Added to your basket:
With the Abyssinians in Somaliland … With a preface by Colonel A.N. Rochfort … and sixty-five illustrations from photographs taken by Major Jennings, and a map.

Checkout now

First edition recounting the author’s fact-finding mission to Eritrea and Ethiopia investigating the ‘folk-lore, the characteristics, and customs of the Abyssinians’.

The two observers were James Willes Jennings, a medical officer in the employ of the British army, and Christopher Addison, a lecturer on anatomy at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School. The immediate political context of their expedition was the activities of Mullah Mohammed Abdulla Ibn Hassan, nicknamed the ‘Mad Mullah’, the Somali religious and military leader of the Dervish movement. Initially directing his attention against the Abyssinians, his actions soon brought him into conflict with British authorities. By the autumn of 1903, the British were planning more extensive operations against Mullah Mohammed Hassan under the command of Lieutenant-General C.C. Egerton, with the goal of assisting the Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II. As part of this co-operation, and at the Emperor’s request, the British sent Jennings and Addison to accompany Menelik’s forces. The pair left Britain in October 1903, passing first to Aden and onwards to Djibouti and then Berbera. The subsequent account details the year they spent travelling alongside their Abyssinian companions, with detailed and fascinating accounts of their military movements, the local customs and culture, and the various hunting expeditions they engaged in along the way.

You may also be interested in...

WITH PROVENANCE FROM A PRISONER TO A PILFERER BEUTER, Pere Antoni (or Pedro Antonio); Alfonso de ULLOA, translator.

Cronica generale d’Hispagna, et del regno di Valenza … con due tavole.

First and only Italian edition of the first part of Beuter’s history of Spain and Valencia from the Great Flood to James I the Conqueror, handsomely bound for Don Pedro Antonio de Aragon.

Read more

[BRACKEN, Henry (attributed).]

Ten Minutes Advice to every Gentleman going to purchase a Horse out of a Dealer, Jockey, or Groom’s Stable.

Very rare second edition of advice on the purchase of horses, with the tricks used by dealers to deceive buyers. Though the text is commonly attributed to Bracken, he is unlikely to have published anything a decade after his death; the author’s preface, signed ‘S.’, may offer a more productive lead. A concise work, the author notes: ‘This Treatise might have been swelled to a much greater size, but the Author thought it would prove too tedious; he hopes the shortness of it will not be deemed a fault, but rather a recommendation’ (p. 22); evidently not deemed a recommendation, the work was much expanded for future editions.

Read more