of African darkness. That I had done this under most trying conditions, Mr. Stanley fully appreciated; and warmly reciprocated by showing me every courtesy in his power, on the march to the coast, in Zanzibar, and in Egypt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Stevens_(cyclist)